SEASON 4 FEATURED VOICES:
Maddy Siriouthay (she/her) is a writer, designer and creative technologist dedicated to social good, education and community. She received her Bachelor of Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism and her M.F.A. in Design and Technology at Parsons in New York City. She is the CCO and co-founder of Ovee, a sexual and reproductive health hub for women (and people with vaginas), which is committed to the re-education and the destigmatization of the body. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Lao/tian American National Alliance (LANA), a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing, uplifting, and uniting the Lao/tian American community, with recent efforts being addressing recent deportation orders and the 2020 Census.
Maddy Siriouthay
Pidgeon Pagonis (they/them) has slowly, oftentimes not so quietly risen to visibility in Chicago as not only an activist on behalf of intersex people, but also as a fighter for the recognition of marginalized others in general, regardless of race, sex or gender identity, class or creed. Whether advancing youth advocacy with interACT, producing informational videos that go viral on Buzzfeed, writing for Everyday Feminism or appearing on the cover of National Geographic “Gender Revolution” special issue, Pidgeon has staked out a place at the fore of debates on intersexuality and otherness.
Pidgeon Pagonis
Kimberly Huggins (she/her) is a licensed Social Worker, sexual wellness educator and Public Health practitioner who is passionate about reproductive health and the emotional well-being for people living with HIV and other stigmatized health conditions. She has worked in various capacities to further research and intervention efforts for under-served groups in the areas of sexual and reproductive health. As co-founder of KIMBRITIVE, Kimberly supports the organizations vision for creating real, empowering conversations and sexual wellness workshops and digital content that centers Black women and girls. Kimberly holds a B.A. in Psychology from Syracuse University, a Master of Public Heath from SUNY Downstate Medical Center and a Master of Social Work and Master of Human Sexuality Education from Widener University.
Kimberly Huggins
Jessica Diggs (she/her) is a LA-based midwife, doula, and educator. She began her journey as a birth worker in 2012. The trainings, her mentors, and ultimately, her first birth as a doula honed her interest in reproductive justice through doula trainings, childbirth education and holistic practices. Jessica is honored to be a black midwife and to join other reproductive health advocates with a common goal: to provide a safe, satisfying, and autonomous experiences for all people.
Jessica Diggs
Mistress Velvet, MA, ICDVP (she/they) is communist social worker, a sex & pleasure educator, and Chicago’s premier African dominatrix. She is best known for her BDSM practice where she teaches her clients about white supremacy, Black liberation, and the importance of reparations. Velvet has been a sex worker and an organizer for 10 years. Her work has spanned reproductive justice, gender-based violence, and LGBTQIAA+ inclusive sexual health and relationship education for youth and adults.
Mistress Velvet
Eva Sweeney (she/her) is a 37-year-old genderqueer disabled female who works primarily as a sex educator and freelance writer. Her topics include disabilities and sex, gender, and queer culture. She has been doing sex and disability workshops for over 15 years and started doing this work because she found a huge lack of good sex-positive information for people with disabilities. Eva wrote the book “Queers on Wheels” and has traveled the country giving workshops about sex and disability. She continues to give workshops online and in-person through “Cripping Up Sex with Eva”, and she is also available for private consultations.
Eva Sweeney
Daniela Gilsanz (she/her) is a designer, activist, and co-creator of The Period Game - a board game designed to teach menstruation in a fun, engaging way (with spinning ovaries)! She uses her design skills to advocate for comprehensive sex ed, menstrual equity, and ending toxic masculinity through her personal work and her work on campaigns for brands including Trojan Condoms, Axe and Seventh Generation.
Daniela Gilsanz
Brittany Brathwaite (she/her) is a reproductive justice activist, youth worker and community accountable scholar with a deep commitment to supporting the leadership, organizing, and healing of girls of color. As co-founder of KIMBRITIVE, Brittany supports the organization’s vision for creating real, empowering conversations and sexual wellness workshops and digital content that centers Black women and girls. Brittany has worked to create change in the lives of girls of color through sexual health education, local base building, advocacy, curriculum development, storytelling strategies and participatory action research. Brittany holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology from Syracuse University and a Master of Public Health and a Master of Social Work from Columbia University.
Brittany Brathwaite
Jessica O’Reilly, Ph.D., (she/her) is a best-selling author, television host, and top-rated international speaker whose award-winning couples’ retreats span the globe from Istanbul to Albuquerque. She has worked with thousands of couples to improve communication, heighten intimacy, and deepen connection before they encounter struggles in their relationships. Her sex and relationship advice is featured regularly by Showtime, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Men’s Fitness, CTV, CBC, ABC and The Globe and Mail—and now Greatist.com! Dr. Jess is a top-rated keynote speaker for prestigious executive organizations, school boards, social service agencies, universities and corporations and her sessions attract a full house at entertainment and educational events alike. With a background in education, she designs interactive programs with measurable take-home value and participants leave with the motivation and skills to improve the way they think and behave in their relationships. Catch her Tuesday mornings on GlobalTV and Saturdays on PlayboyTV as the host of the reality series, Swing.
Jessica O’Reilly
Daniel Walker (he/him) is an engineer, YouTuber, and asexual activist. He identifies as homoromantic asexual, which means that he feels romantic attraction to other men, but sexual attraction to no one. Through his YouTube channel - Slice of Ace - and work with the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), Daniel works to educate others about this lesser-known facet of the LGBT+ community.
Daniel Walker
Adiba Khan (she/her) is a reproductive justice activist, and a recent Sociology & Public Health graduate of UC Berkeley. As a student at Berkeley, Adiba spearheaded a student movement, Campus Action for Reproductive Equity (justCARE), behind California legislation she co-authored to implement medication abortion at all California public university student health centers. Her bill became law in 2019. Currently, Adiba works to advance reproductive justice as an organizer for the Bernie 2020 campaign.
Adiba Khan
Hans Lindahl (they/she) is an artist, writer, and YouTuber. Growing up in intersex community as a teen, they started out in advocacy by joining interACT Youth, an international collective of intersex activists under 30. Since then they have spoken to doctors, families, sex educators, and state legislatures about intersex issues. They currently serve as Communications Director for interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth.
Hans Lindahl
Da’Shaun Harrison (they/them) is a nonbinary abolitionist and community organizer based out of Atlanta, GA. They work as the Lead Organizer of Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative (SNaPCo)—a Black trans-led nonprofit. In recent years, Da’Shaun Harrison has traveled throughout the United States and abroad to speak at conferences, colleges, and to lead workshops focused on race, sexuality, gender, class, religion, (dis)abilities, fatness, and the intersection at which they all meet. They are now working to complete their forthcoming book, tentatively titled Belly of the Beast, which is set to be published next year. You can find more about them and their portfolio on their website, dashaunharrison.com
Da’Shaun Harrison
Anne Louise (AniLu) Burdett (she/her) is a certified Western Constitutional Herbalist with 15+ years of training and 9 years of experience as a Primary Care Clinician with a dual focus on sexual health and trauma. She is also a certified Sexual Health Educator and medicinal herb farmer. As CEO of TOCA, her newest project, she is creating pleasure products and educational materials combining botanical extracts with high potency CBD. She believes wholeheartedly in being true to oneself, acting from desire, and in individual wellness being essentially and always tied to collective wellness. You can find more information at tocatocatoca.com.
Anne Louise Burdett
Marla Renee Stewart, MA (she/her) is a Californian native, a Southern transplant, and a woman with passion, charisma and integrity to educate and inspired others. She is dedicated to getting people in touch with their body, mind and spirit and believes in harnessing love and accepting people for who they are and where they currently are in their lives. Her non-judgmental spirit speaks to people from all different backgrounds and she has an innate ability to get along with just about anyone. She is a maven in most everything that she pursues and strives for perfection in everything she does. Mediocre is not in her vocabulary. Check out her website, velvetlipssexed.com, or connect with her on Instagram at @1marlastewart and @velvetlipssxed.
Marla Renee Stewart
Nina Kossoff (they/them/she/her) is the creator of ThemsHealth. ThemsHealth was born need for health and wellness information beyond the traditional "men's" and "women's" binary. After identifying bodily health, mental health, sexuality, fitness, nutrition, and identity as key areas to focus on, ThemsHealth has become an Instagram-centric resource of suggestions, advice, methods, affirmations, ways of thinking, practices, and broadly information for non-binary and trans folks to see themselves in. ThemsHealth has built in a network of #themfessionals (non-binary professionals in the health and wellness spaces) who volunteer their time to answer anonymous questions directly from the community, based on their experience as nurse practitioners, therapists, nutritionists, trainers, and more. You can find the project on Instagram at @ThemsHealth. Outside of ThemsHealth, Nina is a creative brand strategist and consultant working in the impact and purpose-driven landscape across issues like climate change, education equity, gender equality, and more.
Nina Kossoff
Janielle Bryan, MPH CHES (she/her) is a public health professional and sexuality educator based in Philadelphia, PA. She has experience in clinical research, health education, community health, and disease prevention. Janielle can be found lecturing or facilitating workshops everywhere from community rec centers to world class museums. Whether it's in the classroom or on social media, she creates spaces that allows everyone to feel safe and empowered regardless of sexual orientation, race, or gender identity. In addition, she's the creator of The Sex Exchange. The Sex Exchange are sexual wellness events that allows attendees to explore the complex subject of sexuality through shame free, pleasure centered conversations. You can find her on Instagram & Twitter at _jbytheway.
Janielle Bryan
Sean Saifa Wall (he/him) is an intersex activist and public health researcher. Born and raised in the Bronx, he attended Williams College and after a short stint in New York City, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he lived for nine years. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his dog, Justice. He is the former board president of InterACT, a legal advocacy organization protecting the human rights of intersex young adults and is a co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project (IJP), a project whose mission is to #endintersexsurgery.
Sean Saifa Wall
Sam Brinton (they/them) is one of the world’s leading advocates for LGBTQ youth. They are the founder of the 50 Bill 50 States campaign at The Trevor Project to end the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy, first in the United States and then around the globe. As a survivor of conversion therapy, Sam has spearheaded efforts to submit legislation and promote public education in the hopes of ending the practice on minors. They have co-chaired the National Center for Lesbian Rights #BornPerfect Advisory Committee on conversion therapy and have spoken before the United Nations and Congress as well as testified on legislation to protect LGBTQ youth across the country. They have been featured in numerous media including a recent New York Times op-ed as well as The Washington Post, Playboy Magazine, TIME Magazine, USA TODAY, MSNBC, PBS Newshour, Huffington Post, and CTV in Canada. Sam uses they, them, or theirs as their pronouns as a genderfluid person.
Sam Brinton
A queer auntie & eldest daughter of four from southeast Kentucky, Tanya Turner (she/her) is an artist, organizer, and creator of the Appalachian sexual health project, Sexy Sex Ed. Her work to expand rural sexual health resources has been featured in NewNowNext, Yes! Magazine and on CNN. As co-host of political podcast, Trillbilly Workers Party, she reaches 50,000 listeners a month and is creating an animated comedy series about rural leftist organizing with MeansTV and Appalshop. Tanya, her partner, and their pets live on a mountain top with too many houseplants & guitars. You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram.
Tanya Turner
Cecile Gasnault joined sexual wellness brand Smile Makers four years ago when turning 31 and at the time, she had never owned a vibrator in her life. But she was feeling passionate about the brand's mission to normalise the perception of female sexuality. Since then, she has been talking about vibrators, lubricants and female sexuality on a daily basis and with vulva owners from all over the world. To answer questions she was receiving online from the brand's community, she developed together with sexologists a sex education programme called Vulva Talks, focused on female pleasure.
Cecile Gasnault
Dr Rebecca Levy-Gantt (she/her) is a Board Certified ObGyn and a certified menopause practitioner who has been practicing for the last 10 years in Napa, California. She is originally from New York City, where she grew up and went to medical school at the NY College of Osteopathic Medicine, graduating in 1992. She practiced on Long Island for 11 years before moving to Napa. Her special interests are menopause management, including hormones and alternative management strategies, as well as vaginal and vulvar pain syndromes. She owns a solo private practice which has been growing for the past 5 years, teaches medical students from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, and spends her free time teaching, traveling, running and writing.
Dr. Rebecca Levy-Gantt