2008 Conference Speakers

Jill E. Adams is the Executive Director of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. Jill is committed to empowering law students, building coalition with other social justice groups, and fostering LSRJ's long-term sustainability.
Jessica Arons is the Director of the Women's Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. Her publications include "More Than a Choice: A Progressive Vision for Reproductive Health & Rights" and "Future Choices: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Law."
Emily Barcklow works as the Projects Coordinator for the Mexican organization, Equidad de Género: Ciudadaní a, Trabajo y Familia (Gender Equity: Citizenship, Work and Family). She has been an active member of Decidir: Coalición de Jóvenes por la Ciudadaní a Sexual (Decide: Youth Coalition for Sexual Citizenship) since 2003.
Alyssa G. Best is the Local Programs and Policy Associate at Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), where she works on various direct service, organizing, and policy projects that increase economic opportunities for low-income women and girls in the DC Metro Area.
Vickie Boisseau is a speaker for SpeakOut Boston, a Boston based GBLTI Speakers bureau, and is co-founder of The Annual Intersex Days of Awareness at the University of Montana (an educational event which has now gone 'national').
Tyler Boudreau served in Iraq as a Captain in 2004 with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. Tyler Boudreau resigned his commission in 2005 and was honorably discharged after twelve years of active service. He speaks regularly in classrooms and at community events about the realities of war.
Jamie D. Brooks Esq., is the project director on race, health and human rights at the Center for Genetics and Society which is committed to the pursuit of biotechnology within a human rights framework.She has been committed to secure health access for all for a number of years.
Kevin Brown is a recent graduate from high school and is working in an internship at the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health as a youth organizer. Prior to that, Kevin was a youth activist with ICAH for two years and was part of a team of youth and adult allies that passed a policy change for comprehensive sex education in the Chicago Public School system.
Dr. Sacheen Carr-Ellis, MD, MPH currently works at Planned Parenthood of Lower Massachusetts and is an executive board member of the Abortion Access Project based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her areas of interest are family planning, health care policy, medical education and women with disabilities.
Katie Chau is the Executive Coordinator of the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (SRR). Katie has focused the majority of her professional and academic careers on international public health issues, with a particular emphasis on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Ellen Choy is the Program Associate at the Environmental Justice & Climate Change Initiative, a diverse, consensus-based group of U.S. environmental justice, climate justice, religious, policy, and advocacy networks working together to promote just and meaningful climate policy.
Maxwell Ciardullo is the Information Associate at SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. As such, he coordinates SIECUS’ Community Advocacy Project and monitors controversies around the country related to sexuality education as well as providing assistance to local advocates.
Riley Cockrell is a gentleman and a scholar. He has a degree from Hampshire College in something resembling queer studies. He is currently residing in the Mile High City, putting together the pieces of a dispersed community.
Sadie Crabtree is a community organizer and communications specialist. Her work has supported struggles for reproductive freedom, sex workers' rights, LGBT equality, and workers' freedom to join together in unions. In Washington, D.C., she brought transgender people and allies together to win the strongest anti-discrimination protections in the country.
Meredith Crafton is a Hampshire alum, currently living in Seattle where she divides her time between work with Ropeworks as a professional jump rope instructor and performer, and the Hanford Challenge, a nonprofit organization that focuses on nuclear cleanup and supporting workers and whistleblowers.
Carrie Cuthbert works with the development team to plan and implement all fundraising activities for Free Press and Free Press Action Fund. She has also served on the board of a local battered women’s organization and on the founding coordinating committee of the U.S. Human Rights Network.
Melanie DeSilva is the mother of two daughters and the Executive Director of MotherWoman, Inc, an Amherst-based mother's support and empowerment organization.
Milka Dinev served as Pathfinder International’s Country Representative for Peru and Ecuador from 1998 thru 2006. Currently, she is the Director of Pathfinder’s Extending Service Delivery Project operating out of Washington DC which promotes best practices in family planning and provides technical services to numerous developing nations.
Lauren Dutton is a midwife at Planned Parenthood of Maryland. She has a master's degree from Yale School of Nursing and a bachelor's degree from Smith College. She has been coming to this conference since 1999.
Emily Goodstein is the Director of Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom at the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. She graduated from George Washington University in 2005, and serves on the board of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and is an active member of the Jewish Funds for Justice Selah program.
Imani Henry has been a Staff Organizer at the International Action Center (IAC) since 1993, where his work has focused on national organizing of communities of color and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement toward broader social justice and anti-war campaigns. For the last five years Imani has toured with his multi-media theatre piece, B4T (before testosterone).
Christina Hollenback is the Youth Initiatives Manager for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Coming from years of issue and electoral organizing, Christina provides support to all of Planned Parenthood's teen, campus, and non-college programs in their efforts to ensure real healthcare that includes reproductive healthcare is accessible for all people.
Tim Horn is a Hampshire Alum and President and Editor-in-Chief of AIDSmeds.com, a healthcare and treatment education website for people living with HIV/AIDS. He is also a member of the AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition, a national coalition of AIDS treatment activists.
Helen (Xiaojia) Hua is a sophomore at Smith College and feels honored to be speaking at the conference. She was a CLPP Reproductive Rights Activist Service Corp. Intern the summer of 2007 with the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum.
Pat Hynes is a Professor of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health where she works for environmental justice in inner city communities. She writes and speaks on the health effects of war on civilians, particularly women, the environmental effects of war, and the pre-conditions for peace.
Jacqueline Johnson is a senior at Mount Holyoke College and recently received a CLPP grant to intern at Justice Now in Oakland. The women at Justice Now taught her what it means to be fierce, passionate, caring, focused, and most of all understanding.
Kathryn Joyce is a freelance journalist living in New York City. She's written for The Nation, Mother Jones, Newsweek and other publications. Her first book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, a study of Christian Right women in the "patriarchy" and "Quiverfull" movements, is forthcoming from Beacon Press this fall.
Kale has several years' experience working as a patient instructor. They are also a pro-choice activist, an anti-psychiatry mental health advocate, and a neuroimaging researcher.
Jesse Natha Kimler is a Hampshire alum and since then has been focused on food production, cooking, and agriculture. She is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Gastronomy at Boston University, while living in the mountains of Vermont.
Jessica Kincman is a junior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she is studying Sexuality and Leadership in Politics.
Dru Levasseur is a transgender activist and attorney committed to empowering trans and gender non-conforming people to believe in themselves. He initiated Lavender Law's Transgender Caucus and New England's first-ever Transgender Pride March and Rally.
Miss Major is a respected, long-time activist in the transgender community. Gracious, cordial, caring, empathetic and involved. Miss Major now serves as the lead Community Organizer for the TGI Justice Project, a local community organization promoting the human rights of transgender, gender variant and intersex people in prisons and jails.
Kate McMahon is a Research Assistant at Friends of the Earth in Washington, DC, where her work has focused on energy and climate policy. Kate received a BA from Hampshire College in the Spring of 2006 where her concentration of studies was on environmentalism and anthropology.
Christopher Mcmillan received his B.A from Hampshire College in May 2007 and his Ministers Certificate from Agape Hands Cathedral United. He is interested in dance as it relates to Queer Liberation Theology.
Stacey Milbern is a disability rights activist interested in building a community that recognizes the intersections of oppression. She is living in North Carolina and currently serving as the President of the National Youth Leadership Network, a youth-led, youth-run organization that focuses on empowerment of young disabled people.
Mia Mingus is a queer disabled woman of color, South Korean transracial adoptee, organizer and one of the Co-Executive Directors of SPARK: Reproductive Justice Now! (formerly Georgians for Choice) in Atlanta, Georgia. She believes that reproductive justice is crucial in the struggle for social change and the fight to end oppression.
Dr. Khaleel Mohammed is a specialist in Islamic law (grad. from McGill in Canada, read law in Saudi Arabia at Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University ), did post doc at Brandeis and now at SDSU in Dept of Religious Studies, as well as core faculty in Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies.
Dr. Sarah Morgan is a Hampshire alum and enjoys the practice of community medicine in a small town in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. During her medical training at Stanford University, she participated actively in Medical Students for Choice and has performed abortions at a local Planned Parenthood office.
Katerina Miovska is an active member of HERA, where more than 5000 young people in Macedonia were reached through their peer education program on sexual and reproductive health and rights. She is also a member of Astra Youth, Poland.
Maria Nakae has been doing community-based research, training, and alliance building in low-income immigrant communities and communities of color for the past six years. She live in San Francisco and works in Oakland, CA as the Alliance Building Coordinator and a New Voices Fellow at Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice.
Trang Nguyen was born in Vietnam and grew up in Oakland, CA where she now lives. She joined ACRJ in August 2006, organizes with VietUnity, and has worked as Executive Director for a refugee/community development organization.
Cate Owren is a part of the Sustainable Development team at the Women’s Environment & Development Organization, working specifically on gender & climate change. She has worked on issues such as reproductive health and AIDS education at the village level, microfinance in Dominican-Haitian communities, and the global movement towards fair trade.
Cara Page is a Black queer artist and organizer building models of healing, justice and social transformation in our movements.
Amrita Pande is a Doctoral Student in the sociology department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Currently working on an ethnography of commercial surrogacy in Gujarat, India.
Eesha Pandit is currently Director of Advocacy at Merger Watch. She is also a regular writer for RH Reality Check. Recently, Eesha served as Associate Director of Programs at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, and has also worked with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Amnesty International USA's Women's Rights Program.
Rebecca Pearl is the Sustainable Development Program Coordinator at WEDO (Women's Environment & Development Organizationan), a global advocacy organization that has been partnering with the UN system since 1991 on issues of gender equality and sustainable development.
Miriam Zoila Pérez is a writer, blogger and the Senior Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. She has been a doula since 2004.
Sophie Pinkham is a program coordinator at the International Harm Reduction Development Program of the Open Society Institute, where she manages IHRD’s program on women drug users’ access to harm reduction, sexual and reproductive healthcare, and drug treatment in Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia.
Martina Robinson is a 31 year old bi-sexual woman of color with a disability. Currently, she has three writing jobs, engages in various public speaking commitments, and writes self-published poetry books. She's delighted to return to the conference this year for her fourth annual engagement.
Bipasana Sakya has a Master of Gender and Cultural Studies degree from Simmons College and has been working for the National Network of Abortion Funds since 2006. Ms. Sakya provides operational support to all NNAF programmatic work and coordinates the annual conference/regional summit and regional trainings.
Ellen Schubert is a third-year student at Hampshire, and has been active in sexual health education since her senior year of high school, when she designed and taught a comprehensive sexual health class at the Sadie Nash Leadership Project. Since then, she has worked with the youth peer education program at NARAL Pro-Choice New York.
Mischa Schuler is a Community Herbalist in Cambridge, MA focusing on women's reproductive health and pediatric care. She and herbalist Robin Rose Bennett are organizing a national study on the contraceptive effectiveness of Wild Carrot.
Dean Spade is the founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective providing free legal services to low-income people and people of color facing discrimination on the basis of gender identity and/or expression. Dean is currently a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Ellen Story, MA State Representative for the 3rd Hampshire District, has been in office since 1992. She worked in a women’s health agency for 17 years before joining the Legislature.
Julia Elizabeth Sullivan is currently a MPH candidate at Emory University where she is studying and researching barriers to access that the transgender community faces while seeking reproductive healthcare, and how to reduce theses barrier through gender sensitive provider education. Julia is both a CLPP and Hampshire College alum.
Aimée Thorne-Thomsen serves as Executive Director of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, where she focuses on creating spaces for and elevating the voices of young women in the reproductive justice movement.
Joshua Truitt is a fourth year student at Hampshire College, who has been involved with CLPP for three years now and thinks it is the best thing in the world.
Lindsey Tucker is the Health Reform Coordinator at Health Care For All, a leading Massachusetts consumer health care advocacy organization. She manages the Affordable Care Today (ACT!!) Coalition, a dynamic advocacy coalition supporting implementation of Chapter 58 - Massachusetts' landmark health reform legislation.
Heather White has been implementing new models of social monitoring of factories since 1995. She has worked with over 300 companies on supply chain issues in China, Southeast Asia and Africa. She is also a consultant to socially responsible investment funds that seek to reduce risk of labor and human rights violations in their portfolios.
Juanita Williams was diagnosed as HIV+ in rural South Carolina in 1989 and was denied medical services. Since then, she has advocated for HIV+ women nationally and internationally, and currently sits on the Board of SisterSong and AIDS Survival Project in Atlanta. As a passionate advocate and activist, she's determined to make a difference!
Miriam Yeung is the Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. Born in Hong Kong and raised in projects of Brooklyn, Miriam is a proud queer, Asian American, immigrant, woman, activist who is committed to social justice movement building.

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