Alison is a veteran creative director specializing in creative leadership. She has over twenty years experience building and leading large, diverse teams and providing creative strategy, relevant storytelling, and integrated advertising for global businesses, including Barneys New York, Gap, Sony Music, and Crate&Barrel. She has served as representative, business manager, and executive producer for musician and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello since 2006, realizing 250% growth over ten years. Alison is also the founder and creative director of Set Editions, a small design studio that produces a line of text based goods that have garnered a devoted following among celebrities, friends, and politicians, and have been carried in over 300 museums and design shops. She currently consults with artists and brands on defining their mission, strategic development, and creative expression. She works most tirelessly to ensure the creative integrity and equitable representation of independent creative clients. Originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alison moved to New York to attend Barnard College in 1992 and seems unable to pull herself away. 

Ilana is a deeply committed human rights advocate. After practicing labour and human rights law in Canada, she spent eight years at the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on human rights and as the CEDAW Advisor at HQ. During this time she travelled extensively, working with grassroots women’s groups working on a wide range of women’s rights, human rights, and sexuality-related rights issues and movement building. Ilana was the co-founder and first President of UNGLOBE, a group advocating for the rights of LGBTQ U.N. employees. In 2003, at the height of the AIDS pandemic in Africa, Ilana co-founded and served for 17 years (2003-2020) as the Executive Director of The Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF) – an organization established to support community-based organizations that were – and continue to be – at the heart of the response to the AIDS pandemic. Ilana and Stephen created the SLF with the firm conviction that community-based organizations are the experts on what is needed in their communities, that funders should respect the agendas of their partners, and work to amplify their voices and perspectives, and be accountable for the power imbalances in the funding relationship that can disrupt powerful and effective programmatic and advocacy work at the grassroots and national levels. In 2016 Ilana launched the SLF’s African LGBTQ Initiative, supporting LGBTQ CBOs in eight countries with programmatic and operational support. The SLF has disbursed over 130 million to 1800 initiatives led by over 300 CBOs in the 15 sub-Saharan African countries hardest hit by HIV and AIDS. Ilana is the founder and host of the podcast Grandmothers on the Move, and lectures and writes frequently on human rights issues, LGBTIQ rights, and the responsibilities of intersectional philanthropy. Ilana was the recipient of the Canadian YWCA Women of Distinction award for International Development, and was named one of the Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada. She serves as an advisor to the (2SLGBTQ+ organisation) Dignity Network Canada, and is a Senior Associate with Gender at Work.  

Susana is a Senior Advisor, Global Programs for CREA and a Fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership (Yale University). Her work focuses on building cross-movement strategies and advocacy to challenge criminalization of sexual and reproductive rights, sexuality, HIV, sex work, sexual orientation, gender identity and drug use. From 2008-2014, she was the senior gender, HIV and health advisor at UNDP. Susana has worked in a senior capacity with a wide range of women’s rights, human rights, sexuality-related rights and SRHR organizations, including Open Societies Foundation, ICASO, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Amnesty International, the OUTRIGHT Action International (formerly the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission), the International Women’s Health Coalition, Harvard School of Public Health, WHO, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, among others. She has spoken and written widely on topics related to gender-based violence, sexuality, health and rights. She is currently a Board member of the Positive Action for Girls and Women Fund and the Athena Network and sits on the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program.

Rocki is a white Brazilian butch who came to the United States in the late 80s, fell in love with women and rice krispies treats (not necessarily in that order) and decided to stay. Most of her community organizing work has focused on queer/trans youth, homelessness, and intersectional social justice movements. Most of her personal work has focused on being a loving friend, partner, ex-partner, anti-racist community member, and parent. On a good day she does some of these things well. Rocki is a youth worker at heart and has a long history with the GLBT Host Home Program (now ConneQT), which she helped start in 1997. She was honored for her work with a True Leadership Award by the True Colors Fund in September 2015.  She is now at the University of Minnesota’s Labor Education Service and excited to be part of its fierce commitment to labor and workers. 

Geetanjali Misra is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of CREA. Geetanjali has worked at the activist, grant-making, and policy levels on issues of sexuality, reproductive health, gender, human rights, and violence against women. She has taught as an adjunct professor on the intersection of LGBT issues, sexual rights and public health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Before joining CREA, she was Program Officer, Sexuality and Reproductive Health for the Ford Foundation in New Delhi and supported non-governmental organizations in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka working on sexual and reproductive health and rights. She also co-founded SAKHI for South Asian Women in 1989, a non-profit organization in New York, committed to ending violence against women of South Asian origin. Formerly, she was Chair of the Boards of Reproductive Health Matters (UK), a global peer reviewed journal on sexual and reproductive health and rights and Mama Cash (the Netherlands). She was a Board Member of FHI 360 (USA) and also served as President of the Board of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) where she led a strategic planning and organizational development process leading to changes in leadership roles and structure. In the past, she held several key advisory roles such as being a Member of Cordaid’s Expert Advisory Group (the Netherlands), served as a core member of the Action Plus Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV/AIDS (India), was regional and Global Advisor for Global Fund for Women (USA) among others. She writes on issues of sexuality, gender, and rights, and has co-edited ‘Sexuality, Gender, and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and Southeast Asia’ from SAGE. She is also author of ‘The Power of Movements’ published by AWID. She holds Master’s degrees in International Affairs from Columbia University, US, and in Economics from Syracuse University, US.