A woman who grew up in Vallejo and lived for years in Benicia is the first fellow with Harvard Law School’s Animal Advocacy Program.

Delcianna Winders is in charge of the Captive Animal Law Enforcement division of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said David W. Perle, PETA senior media coordinator.

He described Winders as someone who “knows how to use the U.S. legal system to effect change for animals.”

As a Harvard fellow, Winders will be involved in researching and writing about instances in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has failed to enforce the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), Perle said. That act marks its 50th anniversary in 2016, and Perle said the USDA’s inspector general has pointed out times when the department hasn’t enforced that law.

“(It’s) an issue that Winders and PETA have worked on for years,” he said. “Lawsuits that she has worked on have challenged the USDA’s failure to protect birds under the AWA for more than 40 years and the agency’s policy of rubber-stamping AWA license renewal applications, among others.

“Her Harvard fellowship will build on this work, looking at administrative law scholarship to develop tools to address these failings.”

Among her duties with PETA, Winders has led the organization’s support of Oakland’s bullhook ban. She helped free more than 30 bears once held captive in cages and concrete pits in roadside zoos throughout the United States, and she also has been active for years filing complaints and enforcement requests about Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’s treatment of its elephants.

Earlier this year, the circus company announced it would phase out all its elephant acts by 2018, Perle said.

In 2013, Winders was among those featured in Oprah Winfrey’s “O Magazine,” in an article about confident women.

A Benicia resident from 2001-13, Winders worked at Mortgage Strategies, obtaining her real estate license. She became a lender after graduation from the University of California-Santa Cruz.

She moved from Benicia to study animal-rights law at New York University School of Law. She graduated from that school with honors in 2006.

She said her affinity for animals began when she was 14, when she cared for pigs being raised for food. After the pigs were slaughtered, she said, “I could no longer separate the meat on my plate from the animals it had come from.”

The experience launched her study of factory farming. “I wanted to right these wrongs,” she said. Later, she said, she realized that public speaking is another way to address concerns about animal treatment.

Earlier this year, Winders spoke out in favor of PETA’s protest of the bullriding movie, “The Longest Ride, and praised San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors when they banned performances by wild and exotic animals in circuses, movies, television and other venues.

She has called for people to boycott SeaWorld and other theme parks that exhibit animals.

After use of the contents of a mislabeled container killed nearly 500 fish at the Texas State Aquarium, Winders wrote Chief Executive Officer Tom Schmid, offering to give $10,000 for an animal-free exhibit if the aquarium agreed not to restock its tanks.

Last May, she criticized the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after PETA filed a suit, contending that applicants for exceptions to the Endangered Species Act sidestep the act’s provisions by making minimal donations to conservation organizations.

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