Siti Abas Ali
Siti Abbas Ali was born in 1980 in Zanzibar, Tanzania; she is a gender activist, lawyer and feminist committed to promote women’s economic justice. She has campaigned for women economic justice for over 13 years while serving in different positions. She is currently working as commissioner for National Planning, sectoral Development and Poverty Reduction. In 2018 she was appointed as Personal Assistant to the Second Vice President Social Welfare. She has held several positions with both governmental and non governmental organizations. She was one of the co-founders and the first Executive Director of Save the New Generation a Women’s Right Organization, and has also worked with Zanzibar Female Members of the House of Representatives Network. She is currently enrolled in pursuing graduate study of gender.
Keywords: community activism, gender-based violence, disability rights, gender and health
Media: Transcript (Swahili, English), YouTube Video (Swahili, English)
Adrienne Asch
1948-2013
Adrienne Asch (1948-2013) was an author and an internationally known bioethicist. At the time of her death, she was director of the Center for Ethics and the Edward and Robin professor of biotethics at Yeshiva University in Manhattan. She was also professor of epidemiology and population health at Yeshiva. Adrienne was a long-time member of the board of directors of the American Society for Bioethics in Humanities and served on the Clinton Task Force on Healthcare Reform and the Ethnical, Legal, and Social Implications Policy Planning Group of the National Human Genome Research Institute. The GFP staff note with sadness Adrienne's death in 2013. Read the NYT obituary to learn more about her pioneering work in disability rights.
Keywords: gender and health, disability rights, reproductive rights
Media: Transcript (English), Video, Bibliography, YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio
JD Davids
JD Davids, born in 1967, is a US-based health justice and communications strategist working with national networks of disabled and chronically ill people. He co-founded Strategies for High Impact and its Network for Long COVID Justice in 2021. Davids has been an external expert advisor to the NIH, CDC, and local health departments, and has served as a strategist and organizer with many pivotal groups, including ACT UP Philadelphia, AVAC, the Coalition for a National HIV/AIDS Strategy, Health GAP, the Health Not Prisons Collective, the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance, Positive Women’s Network – USA and the U.S. Caucus of People Living with HIV. As a queer and trans person living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), Long COVID and other complex chronic conditions, he writes and hosts conversations for The Cranky Queer Guide to Chronic Illness (@TheCrankyQueer), sits on the board of #MEAction and is a contributing member of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, which released the first comprehensive study on Long COVID.
Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, gender and health, international rights
Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio
Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova
Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, born in 1963, had dual degrees in social work and sociology. She is a professor of sociology at the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University in Moscow, Russia, where she is a leading research fellow and the editor of the Journal of Social Policy Studies. Her professional research interests include social policy, sociology of professions, gender and disability, family and children, and qualitative research methods.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, art/writing as activism, education
Media: Transcript (English, Russian), Video (Russian), YouTube Video (Russian, English), Name Pronunciation Audio
Ke Qianting
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin), YouTube Video (Mandarin, English Subtitles)
Liu Bohong
Liu Bohong, born in 1951, is Deputy Director of the Institute of Research on Women of the All-China Women's Federation, circulating feminism and promoting gender-awareness in the Chinese government system, notably formulating national programs that implement the 1995 UN Platform for Action.
Keywords: academia and women's studies, education, gender-based violence, politics and the law, reproductive rights, rural women and land reform
Media: Transcript (English, Mandarin), Video (English, Mandarin), Bibliography, YouTube Video (Mandarin, English Dubbed), Name Pronunciation Audio
Fiona Lowenstein
Fiona Lowenstein, born in 1993, is an award-winning independent journalist, producer, and speaker, covering health justice, wellness culture, LGBTQ+ issues and more. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Vox, The Guardian, and Business Insider, among other publications. Fiona is the founder of Body Politic – home of the original Long COVID support group. They are also the editor of the recently published anthology, THE LONG COVID SURVIVAL GUIDE, out November 2022 from The Experiment. Photo credit: JJ Geiger
Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, gender and health, intersectionality, media
Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio
Dona Murphey
Dona Murphey, born in 1979, is a neurologist, neuroscientist, historian of science, and community organizer. She has navigated local, state, federal, and international partnerships across academia, government, and health tech sectors in rapid response and strategic mobilizations at the intersections of race, poverty, and immigration. Her belief in the foundational democratic rights to health, migration, public education, and voting have informed her extensive grassroots activism and nonprofit advocacy and a run for her local school board in Texas. Her current project is a public benefit start-up that marries her scientific and clinical expertise with a community organizing ethos to develop a digital diagnostic tied to culturally and language specific content and community health worker access to help eliminate racialized health disparities in dementia.
Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, community activism, disability rights, intersectionality
Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio
Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes
Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes was born in 1945 in Fortaleza, Ceará. She is a leader in the struggle against domestic violence in Brazil. Victimized by her husband in 1983, she was the first to successfully bring a case of domestic violence to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 2006, Brazil Federal Law 11340 was ratified, known as the "Maria da Penha Law on Domestic and Family Violence."
Keywords: gender-based violence, politics and the law
Media: Transcript (Portuguese, English), Video, YouTube Video (Portuguese, English Subtitles) Name Pronunciation Audio
Joanna Regulska
Joanna Regulska was born in 1951 in Warsaw, Poland. She studied geography at the University of Warsaw in Poland and at the University of Colorado in the United States. In 1989, she co-founded the Foundation for Development of Local Democracy in Poland. She directs the Department for Women and Gender Research at Rutgers University in the USA Regulska has a daughter and divides her life and work between Poland and the United States.
Keywords: feminist conferences, disability rights
Media: Transcript (English, Polish), Video (English, Polish), Bibliography, English YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio
Chimére L. Smith
Suffering with the debilitating effects and symptoms of Covid-19 for nearly a year, Chimére L. Smith, born in 1982, has had to learn the hard knocks of advocacy in healthcare. While seeking treatment and care, she experienced racism, sexism, and dismissal by several medical professionals. Chimére boldly took matters into her own hands by challenging Baltimore hospitals for better, comprehensive treatment for herself and other Black Long Covid patients in urban communities. She is an author, speaker, highly-requested panelist, and thought leader who unapologetically shares her Long Covid journey — including balancing the effects of her disability emotionally, physically, and financially. Chimére Smith has been featured on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, and in The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She has written for Huffington Post, Medium, The Long Covid Survival Guide, and She Knows.
Keywords: activism during the COVID-19 pandemic, disability rights, gender and health, media
Media: Transcript (English), YouTube Video, Name Pronunciation Audio
