Women’s lived realities have never been the center of our cultural narrative, nor our national policy. The U.S. is one of few countries not to have enshrined equal rights in its constitution. Meanwhile, gender and racial inequities have deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most frontline workers are women, and the burdens of caretaking, schooling, and job losses, alongside increased risks to physical safety, have hit women, girls, and LGBTQI+ people of color hard. Mainstream media exacerbates these harms by failing to center their voices, perpetuating misrepresentations and erasure, and not lending enough urgency to calls for systemic change.
Equal Voice | Equal Future:
Amplifies issues of importance to BIPOC and LGBTQI+ women and girls; by commissioning storytellers from these communities, this includes a cohort of 10-12 women. We will introduce nuanced narratives that uplift their leadership and cement their place in the post-pandemic economy. Their writings and media productions will also socialize important policies such as the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have a game-changing impact on issues like labor force participation and unequal pay.
Cultivates an ecosystem and team of content creators and journalists representing the BIPOC and LGBTQI+ women and girls communities focusing on gender justice, equity and social justice as it relates to the ERA. This includes:
EV | EF cohort (team) consisting of 10-12 young women, content creators/journalists
EV | EF partner collaborative cohorts: ERA ratification media projects integrated through their programs and curriculum
EV | EF editorial board & team
Serves as a resource to highlight, feature and connect like-minded organizations, journalists/content creators and education institutions focused on equity and social activism in media. We will also create new economic opportunities via our partner organizations.
Together, we will build a digital epicenter for gender justice, influencing policymakers and fueling economic and cultural change.
Feminist trailblazers Carol Jenkins, Gloria Steinem, and S. Mona Sinha, will lend additional thought leadership and resource mobilization muscle to support this work.
Our initiative is the brainchild of women and gender expansive people of color, and puts the voices of young people — artists, activists, mediamakers, and more — front and center. We believe in intergenerational learning and the wisdom that comes from both seasoned storytellers and changemakers, and visionary newcomers. Rarely have change initiatives both amplified marginalized voices and fueled their leadership and economic mobility; ours does both.
Editorial Board
Alixa Garcia, Multi-Disciplinary Artist, Poet, Activist, Filmmaker, Co-Founder, Climbing Poetree
Alixa García is a Colombian born, globally-raised, multi-disciplinary artist and movement architect whose work is imbued in ritual, spirit, and deep reverence for our Great Mother, Great Lover: our Earth. She is an award-winning poet, activist, and filmmaker, as well as a visual artist, musician, science-fiction writer, and essayist.
As a visual artist she has exhibited her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, the Kunsthal KAdE Museum, Netherlands, the Pop-Up Museum, New York, New York, and the Manifest Justice Exhibition, Los Angeles, alongside Hank Willis Thomas, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, and other world-renown artists. She has created large-scale murals in New York City, Cuba, and Jamaica, and was commissioned for a large scale mural by Tony Award-winning playwright, V (formerly Eve Ensler). García is a visual art awardee of the Global Arts Fund/Astrea, The National Association of Latino Arts & Culture Grant, The Rising Fund, and the V-Day Fund. She has been the recipient of multiple prestigious artist residencies including Blue Mountain Center and Omega Institute.
An a visual artist she has been commissioned by Times Square Arts, Alicia Garza’s Lady Don’t Take No, Black Future Labs, For Freedoms, Wide Awakes, Education for Racial Equity, to name a few.
In 2020 she was commissioned by Times Square Arts Alliance to create a piece for “Massages for the City” in honor of nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The animation Superheroes Never Die was up in Times Square on 3 mega-screens, as well as 1,800 LinkNYC kiosks and digital billboards across the 5 New York City boroughs, Boston, and Chicago. The piece was later commissioned by the Mint Museum in North Carolina.
García is the Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director of Climbing PoeTree, an internationally-renowned, award-winning social justice spoken word, hip-hop, and world music duo. Touring the globe, García has performed on main stages including Lightning in a Bottle, Eclipse, and Symbiosis music festivals; T.E.D: Ideas Worth Spreading; United Nations; and In 2016 she performed on the main stage at the Women’s March for over 500K people on the streets of D.C., a performance televised to millions world-wide.
She has been a keynote speaker and facilitator at hundreds of universities and conferences, from Harvard to the United Nations and T.E.D: Ideas Worth Spreading. Throughout her career she has performed alongside powerhouses such as Janelle Monáe, Maxwell, Madonna, and Erykah Badu.
She is the Co-Director & Co-Producer of the award-winning theater production and social justice movement strategy Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water. The production toured over 50 cities, traveling 11,000 miles on a bus converted to run on recycled vegetable oil, and gave a platform to over 200 grassroots organizations, supporting and deepening local organizing work. Her artistic, educational, and organizing passions have taken her internationally from Mexico to South Africa, Cuba to Scotland, Amsterdam to Ecuador, and beyond.
García’s work has been published by Whit Press, North Atlantic, AK Press, & Hatchett.
Brittney Cooper, Ph.D. Associate Professor-Department of Africana Studies / Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers
Brittney Cooper is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University in 2009. She also has an M.A. from Emory (2007) and bachelors degrees in English and Political Science from Howard University (2002). Professor Cooper is currently completing her first book Race Women: Gender and the Making of a Black Public Intellectual Tradition, 1892-Present.
Her work focuses extensively in the area of Black women’s intellectual history, Black feminist thought, and race and gender politics in hip hop and popular culture. She has two forthcoming articles about hip hop feminism in Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society and African American Review. Professor Cooper has also published book chapters on Black women’s history in fraternal orders and the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident. She is co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective blog, which was named a top feminist blog by New York Magazine in 2011 and a top race blog by TheRoot.com in 2012. She writes for the CFC as “crunktastic.”
Caroline Heldman, Executive Director, The Representation Project & Chair, Critical Theory and Social Justice at Occidental College
Dr. Caroline Heldman is Chair of the Critical Theory and Social Justice department at Occidental College and the Executive Director of The Representation Project. Her research specializes in media, the presidency, and systems of power.
Dr. Heldman has published six books, including Protest Politics in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Corporate Age (Cornell University Press, 2017), Women, Power, and Politics: The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Madame President? Gender & Politics on the Road to the White House (Lynne Reinner, 2020).
Cristina Escobar, Co-Founder, Latin Media Co.
Cristina Escobar is the co-founder of latinamedia.co, uplifting Latina and gender non-conforming Latinx perspectives in media. A rehabilitated English major, she’s also a member of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association and a Rotten-Tomatoes approved critic.
She writes at the intersection of race, gender, and pop culture. Her words can be found in the A.V. Club, Latino Rebels, POPSUGAR, Refinery29, Remezcla, Roger Ebert, and lost grocery lists. Finally and most importantly, her abuelita made the best tamales this world has ever seen.
Deborah Calla, CO-CEO and the Executive Producer of the Media Access Awards
Deborah Calla, a Brazilian native, is a writer/producer and an activist.
She served as the chair of the Producers Guild of America Diversity Committee from 2004 to 2018 where she created several programs, including the very successful Producers Guild of America Diversity Masters Workshop. She is also the Brazil Chair of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
Since 2010, Deborah has been the CO-CEO and the Executive Producer of the Media Access Awards, an organization initially created by Norman Lear to celebrate the portrayal and employment of disabilities in media. The organization’s award show has become the preeminent vehicle for celebrating the disability experience. Past show participants include: Jimmy Kimmel, Selma Blair, Marlee Matlin, John Krasinski, Russell Crowe, Troy Kotsur, Simon Cowell and Jim Parsons among others. The Media Access Awards has been honored with a Telly Award and an Anthem Award.
Deborah and her Media Access Awards, partner Allen Rucker have written a Best Practices Guide in Hiring Disabled Writers which is used by the WGA in their showrunner program.
The Media Access Awards, The Black List and Easterseals have also published and promoted the 2019 and 2020 Disability List, an annual list of best unproduced scripts that include a disabled main character.
Deborah co-wrote and produced the feature film A Beautiful Life starring Dana Delany, Jesse Garcia, and Angela Sarafyan. produced the comedy-feature Dream House starring Justin Theroux, the drama Lehi’s Wife with James Green and Kathryn Joosten, and coproduced Lost Zweig with Rudiger Vogler and Ruth Reiser. She is also the Brazilian producer of You Got Served: Beat The World, a Sony International feature film release.
For television she produced content for TNT, HBO Latino, SAT 1 (Germany), Travel Channel and Globo International Television. She’s a member of the PGA and the WGAw.
Deborah has had three books published by Putnam and Scholastic and writes for the The Huffington Post. She has been a guest lecturer at AFI (American Film Institute), USC Film, Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Los Angeles Latino Film Festival and Produced By Conference (the largest producers conference in the US). Deborah is a frequent guest lecturer in Jordan, Taiwan and in Brazil where she teaches writing and producing to filmmakers.
She is a sought-after speaker on the topic of greater inclusion of underrepresented communities.
Fran Zone, President/CEO, Zone Communication
Fran Zone is an award-winning leadership communication strategist and the creator of The Zone Method™. She transforms careers via custom workshops, executive coaching programs, industry keynote speeches, leadership workshops, webinars, media appearances, and message strategy sessions. Her clients include Fortune 500 executives, CEO’s, marketing and sales leaders, best-selling authors, elected officials, and individuals ready to thrive on their own terms.
In 1992, Fran was recruited by UC Berkeley to create graduate level marketing curriculum as well as serve as an instructor. For her lifetime contribution to the field of communication, Fran received the ‘Headliner of the Year Award’. Other award recipients include Barbara Walters and icon Hearst Magazines editor, John Mack Carter. Her counsel and constant interaction with corporate brands and leaders won her a coveted invitation to Fortune Magazine’s ‘Most Powerful Women in Business Summit’.
Jamia Wilson, Vice President/Executive Editor at Penguin Random House
Jamia is an award-winning feminist activist, writer, and speaker. She joined Random House as vice president and executive editor in 2021. As the former director of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York and the former VP of programs at the Women’s Media Center, Jamia has been a leading voice on women’s rights issues for over a decade. Her work has appeared in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, the Today Show, CNN, Elle, BBC, Rookie, Refinery 29, Glamour, Teen Vogue, and The Washington Post.
She is the author of This Book Is Feminist, Young, Gifted, and Black, the introduction and oral history in Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World, Step Into Your Power: 23 Lessons on How to Live Your Best Life, Big Ideas for Young Thinkers, ABC’s of AOC, and the co-author of Roadmap for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Advocacy, and Activism for All. Jamia is passionate about mission-driven organizations and serves on the Omega Institute, Feminist.com and Center for Reproductive Rights boards and the St. Timothy’s School Advisory Council.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf; Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships, Ms., lawyer and nonprofit leader
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf worked for more than a decade as vice president at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, where she currently serves as the organization’s inaugural women and democracy fellow. In 2022, she joined Ms. – the feminist movement-making magazine – as its executive director for partnerships and strategy. A passionate advocate for issues of gender and politics, Weiss-Wolf is cited frequently in the media; Newsweek dubbed her the “architect of the U.S. campaign to squash the tampon tax.”
Her public writing has included regular opinion posts at Newsweek and Ms.; targeted features with Cosmopolitan and Refinery29; and op-eds and essays in magazines (Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue), high-traffic sites (Bustle, Pop Sugar, Slate), and national and regional news (New York Times, NBC Think, TIME, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, New York Daily News, Miami Herald).
Weiss-Wolf’s nonfiction debut, Periods Gone Public: Taking A Stand for Menstrual Equity (Arcade, 2017), was lauded by Gloria Steinem as “the beginning of liberation for us all.” She contributed a chapter to the Young Adult anthology, Period: Twelve Voices Tell the Bloody Truth (Macmillan, 2018). Her forthcoming book, Period. Full Stop. The Politics of Menopause, will be published in 2024 by NYU Press.
Jyoti Sarda, Founder and CEO, Nimble Media
Founder and CEO Jyoti Sarda brings twenty plus years experience as a senior-level global marketing executive with major studios and blue chip brands to creating socially relevant content.
Until 2016, Jyoti was Vice President of Marketing at Paramount where she led all facets of global marketing operations for Paramount home media partner brands including Dreamworks, Marvel, Lucasfilm, CBS, Showtime, MTV & Nickelodeon, while overseeing the international marketing of Paramount’s film catalog and acquisitions. Prior, she worked at Twentieth Century Fox running the TV on DVD business in the heyday of adult animation and the binge worthy series like 24. After the advent of Hulu, Jyoti moved the international home video division spearheading releases of high profile franchises (Avatar, X-Men) and specialty titles from Fox Searchlight. Jyoti began her journey in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson, working with prominent brands such as Kraft, Dole, and Mattel.
A long time proponent for gender and racial equality, Jyoti has served on the boards of GlobalGirl Media and the ERA Education Project and is currently on the advisory board of LAANE, a leading LA social justice nonprofit. She graduated from USC and received her EMBA from UCLA, making her a rare Bruin/Trojan although she declines to take sides.
Jyoti is a frequent speaker and programmer of panels, podcasts and conference events, using her expertise to tell the stories of women making a difference from the streets to the boardroom. Speaking from a practical perspective, she is keenly focused on sharing hardwon lessons of career transitions and finding your voice to inspire change.
Lela Meadow-Conner, Creative Producer and Founder of mama.film Lela Meadow-Conner is a Creative Producer and Founder of mama.film – a village at the crossroads of art & advocacy where storytellers, changemakers and nurturers come together to champion humanity through a maternal gaze. She has 20 years of experience in independent cinema exhibition, most recently serving as Executive Director of Film Festival Alliance from 2017-2022.
She currently resides in Wichita, KS with her family, including two daughters and serves on the boards of Los Angeles’ iconic Vidiots Foundation, soon to relaunch in the historic Eagle Theatre, and Harvester Arts (Wichita, KS.)
Linda Villarosa (she/her) is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, where she covers race and public health, and a former executive editor at Essence magazine. She is a contributor to the books Black Futures, edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times Magazine. Her forthcoming book Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation will be published by Doubleday in June 2022. Linda is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she is a journalist in residence and associate professor. She also teaches journalism and Black studies at the City College of New York.
Lolita Lopez, Investigative Reporter and Anchor at NBC4
Lopez is part of the award-winning I-Team, digging deep into stories and cases that impact viewers throughout the Southland – her investigative stories can be seen here. She has also covered a wide range of significant stories, including national stories from the Christopher Dorner manhunt to the Los Angeles Kings Stanley Cup win in 2012. Earlier in her career, she was stationed at Ground Zero for nearly two weeks while covering the World Trade Center tragedy and spent many years reporting the effects of that tragedy.
Lopez believes her job is complete when her news stories about the community make a difference, as in the case of a piece she did on a sixth grade class that created a Facebook page to sell their homemade art to raise money for a classmate whose family couldn’t afford a proper funeral for his father. Just one day after Lopez’s story aired, the site raised more than $3000.
A journalist for more than 20 years, Lopez feels privileged to tell peoples’ stories and honored to meet many inspiring people along the way. As a breast cancer survivor, she has shared her own challenges during treatment and recovery with a series of stories on her courageous fight against the disease as a working mother and wife.
Prior to joining NBC4, Lopez had a successful, decade-long career at WPIX-TV in New York, where she served as a general assignment reporter and, later, a sports anchor. She became the main sports anchor and a field reporter for the NY Mets, working alongside the late great Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver. Earlier in her career, she was one of only two reporters on Court TV’s issue-oriented legal program “Pros and Cons” with Nancy Grace. While working on the show, Lopez covered many controversial cases, including the parole hearing of John Lennon’s murderer.
Over the course of her career, Lopez has been recognized with several industry awards, including several Los Angeles area Emmy Awards for her live anchoring and investigative reports. She won two New York area Emmy Awards for ‘Best Sports Feature’ and ‘Best Live Sports Coverage.’ She also was praised by New York’s largest Spanish language daily newspaper, El Diario La Prensa, as one of the most outstanding women in the community.
Lori Sokol, PhD, Executive Director & Editor-In-Chief, Women’s eNews
Lori Sokol, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of Women’s eNews, an award-winning, non-profit, global news organization that reports on the most crucial issues impacting women and girls around the world.
Dr. Sokol is also the author of the award-winning book, She Is Me: How Women Will Save The World, which profiles 30 women including Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Leymah Gbowee, and other extraordinary women who are contributing to the safety, peace and resiliency of our planet.
Dr. Sokol’s articles have also been published in The Baltimore Sun, Slate.com, and The Huffington Post, and she has recently been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, MSNBC, CNBC, WPIX and NY1.
Nakisha M. Lewis, President & CEO, Breakthrough
Nakisha M. Lewis (She, Her, Hers) is a Black lesbian feminist and lifelong advocate for racial and gender justice and equity. She has spent more than twenty years mobilizing for racial justice, women’s rights and LGBTQ equality. As the President & CEO of Breakthrough, she spearheads the organization’s work to amplify the voices and experiences of marginalized people and transform dominant narratives in media and popular culture.
Nakisha is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the gender justice movement and the Movement for Black Lives. She is the former Program Officer and Senior Strategist for Safety at the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she created a national portfolio for women and girls through a Black, queer, feminist lens, and is a chief architect of the philanthropic movement to invest in women and girls of color. Nakisha most recently served as the Director of Civil, Human, and Women’s Rights at the AFL-CIO, where she led the labor movement’s efforts to advocate for the rights of historically marginalized working people. In 2016, she co-founded the #SheWoke Committee, the catalyst for the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls. She is a Board Officer for Power Rising, a national network and annual convening of Black women, girls, femmes, and allies.
A gifted storyteller and impact strategist, Nakisha has been at the vanguard of narrative and cultural change for decades. She has conceptualized, implemented, and directed game-changing arts installations and multimedia campaigns in partnership with the New Museum, #DefendBlackWomanhood, #BlackLivesMatter, and #SayHerName. Through her storytelling work, she amplifies the voices of people too often invisibilized and unheard, addressing systemic harms and shifting narratives in all the spaces where they exert power, from media and popular culture to philanthropy and politics.
Nakisha has served on the boards of Resource Generation, Emerging Practitioners In Philanthropy, Project Hip Hop, and New York Blacks In Philanthropy. A prolific reader and writer, she is the creator of Sappho’s Reads: A Black Lesbian Book Club and is published in several periodicals and nonprofit journals, including The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Huffington Post and NBC News.
Dr. Nicole Haggard, PhD, Co-Founder, Center for Intersectional Media & Entertainment (CIME)
Dr. Nicole Amber Haggard is an award-winning instructor, speaker and published researcher with sixteen years of study contextualizing the intersection of race and gender in American culture. Dr. Nicole is a faculty member in the Film, Media, and Social Justice program at Mount Saint Mary’s University and the Director of Communications for the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
In 2018, Dr. Nicole co-founded the Center for Intersectional Media and Entertainment (CIME/see-me/), an organization dedicated to advancing representation. In addition to her speaking and writing, she is a featured expert for outlets like Variety, Glamour, and NBC. Dr. Nicole is currently completing her forthcoming book “Race, Sex, and Hollywood” due out in 2020.
Sahar Driver, Co-Director, Color Congress
Sahar is a veteran documentary impact strategist, field builder, and researcher. Her career has focused on social and cultural transformation through nonfiction storytelling. She has led impact campaigns and strategy for over two-dozen documentaries, independently and with Active Voice. She has designed and led impact trainings and grantmaking programs to support impact producers and filmmakers of color with Firelight Media.
She piloted new models to strengthen impact practices for people working at the intersection of film and faith with Hartley Media Impact Initiative at Auburn. She worked with Doc Society to update the second edition of their Impact Field Guide and wrote the 2019 Impact Hi5 case studies. In 2020 she authored the Ford Foundation commissioned report: Beyond Inclusion: The Critical Role of People of Color in the U.S. Documentary Ecosystem. Sahar is a second generation, Iranian American living in Oakland, CA on stolen Chochenyo and Ohlone land.
Stacey Marbrey, Executive Director, Global Girl Media
Stacey Marbrey is an award-winning filmmaker (National Black Consortium Community Award recipient, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame inductee, Film Independent PROJECT INVOLVE directing fellow) and internationally recognized editorial photographer. For over ten years she has programmed for numerous film festivals, including Slamdance, and currently the Atlanta Film Festival.
Her previous appointment was as Program Director for an international film exchange under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State in concert with the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, UNESCO, the American Film Institute’s PROJECT: 20/20 and Sundance Institute’s FILM FORWARD. During her tenure, Stacey was invited to the White House and presented with the International Engagement Award. Stacey is a graduate from San Francisco State University School of Cinema, resides in Los Angeles and is GlobalGirl Media’s Executive Director.
Vivian Wenli Lin, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Voices of Women in Media & Professor, Media Arts and Culture Department-Occidental College
Vivian Wenli Lin received her Ph.D. in Media Art at the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media. In 2017, her doctoral research was presented in the form of an exhibition titled, Visualizing the Voices of Migrant Women Workers at the University of Hong Kong with support from the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Exchange (KE) Project Fund.
In 2004, she received a Masters in Fine Arts from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, The Netherlands where she co-founded Voices of Women Media in 2007, an organization that offers multimedia workshops to marginalized communities of migrant women – including teenage girls, asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, and women in the emotional labor industry.
Vivian’s prior education includes a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Asian American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, she received a Masters in Professional Studies at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program where she co-founded alongside Ann Poochareon and Geraldine Chung, Fortunes for Cookies, a self-portrait video workshop for young women from the Chinatowns of New York City.
Voices of Women Media
Media Arts and Culture Department
Occidental College
Team
Zakiya Thomas, President & CEO, ERA Coalition and Fund for Women’s Equality
Zakiya Thomas is President and CEO of the ERA Coalition and the Fund for Women’s Equality. Zakiya is an agent for change, working to make equality a reality for all people.
Using her experiences as a political strategist and nonprofit manager, Zakiya leads a diverse coalition of over 280 organizations representing 80 million people. This community of activists jointly advocates for gender, racial, and reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and much more under the unifying goal of sex equality. The Coalition’s work is to shift how people talk about their respective issues in order to reflect how all of our issues are connected and to facilitate closer collaboration.
Zakiya is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law teaching a nonpartisan course on how to run for political office and volunteers on several nonprofit boards ranging from advancing reproductive rights to individual financial empowerment.
Elisa Parker, Social Impact Media & Partnership Consultant
Elisa is a speaker, facilitator, media-maven, coalition builder, strategist and visionary for equity and social justice. She is the co-founder, producer and host of the award-winning radio program and multimedia platform See Jane Do, co-founder & co-director of 50 Women Can Change the World in Media & Entertainment, Indivisible Women, 100 Women Change Hollywood: Partners in Parity and producer/emcee of The Visionaries Summit-Conscious Media (Shift Network).
Elisa’s work takes her around the world to discover and share the extraordinary stories and solutions in each of us. She hosts a weekly show for nationally acclaimed radio station KVMR and is the co-founder and director of the Passion into Action™ Women’s Conference, TEDxGrassValley, Raising Jane and the See Jane Do Media Lounge. She reaches thousands through partnership with like-minded organizations and develops organizational-wide initiatives, communications strategies for events and digital media campaigns that support women’s leadership and gender equity. Elisa is an alumna of the Women’s Media Center Progressive Women’s Voices program, Take the Lead Women and the Vote, Run, Lead Go Run program.
Elisa is a recipient of the Jody Fenimore Award for Public Affairs and Osborn-Woods Community Service Award and has served on the KVMR Board of Directors for six years. She holds a BA in Communications from San Francisco State and a MA in Organization Development & Leadership from the University of San Francisco.
Learn more at www.seejanedo.com and www.50womencan-media.com
Chrisi West, Director of Communications, ERA Coalition and Fund for Women’s Equality
Chrisi West is the Director of Communications for the ERA Coalition and Fund for Women’s Equality. She previously served as the Director of Advocacy for Child Care Aware of America, and worked in digital communications for nonprofit advocacy organizations for 11 years prior to that position.
Chrisi has created and led trainings on communications and social media tools for effective advocacy for issues-based organizations across the country and has been passionate about women’s issues and equity her entire life. In her free time she leads social media efforts for a gun violence prevention group in Virginia, runs an afterschool reading program for children in at-risk housing, escorts at a women’s health clinic, and serves as an officer on two different boards. She has a degree from the University of Pittsburgh in Communications: Rhetoric.
Katherine Hiraldo, Web Design Consultant
Katherine is serving as a Web Design Consultant for the Fund for Women’s Equality. She is currently a student at Arizona State University, pursuing a second degree in Graphic Design.
She has over 10 years experience in Web and Graphic Design, as well as over 15 years of experience in Office Administration and Management.