Eleni Vlachos infuses fun into unpopular ideas through community outreach, the importance of which she discovered after screening her documentary about the role of animals in our society and speaking with students at over 100 universities across the country.
In the past decade she won three awards for three initiatives she successfully led including a partnership with the City of Durham to create a “bridge” to her neighborhood from downtown by transforming a vacant lot into a dog park, and four month-long vegan chef challenges that engaged the non-veg community. She is also a filmmaker and drummer for Beloved Binge.
Currently Eleni is writing a novel on the boundaries between love and domination in familial and animal relationships as told through the story of a family coping with loss, power, and abandonment in New Mexico. Eleni has also written articles on food and family for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Eleni has been featured in over 80 newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, and television shows. To interview Eleni, contact her here.
Press
Below you will find press on Eleni Vlachos’ community engagement, band, and film.

Article: In Harlem, a Home Without Wheels
Select press for community engagement
- Local restaurants shake up menus for vegan challenge (Santa Fe, NM)
- A landowner who’s an ally, not a bully? In Philly?
- Bull City Vegan Challenge (launch)
- Meatless Monday Pledge-olution
- Fifteen Durham Restaurants to Participate in April’s Bull City Vegan Challenge
- Durham’s Eleni Vlachos making meatless mainstream
- Triangle Meatless Mondays kick-off
- Vegan Thanksgiving Record Party
- Duo-fest III write-up, in Durham NC (Co-hosted three annual music festivals)
- Meatless Mondays as a New Year’s resolution
- Vegan? Enjoy pizza again
- Century-old Durham home latest to face bulldozer
- Preserving Durham (Quoted)
- The Parlour’s Vegan Sundae
- The Cupcake Bar Accepts the Bull City Vegan Challenge
- And the winner of the Bull City Vegan Challenge is …
- Bull City Vegan Challenge in April
- Awards for Triangle restaurateurs, Bull City Vegan Challenge
- Take a Bite Out of the Bull City Vegan Challenge
- Real winner in Durham vegan challenge? Your taste buds
- Durham chefs compete for best vegan dish
- Bull City Vegan Challenge on CBS
- Bull City Vegan Challenges enters last week
- Durham’s fourth Bull City Challenge to take place this April
- Top North Carolina Chefs Participate in Vegan Challenge
- Our Hen House interview for Bull City Vegan Challenge
- Durham, North Carolina is getting its own Vegan Cookoff
- Triangle Dining News
- The Triangle Explorer: Bull City Vegan Challenge
- The Triangle’s Best Food Events

Select articles about Eleni’s band Beloved Binge
- Independent Weekly: Interview with Beloved Binge before last show in Durham
- Beloved Binge of Connectivity
- Tour of Duty
- Beloved Binge’s Eleni Vlachos on the road, veganism and the end of small talk
- Beloved Binge’s Pockets
- Beloved Binge’s Blender Theory
- Beloved Binge’s Other Places
- Introducing: Beloved Binge (UK)
- Beloved Binge in Sofia, Bulgaria
- Beloved Binge in Athens, Greece
- Pockets Review
- Mobile DIY Rockers Celebrate 10 years
Photo of Beloved Binge (and their dog, Syba) (and the cob house Eleni built) by Alex Boerner
Select press for Eleni’s documentary Seeing Through the Fence
Eleni screened Seeing through the Fence at over 100 universities across the USA from roughly 2008-2010, speaking to college audiences about the role of animals in our society. A few of the 25+ articles that resulted:
- Richmond Style Weekly: Documentary with Bite
- Chicago Reader: Seeing Through the Fence
- Yale Herald: Climb down moral high ground
- Louisville Leo weekly: Staff picks
- Athens Banner Herald: Best Bets
- Athens Banner Herald: Funny Film about Food
- Independent Weekly: Seeing Through the Fence
- University of Pittsburgh to Present Film by Eleni Binge
- FGCU brings documentary about modern food production
- VegNews: Vegan Activists Beloved Binge
- The Seattle Times
- Interview on Our Hen House, episode 7
Awards for community engagement
- Helped mobilize the Cleveland Holloway neighborhood and awarded the “neighborhood hero” award in Durham, NC (2007)
- Selected as “Humane Hero of the Year” by the Humane League (2016)
- Awarded the first “Lisa Shapiro Award” for activism and outreach by the Triangle Veg Society (2016)
