Executive Director

The Rev. John Millspaugh, M.Div., M.P.A., is the grandson of Iowa farmers and is a graduate of both Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Kennedy School. His award-winning justice work has focused on modern slavery, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate justice, and animal protection.

John’s thoughts on social ethics have been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times. His 2024 justice work for animals inspired a longform article in The Atlantic.

John led the team that organized over 400 congregations to collectively write and adopt Unitarian Universalism’s intersectional “Ethical Eating” statement in 2011, the first known instance of a national U.S. religious body adopting an intersectional position statement on food. More than a decade later, in 2024, he spearheaded the campaign that led the Unitarian Universalist Association to incorporate language he wrote into its bylaws. Article II now states that Unitarian Universalists “covenant to protect … all beings from exploitation.”

In addition to serving as UUAM’s Executive Director, John works as Farm Forward’s Director of Education and Better Food Foundation’s Director of Faith in Food. He is the former Project Director of the University of San Diego Food Studies Initiative, Policy Manager of the San Diego Hunger Coalition, and Executive Director of an international animal protection nonprofit.

John served Unitarian Universalist congregations for 14 years. He and his wife and son live on the unceded land of the Kumeyaay with their beloved mutt, who may or may not be a black lab mix, in San Diego, CA.