Meet the passionate and diverse teams from Viva! Uganda and Viva! UK, working together to make Gorilla Defenders possible. Each member brings unique skills, experiences, and a deep dedication to making a difference for the mountain gorillas and the people who protect them.
Viva! Uganda
Juliet Gellatley, BSc zoology & psychology, Dip Direct Marketing, Dip Nutritional Therapy, Founder & Director of the Board
Juliet is the international founder and director of vegan campaigning charity Viva! in the UK and also founded its sister groups, Viva! Poland and Viva! Uganda.
After obtaining a degree in zoology and psychology, she became the Vegetarian Society of the UK’s first youth campaigner in the 1980s and quickly rose to become the Society’s campaigns director, and then director. On 26 October 1994, she launched Viva! in the UK; Europe’s largest vegan campaigning charity. Juliet has since created and launched numerous campaigns on the disastrous repercussions of eating animals, not just for them but also for the planet and our health.
Juliet is the author of several reports and guides, and producer of the award-winning documentary HOGWOOD: a modern horror story, available on Amazon Prime and Netflix. She is also producer of Viva!’s first TV ad, Take Away the Meat (reaching 38 million people) and co-produced the UK’s first cinema ad, Bringing Hope to Millions. She produced videos that went viral as part of 3 in 4, a campaign that she created which reached millions of people during the Covid pandemic exposing the link between wet markets, factory farming and infectious diseases.
Juliet became a qualified nutritional therapist in 2005 and launched several health campaigns with her colleagues Dr Justine Butler and Veronika Prošek Charvátová, under Viva!’s health and nutrition arm, Viva! Health. They have promoted the benefits of being vegan and also exposed the damage being wrought by consuming meat and other animal products.
Juliet is also the author of The Livewire Guide to Going, Being and Staying Veggie!, The Silent Ark: A Chilling Expose of Meat – The Global Killer, and Born To Be Wild: The Livewire Guide to Saving Animals. Juliet has given many hundreds of talks, radio, podcast and TV interviews and received awards including the Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain from Sir Paul McCartney: Animal Welfare Award, Cosmopolitan Woman of the Year: Education, the Australian Wildlife Protection Council’s Wildlife Protection Award, the People Environment Achievement National Award, and the St Francis Award for helping animals.
“As a teenager the seeds for Viva! were sown. I witnessed the sheer scale of animal suffering – rows upon rows of pregnant pigs confined to cages, gnawing on their metal prisons. There was one particular pig which has stayed with me forever. At the end of a row of stalls, there was a large boar who dragged his exhausted body towards me. He looked straight at me, his sad, deep eyes staring into mine. In that moment I knew I would dedicate my life to saving animals.
Since then and over the decades, I have travelled to Africa – mainly Uganda and Kenya many times. Uganda, in particular, has a piece of my heart. It is a beautiful and complex country where I have met the most inspiring people and had the privilege to see the most incredible wildlife. I’m determined that Uganda will lead the way in Africa in using the most obvious and vital solution to so many of the most extreme environmental problems – shifting diets to plant-based to massively reduce the need for land and water; to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; to protect people’s health and to be kind to all kind.”
Find out more about Juliet here. [link to full biography page]
Denis Kasaija, Director of the Board
A country boy by heart, Denis was born and raised in Mukono where he lived for all his childhood. He attained a professional guiding certificate from the Uganda Safari Guides Association (USAGA) and is currently pursuing further studies in tourism and wildlife management at the Uganda Wildlife Institute.
Before joining tourism, Denis trained as a primary school teacher and taught mathematics and science at elementary level, before deciding upon a career change.
Denis started guiding in 2011 and worked for various major Ugandan tour companies in Kampala as a senior guide. Denis is multilingual and can speak English, Swahili, a little German and Italian, which helps him communicate well with guests. His hobbies and interests include running, reading, watching football and spending time in his strictly vegan farm. He also has a passion for zoology and botany coupled with an expanding love for birding and entomology.
“I’m vegan to help protect wildlife – to reduce my carbon footprint on planet Earth. Also, because it is such a healthy way to live and because I detest cruelty. I’m proud to a part of Viva! Uganda.”