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Teri Wilhelm
(She/Her)
Lacking a deep inclination for a linear life, Teri Wilhelm is a musician, a studio and teaching artist, a Mathematics instructor and has been drawn to activism. For nearly a decade she had been a Union advocate for New York State’s Security Unit Employees and continues to actively support labor and strikeline coalitions.
Shortly after retirement and making a gender transition, she began to write and lecture on being transgender and issues affecting the transgender community, as well as helped to build coalitions pressing for the passage of New York’s GENDA legislation. Teri is a devoted advocate for LBGTQI youth and health related issues and formerly a long serving co-chair for GLSEN Upstate NY. Teri is a member of the Board of Directors for Equality New York, member of the Board of Directors for the Albany based Rainbow Access Initiative and also serves on the Community Research Advisory Board for the Gender Wellness Center of Oneonta.
Teri is currently the Transgender/Gender Non-Conforming Community Advocate with the Albany Damien Center and a Mathematics Instructor for SUNY Adirondack College. She is an alumna of SUNY Adirondack College, UAlbany and Castleton University.

Jennifer E. Lee, PhD, MPH is dedicated to making an impact on the world by focusing on health justice by dismantling the root causes and systems of oppression, which impact health. Through the lens of resiliency, community empowerment, advocacy, social justice movements, human rights, community-based participatory research, and a strengths-based approach, her research and work provide unique pathways for individuals and communities to make changes through explicit aims at social and political change. While addressing the root causes of social, cultural, political, structural, and economic determinants that underpin health, she also seeks to build partnerships with various sectors in finding innovative solutions to the most vexing public health issues. She founded the grassroots #HouseLivesMatter initiative in 2015 and serves on several advocacy/coalition groups, where she is a liaison, advocate, and voice for the communities she serves and is actively a member of. Dr. Lee has advanced her journey as a leader, health justice educator, community advocate, cultural provocateur, and social justice/human rights pioneer in the field of public health with an MPH and PhD from the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy. Dr. Lee is also the first recipient of the Dr. Adwele Troutman Health Equity and Social Justice Scholars Award, demonstrating her commitment and dedication to the principles of health equity, social justice, human rights, community activism, and national and global health. She is a NASTAD Minority Leadership Fellow of the 2018-2019 cohort, a space rooted in social justice for health department staff of color to engage in critical conversations regarding intersectional systems of oppression, structural processes, and intersectional causes of health inequities impacting sexual/gender expansive people and communities of color.

Trudie Jackson, a Two Spirit transgender woman of the Navajo Nation. Her Clans are of the Bitterwater People and Folded Arms People. Her maternal grandfather is of the Mexican People and paternal grandfather is Yucca-Strung-Out-In-A-Line. Currently residing in Phoenix, Arizona but originally from Teec Nos Pos, Arizona on the Navajo Nation.
Her area of expertise addresses Indigenous gender, identity, and sexuality from a decolonial lens.

Trudie has contributed the following articles:
(July 2019). To Move Forward, We Need Indigenous Leadership and Acknowledgment of Turtle Island. MUSE Collection, Color Bloq. www.colorbloq.com
(Nov 2018). Two Spirit Nation: Water Protector Rise to Reclaim Space in the Sacred Fire. www.EFNIKS.com
(2013). Closing the Gap: A Research Agenda for the Study of Health Needs Among American Indian/Native Hawaiian Transgender Individuals. Ethnic Studies Review Journal 37(1-2): 37-58.

As Trudie continues to become an aspiring writer, she hopes to contribute more from a Dine' Two Spirit transgender perspective by decolonizing with an Indigennous lens.

Kelley Winters, Ph.D., is a mom of grown sons, a Silicon Valley industry refugee, and a writer and consultant on issues of gender diversity in medical and public policy. She is the founder of the Trans Policy Reform blog and administrator of the International Transgender Health Facebook group of nearly 8000 members. She is the author of Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity (2008) and a chapter in the Lev and Gottlieb anthology, Families in Transition: Parenting Gender Diverse Children (2019). Kelley has presented papers on diagnostic policy issues at multiple symposia of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. She served on the International Advisory Panel for the WPATH Standards of Care, Version 7, and was recognized in the 2013 Trans 100 Inaugural List for her community contributions. Kelley wanders the highways of America in an old Mazda, ever in search of comfort food.

Robert Beachy trained as a German historian at the University of Chicago. In 2014 he moved to Seoul as Professor of European history at Yonsei University. He has published four books on eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany, not including his most recent work, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (Knopf), which has appeared in German (Siedler) and Italian (Bompiani) translations. He was recently a Ben and Zelda Cohen Fellow at the Mandel Center for Holocaust Studies at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. He is currently working on a history of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals and its post-1945 legacy.

Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D. is a developmental and clinical psychologist, associate professor of Pediatrics at University of California San Francisco, and Director of Mental Health of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. She is author of The Gender Creative Child and Gender Born, Gender Made. She specializes in research, clinical work, training, and consultation related to gender expansive children, and publishes and lectures both nationally and internationally on this topic. Dr. Ehrensaft is presently an investigator in two four-site NIH grants, studying effects of gender-affirming medical interventions in gender expansive/transgender youth and the developmental trajectories of prepubertal gender expansive children.

Malaya Lakas Mañacop, LMSW (She/Her/Hers) is a social worker, community organizer, and multi-disciplinary artist. She centers her work around LGBTQIA+ individuals, people living with HIV, people of color, and people who come from immigrant families or immigrant backgrounds. Malaya was born and raised in Northern California as a child of immigrant parents from the Philippines. She earned her BS in Business Administration Management from San Diego State University, and her MSW from NYU Silver School of Social Work. She has previously worked at agencies such as: GMHC, the Hetrick-Martin Institute, and Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. She also Currently serves on the NYC HIV Health & Human Services Planning Council, and is part of the founding leadership committee of the Starfruit Trans Justice Collective.

Dr. Radix is the Senior Director of Research and Education at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York and a clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU. Asa is board certified in internal medicine and infectious disease and completed postgraduate training in public health and epidemiology. Asa serves on the DHHS Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents and is the Co-Chair of the WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender health) Standards of Care 8 Revision committee. Asa’s research focuses on LGBT health, STI/HIV risk and HIV prevention.

Lotus Đỗ is a bilingual, licensed clinical social worker of Vietnamese descent and transgender experience. He combines his experience in clinical care, research, and community organizing to address health disparities and social injustices. As the former Senior Behavioral Health Clinician and Interim Clinical Director, Lotus offered intensive clinical case management and mental health assessments for low-income and uninsured San Francisco residents with significant psychiatric and medical needs seeking gender-affirming surgeries. He also spearheaded the development of clinical best practices for gender-affirming surgeries in the public health setting, which included patient education, psychiatric clearance recommendations, and treatment of complex gender dysphoria. He is now working with Kaiser Permanente Adult Psychiatry where he is joining efforts to improve the quality of care to be gender-affirming and responsive to racial trauma.

Jillian C. Shipherd, Ph.D. Dr. Shipherd is currently a Clinical Research Psychologist at the Women's Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System and a Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Shipherd serves as Director for the LGBT Health Program at the Veterans Health Administration in Washington DC, a job she shares with Dr. Michael Kauth. In this role, Dr. Shipherd oversees policy, provider education programs, and clinical services to support personalized, pro-active, patient-driven healthcare for LGBT Veterans. Dr. Shipherd's area of expertise is the interface of mental and physical health subsequent to trauma with a focus on sexual and gender minority populations. More broadly, she has published on improving healthcare system responses to the unique needs of LGBT Veterans, particularly gender minority people. She is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications, several book chapters, as well as co-editor of the book "Adult Transgender Care: An Interdisciplinary Approach for Training Mental Health Professionals".

Laura Fassbender is an Executive Assistant in the Office of the Secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Health. In this role, Laura serves as the staff lead on the Pennsylvania Coordinated Medication Assisted Treatment (PacMAT) program, which is an initiative that expands access to medication assisted treatment throughout the Commonwealth. Laura's responsibilities also include researching arising public health issues and coordinating agency-wide workgroups to enhance the Department's response to emerging public health issues. Laura advises and prepares the Executive Deputy Secretary for her engagements, and supports the Secretary of Health by serving as a liaison between the Secretary and diverse programs within the Department. Laura graduated from Temple University with a bachelor's degree in public health and is particularly passionate about addressing the opioid crisis, community violence, and the public health implications of climate change.

Noah Adams hails from Toronto, Canada, which is on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Having previously completed a Master of Social Work Noah is now working towards a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development at the University of Toronto. He is specializing in investigating the community networks of people who are both transgender and autistic, a subject on which he has recently co-written a book (Adams and Liang; Trans and Autistic: Stories from Life at the Intersection). Noah volunteers extensively within the transgender community, in particular with the Transgender Professional Association for Transgender Health and TransPULSE Canada.