Truthout
Jael Silliman
Jael Silliman was a tenured associate professor of Women Studies at the University of Iowa from 1996 to 2002, where she worked on issues of race, reproductive rights and health, and gender and the environment in the United States and South Asia. She has published widely on these issues. Jael served as Program Officer for Reproductive Rights and Women’s Rights at the Ford Foundation in New York (2003–2009). She has been an activist in the transnational women’s movement for four decades and served on the boards of many women’s organizations. She is currently an independent scholar and writer documenting her community, the Bagdadi Jews of Calcutta, and has curated https://www.jewishcalcutta.in.
Marlene Gerber Fried (PhD, Brown) is known nationally and internationally as a writer, lecturer, and advocate for reproductive justice. She was founding president of the National Network of Abortion Funds, served on the board of the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights, and was Interim President of Hampshire College in 2010-2011. She is currently Faculty Director of CLPP (Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program). She edited From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement and is a co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice. She received the first Marlene Gerber Fried Abortion Access Vanguard Award (NNAF, 2015), the Felicia Stewart Advocacy Award (APHA, 2014), and a Warrior Woman Award from SisterSong (2014).
Loretta Ross was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005 to 2012. She has appeared on CNN, BET, Lead Story, Good Morning America, The Donahue Show, the National Geographic Channel and Charlie Rose. She has been interviewed in The New York Times, Time, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among others. She helped create the theory of reproductive justice in 1994 and led a rape crisis center in the 1970s. She co-authored Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004.
Elena Gutiérrez is an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She is author of Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women’s Reproduction and curator of the Reproductive Justice Virtual Library. She is committed to reproductive justice advocacy and documenting the activism of women of color.