Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Hero Origin Stories – Round 6

Today is already stressful as is—that’s why we thought it a perfect time for round 6 of our series, SRHR Hero Origin Stories! If you haven’t already, check out our previous episodes, SRHR Hero Origin Stories, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 2, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 3, SRHR Hero Origin Stories: Round 4, and SRHR Origin Stories: Round 5, where we talked to a number of amazing heroes in the field of reproductive health, rights, and justice about how they began working in this space. We hope you enjoy the reprisal of our most popular podcast episode, talking to leaders about their work, passions, and journeys into the field of reproductive health for a fifth time!

 Guests include:

Jennie Wetter – rePROs Fight Back

Shireen Rose Shakouri – Reproaction

Kate Kelly – Center for American Progress

Maniza Habib – Population Institute

Dázon Dixon Diallo – SisterLove, Inc

Sarah Craven – UNFPA

Links from this episode

Population Institute Mourns the Passing of Robert J. Walker
Reproaction
Center for American Progress
Population Institute
SisterLove, Inc.
UNFPA

Take Action

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. [music intro]

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Jennie: Hi rePROs. How's everybody doing? I'm your host Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, I just got back from the American Public Health Association Annual Conference. I had a presentation that went great, but most fun is we had a booth for rePROs. I got to meet so many people who love the podcast. It was just such a wonderful time. It was really great. I love getting to meet people who enjoy the podcast and spend time with them. So, it was, like, really energizing slash really draining. I'm inherently an introvert, so like three days of manning a booth and talking to thousands of people is a lot, is a lot. It's exhausting. I, like, went back to my hotel every night and was just, like, oh, nobody talk to me. So, I am taking this weekend, which is the weekend before the election, to just do nothing and talk to nobody and just have some quiet time and maybe do some reading, watch some Halloween movies that I didn't get to watch before the holiday and just have some downtime to recharge because, man, am I drained. That was a lot of work. It was fun, but it was a lot of work. And even more fun, before that my mom came up to Minneapolis and we got to spend a couple days together, which was so much fun. You know, nothing really big or exciting, but just like having some time together, getting to plan some things we have coming up and honestly, just getting to spend time with my mom. It was wonderful. It's always great when I can add on fun on top of a work trip. So, glad my mom was able to make the drive up. And then, and then while I was at APHA, we got huge news! rePROs Fight Back, won a Silver in the Signal Awards this year. I am so excited. We got a Silver for Activism, Public Service and Social Impact category. And y'all, I'm so overwhelmed and honored and just so excited. You know, this podcast is a real labor of love. I love doing this so much. And spoiler alert: this episode is an origin story episode so you'll hear a bit about how I got dragged into this, but it is like my favorite thing. I love getting to talk about these issues with so many amazing guests. Like, the guests we have all had on are just so amazing. I love getting to have guests on who are my friends, and I get to show off how smart they are and how hard they work on all of these issues. I love getting to have people on that I've never met, but whose work I've admired for a long time. Like, I just love everything about it. And so, I am just overwhelmed and overjoyed to win this award, to have it recognized. I think, you know, with this timing where abortion is literally on the ballot across the country, like it's such a huge deal to win for this podcast. And I am so, so proud of my team and so grateful for my team. Rachel and Elena do so much work for this podcast. And honestly, it would not be what it is without them. Like, I just, they're so wonderful. So, this goes out to them a lot. To our editor Meg, who does her best to make me sound great and I appreciate that and all of the work she does. I am so thankful to all of you who tune into the podcast, who enjoy the podcast. It's so much. Like, this was really just a huge honor and it makes my heart so happy. So again, like I said, I'm a little overwhelmed but very happy and excited. And thank you to the Signal Awards. Yeah, so wonderful. Okay, so because this is coming out on Election Day, it seemed really important to not do a heavy episode where we're talking about something serious. We all need just, like, a little bit lighter things today. So I decided to go back to an episode we haven't done in a while and I'm so excited. As I said earlier, it is going to be our SRHR Hero origin story episode, and I am so excited. I have some wonderful people sharing their stories today. And I wanna tell a little bit different story for mine this time.

Jennie: If you wanna hear my story from the beginning, like definitely check out any of our past ones. I'm sure we'll have links to them in the show notes. But this one, it's hard to do it without crying. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that a really close mentor of mine had passed away. It was my old boss, Bob Walker, and there literally would not be a podcast without him. Definitely I wouldn't be hosting it. So, I'm gonna tell that story instead. Bob was such an amazing boss and I, I would consider myself lucky to be half as good of a boss as he was. Okay, so, so my origin story with, with Bob. So, I started at Population Institute before him. I had been there for maybe almost a year, not quite a year before. He, he started and Population Institute had a lot of kind of turmoil. Like, it had merged with another organization as a sister organization and the PI staff there were, there were two of us full time. Andwe didn't have a lot of guidance. And so, it was really hard. It was really hard. And I had been thinking about leaving because I didn't feel like I was going anywhere. It felt like the organization was gonna close down and it just seemed like I should leave. And I went to an event and talked to somebody else and they said, just wait, just wait. They had just hired Bob. Bob hadn't started yet. And he's like, I think you just need to really give him a chance. Like, he's really good. Just, just give him a chance before you make any decisions to leave. And I am so grateful for that advice. Bob came in and was so wonderful. He was so thoughtful about the issues. I felt, honestly, I felt for the whole time he was there, like, he was absolutely a mentor who pushed me and, and guided me, but also saw it as a real collaborative partnership. Like, I spent so much time in his office, like sitting down and talking through what we should do and thinking through things. And it, it, I just felt so collaborative. And I hadn't had that before in a job. And it was wonderful. And I didn't, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Like, I started at Population Institute, I came from the environmental field and population wasn't really my passion. And I came from environment and development. And, and so that's how I ended up at PI. And slowly I started working a lot on our repro stuff and Bob really encouraged me in that direction. And obviously, I became our sexual and reproductive health and rights person. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Like, I knew this was the field I wanted to work in, but I hadn't quite envisioned what my role would be, right? Like, was I gonna do research? Was I comms? Was I gonna do policy? And working at a small organization like you wear all the hats, right? Like I said before, Bob started, there were, there were two of us. So with him, there were three of us. And so, you're wearing all the hats. And I just remember one of my early reviews going into Bob's office and he, he, his reviews were always real basic, like, you're doing amazing and like, let's think about how we can grow you. And like, that's what our reviews were. And he always felt like he was trying to make you the best you could be, even if that took you away from PI and took you somewhere else. Like he just wanted to see his people shine and whatever way, shape, or form that took. And so, I went in for this review and it was the usual, like, everything's great. Where do you see yourself in five years? And I, like, paused for a minute. He's like, actually, you know what, how about I tell you where I see you? And he really saw me doing policy and doing some of the government relations work. And, you know, it had not really been something I had considered. So, you know, it was like this- him asking me if I wanted to be a princess, right? Like, it was just something that hadn't been on my mind at that time as what he saw me doing. And we had a long conversation and I really thought about it. And, you know, he saw that in me before I did. And I think this is gonna be a theme through this origin story. And you know, he, he really pushed me in that direction and I loved it. He was right. Bob was always right [laugh]. So he really pushed, and I think that was a big part of our relationship is, I was sometimes a little resistant. He pushed me, he got the best out of me and pushed me to do bigger and better things and to shine brighter 'cause he always saw that thing in people and he nurtured it. And, like, that is such an amazing thing to have in a boss. So amazing. And so, you know, we, we kept working. We started doing the 50 state report card. He really let me think it through and work it out and adapted and change it and change categories as needs changed. And, you know, he always listened to what I had to say. We didn't always do what I wanted, which obviously, should never be the case, right? And it was great. Like it was a real collaborative partnership. And so, seven years ago there was a board meeting, and you know, I don't even remember who suggested it. Somehow it came up about a podcast. What if, what if y'all did a podcast? And it just seemed like one of those kind of throwaway things that you sometimes hear at board meetings. And a couple weeks later, Bob comes into my office and sits down and he's like, okay, well we need to talk about this podcast suggestion that came up. I think you should do this. Like, I think that this is something that you should really take the lead on and develop. And like, I was like, Bob, this is ridiculous. What are you talking about? Like, I should not do a podcast. And he's like, no, and I think you should host it. Like you, we should do the podcast and you should be the host and you should do it however you want. And y'all, like, my mind was scrambled and blown and I was very like, no, Bob, this is ridiculous. I'm not doing this. And he really, he really pushed and really encouraged me to do it. Again, as I said in my intro, I'm inherently an introvert, so this was a little outside of my realm of things I wanted to consider doing. And so he pushed and you know what? Dang it, he was right. Always. Bob was always right. And I had this, this great opportunity. He just let me figure it out on my own and figure out how to do the podcast, what style I wanted to do it, how it was going to be, what I was going to talk about. And he was just like a sounding board, but he, he just let me figure it out for myself and what topics I would cover and how to do it. And it was so wonderful. And you know, I was really sad when he retired and it was very weird to think about continuing at this organization that the two of us had had such a collaboration for over I think, like, 13 years when he retired. It was like losing a partner and friend and mentor. And it was hard to think about how that was gonna change. But I had never imagined then now, three years later, that he would pass away and I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be doing this podcast if it hadn't been for Bob and him seeing something in me that I never would've seen in myself. And so that's, that's my origin story for the podcast and I'm really gonna miss him. And he was just such an important part of my journey in this. And yeah, so I'm just really grateful and really gonna miss him. Okay. I promised y'all this was gonna be an upbeat episode and here I am crying. so let's turn to some wonderful origin stories of my guests.

Shireen Shakouri: Hi, my name is Shireen Shakouri. I'm Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff at Reproaction and I use she and her pronouns. So, how I got into repro... Reproaction was my first full-time job within the movement. And I've been here about seven and a half, eight years. I'll say that I started my work in the movement more on a volunteer student group basis, community organizations several years before, actually I could even go as far back as, what was it high school where I had a friend who told me, yo, my older cousin's in college and he's in a group where they give out condoms on campus. And I was like, oh my God, that's so funny, I can't believe they give out free condoms. And so then that's kind of just something I, you know, tucked away in the catalog of my memory as I was involved in more sex ed awareness projects in high school and then into early college at orientation, my orientation leader said, yeah, I'm involved in the pro-choice group. One of the things we do is we hand out cookies and condoms in our quad, which was called Kogan Plaza, where I went to at GW. And I just thought that was, oh my God, that thing my friend said back in freshman year, probably, of high school. I now have the opportunity to do that. And it was fun, engaging, but it was also the year of the Affordable Care Act fight. I was going to school in DC, there was a lot of opportunities to plug in, get involved in making reproductive health a part of the Affordable Care Act. And that was something that I found really engaging at the time. I didn't make repro my full-time job after college but the itch kind of started coming back with the 2016 election and seeing where everything was going politically. And I decided it was time to dip my toes back in. And luckily Reproaction took a chance on me and I've been working there ever since. It's been a great ride. A lot of different roles, a lot of different hats along the way in my journey. And since I've also definitely expanded my repertoire of volunteer work I do in the movement. That's something I think it's very prominent in our movement that we cross pollinate from volunteer to full-time gigs. And I'm just thrilled to be a part of it all. It's all good. It's all worthwhile. If you want to volunteer, someone needs your help. Get plugged in. Get there. Hope to see you there.

Kate Kelly: Hi, my name is Kate Kelly and I'm the Senior Director for the Women's Initiative at the Center for American Progress. I have been involved in repro circles and the movement for a long time, but this is not where I started. I was raised Mormon in a very conservative community and family. I just, I didn't know anything about sex or sexual health or reproduction really, except for that was my sole destiny in life was to be a wife and a mother. And that's how I grew up. When I was 12 years old there, I remember an activity at church where they put us in these, all the older women brought these wedding dresses and we were literally put on these pedestals like a box. And we stood up and we were wearing a wedding dress and they took a picture of us. And I had to put that picture in my scriptures so that I would remember starting at age 12, that my destiny was to marry a man and to have children. That was my entire life's purpose. That is not how it panned out. [laugh] I ended up starting a movement in the Mormon Church to fight for gender justice. It was called Ordain Women, and the intent of it was to get Mormon women ordained to the priesthood. Spoiler alert: this was unsuccessful. And as a result, I was excommunicated from the church. I was convicted of apostasy in a trial. And this really led to a period in my life where I began to question everything. I call, I very dramatically called it my dismantle and rebuild period. And the dismantle was rethinking all the things I had been taught about my destiny, about my purpose, about sex, about, you know, all these different things. I ended up working at Planned Parenthood in Utah, honestly, because it was one of the only places that would take me [laugh]. I was so, you know, stigmatized. It was so public. My excommunication was covered in the New York Times. It was covered almost every day in the Salt Lake Tribune. Everyone knew who I was and for a very controversial reason in the state. And so, Planned Parenthood, I was like, well, it's the only place that's equally controversial, [laugh]. So I ended up working at Planned Parenthood, became a lobbyist at the Utah State legislature fighting for abortion access and reproductive rights and freedom. This was a huge shift. I went from being, you know, an Orthodox Mormon to being a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood in a matter of weeks [laugh]. And it was a wild culture shift. I remember, and again, I didn't have comprehensive sex ed. I didn't, you know, I didn't know these things. So I remember in Planned Parenthood meetings, sometimes I would Google things under the table in meetings, like, terms I didn't know, or I don't, I don't even remember. I remember one time I, someone said, dental dam. I had no idea what that was. I had to Google it. I, there were, there was a lot of catching up to do, let's say. And so, what I did at Planned Parenthood was really try to use my knowledge of the Mormon community to help increase other people access to information and access to care. And one of the last things I did at Planned Parenthood, speaking of controversies, is I made a condom with the logo, a CTR logo--Mormons when their children, they wear these rings that are, that say CTR, which is choose the right--and so I designed these condoms that were designed [laugh], and they said, they said, "choose the right contraceptives." Thought this was very, very hilarious. And sort of this tongue in cheek way to help Mormons and former Mormons understand more about contraceptives. This was wildly controversial. The Mormon Church issued a statement, you know, accusing me of prostituting a childhood symbol of faith. It was like a major, major controversy in the state, and we had to recall the condoms. This truly happened. So, if you find one on eBay, they're very valuable at this point. But I say that to say that that was my transition into fighting for reproductive freedom. And since then, I've worked at the state and federal level on access to abortion care. I've worked for Shout Your Abortion, shout out to Amelia, who I really think has a prophetic voice in this movement and I was very drawn to for that reason because of her courage and bravery and really just astute sense of, of how to reach people. Maybe this is my Mormon missionary training [laugh]. And yeah, I've done many things. I work also on the Equal Rights Amendment. I see this as a really foundational fix. You know, I'm, I guess the theme throughout my life is if I see something that's wrong, instead of leaving the community or leaving the country, I fight back and I fight to change it. And so, that is how I fight for reproductive rights and freedom. I believe in constitutional change. I think we should amend state constitutions and the federal constitution and that will give us the foundation that we can fight for. And I think that goes back to my Mormon roots, where I have a very keen sense of right and wrong, and I believe in my own inherent worth and dignity. And I was able to overcome a lot in order to question authority and question whether or not what these right-wing old men were telling me about my future and about my body. And I, even as a child, even as that 12-year-old girl standing on that pedestal, I knew that wasn't for me. I knew that wasn't my destiny. I knew that wasn't my- what I wanted to choose. And so I see everything that I'm fighting for today as fighting for that little girl and other girls like her.

Maniza Habib: Hi, my name is Maniza Habib and I'm a research associate at the Population Institute. Here, I work on issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights including increasing funding for the field, both domestically and internationally, working with abortion access and barriers to family planning across the world, working on child marriage both here and internationally, as well as other gender-based harms such as female general mutilation slash cutting, virginity testing, and femicide. I would say I'm definitely still on my journey in this field and really finding my footing, but that I've also found home and this is exactly what I was supposed to be doing. And it's funny to say that because I grew up in a very conservative Muslim household where we never talked about sex or reproductive health. So, it's a bit ironic that this is where I feel the most comfortable, and this is what I feel like is important to be doing because even with natural things like menstruation, it came with a layer of stigma. Like for example, when I was back in Bangladesh, during Ramadan, I'd have to pretend I was fasting even when I couldn't because of my period. Because acknowledging it openly would have been uncomfortable, especially around men. And I just thought this was ridiculous because the whole point that Muslim women do not have to fast while they're menstruating is so that they can get the nutrients and the food that they need while they're also menstruating. And yet we can't do that because some men are scared of talking about blood that their wives, sister, et cetera, are experiencing once a month. So, I feel like these kinds of experiences really push me towards this field and trying to unlock the stigma that surrounds sexual health and menstruation. And growing up in America, but also having such close ties to Bangladesh really just showed this, like, stark difference in these communities where I felt like I could talk about these things more growing up in a pretty liberal area in the States versus going back to Bangladesh and that being taken away from me. But being Bengali also means I was raised in a culture rooted in social justice because we're really known for our resilience and our fierce commitment to standing up for what's right. And that spirit has stayed with me through my education, which is where my passion for sexual reproductive health and rights really blossomed. It started with my time in University of Maryland where I studied Public Health and Spanish. And this is when I began to understand how deeply health disparities affect marginalized communities. And that experience sparked something in me, a commitment in breaking down the barriers that keep people from accessing the health services they need. Then during my Master's in Global Health at George Washington University, I deepened my focus on sexual reproductive health. I came to see that reproductive rights aren't just about health, they're about justice, dignity, and equality. I began working on a toolkit for survivors of female general mutilation slash cutting, which was a very pivotal moment for me. I feel like that's when I learned that true advocacy means supporting communities with sensitivity and empowering people to access care that meets them where they are. It's not about imposing your beliefs on another group of people, it's about opening up conversations and increasing access to support. So now as a research associate at the Population Institute, I bring my Bengali roots and dedication to social justice into my work. I push for policies that protect and empower those most impacted by stigma and limited access. And my main goal is to ensure that everyone has the freedom to lead a healthy, self-determined life free from the silence and shame that too often surrounds reproductive health.

Dázon Dixon Diallo: Hey, I am Dázon Dixon Diallo. I am the founder and president of SisterLove, Inc, a 35-year-old sexual and reproductive health rights and justice organization that for the better part of our years, has approached the intersections of sexual and reproductive health rights and justice through mostly sexual health, HIV, STIs, but also with abortion, contraception, issues around maternal health, intersections with reproductive cancers, including cervical and breast cancer, and a lot of movement work. And my story begins. And I'm also, oh, a co-founder of SisterSong, National Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, a founding member of the In Our Own Voices: Black Women's Reproductive Justice Partnership. I am a founding member of Trust Black Women Partnership and a whole bunch of other RJ related as well as HIV and sexual health related organizations, programs and institutions. My repro health story starts when I was in college on Spelman college's campus in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a hot summer of 1983. I had a work study job with the admissions office. So, one day I am giving a tour on campus to a prospective family, and literally I look up and I see Angela Davis and June Jordan walking down my campus across the mall, and then I see folks like Paula Giddings and it just went on and on. And then I saw the whole of Sweet Honey in the Rock with all of their amazing, you know, how they have their matching beautiful regalia outfits. And I was intrigued. I was done. I dropped that family back at the admissions office so fast and then played hooky for the rest of the week. To do what? I followed these women and attended sneakily attended the first ever conference on Black Women's Health, National Conference on Black Women's Health held in the United States, hosted by the founder of the Black Women's Health Project, which is now, or the National Black Women's Health Project, which is now the Black Women's Health Imperative, Byllye Avery. So, that's when I met Byllye and Lily Allen and Natalia Kanem and so many other people who have become the stalwarts and the grandmothers, birth mothers, and godmothers of what we now know as the reproductive justice movement. So that was the beginning. And that meeting in and of itself created this momentum for women of color to establish their own health agendas, particularly centered around reproductive health. So that was my beginning and it also was a good trigger for some of my activism on my campus. I ended up having to give up a scholarship and I started a job at McDonald's to help pay my way through school. And it was a terrible six months. And so, I'm looking, looking, looking for another part-time gig. And I ended up with a position as a lay health worker. And I think I was the first Black lay health worker, and I certainly was the youngest lay health worker at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta. This is in the mid-eighties. So I spent the second half of my college time working part-time at the Feminist Women's Health Center, which is what we know as a well-woman. It's a nonprofit, well-woman abortion clinic providing contraception of well-woman reproductive healthcare and graduated from college and ended up with a full-time position there. While working at the Feminist Health Center before I even graduated from college, now I'm in the middle of reproductive health and rights, of course, helping organize for marches, including on my own college campus, but also providing direct services to women and doing a lot of community relations work, right? And it was the day that Rock Hudson announced his AIDS diagnosis--Rock Hudson, for those who were born in the millennial generation or Gen Z and beyond, was like the, y'all might even not know who Brad Pitt is at this point, but who was an A-lister Hollywood, you know, number one leading actor of the 1950s and sixties, of course seen as a straight guy in the movies. But it turns out at the same time of announcing his AIDS diagnosis, he announced the fact that he was gay. I mentioned this because now I'm sitting in a reproductive health and rights space and this happens. And the local AIDS organization had no information, had no resources, had no plan, had nothing for women who all of a sudden, because of Rock Hudson's announcement--I'm making an assumption, but this is when the numbers went up--started calling into the AIDS organization about their own conditions, questions, fears, concerns, hysteria in some instances. And because they didn't have anything to respond to the women, they assumed that we did and called us at the Feminist Women's Health Center. I answered the phone that day when they asked for these information and we had nothing. So, what it showed immediately was that there was already a gap between what was happening in the HIV space and what was happening in the reproductive rights space. And what came to mind the minute I started volunteering was that most of the people who were living at the intersection of reproductive health and AIDS at that time were Black women. Most of them were finding out their AIDS diagnosis at the time they were pregnant. The options for what to do with their pregnancies were very different then because there were no treatments, people were dying within weeks of an AIDS diagnosis. There was already a lot of stigma, discrimination, ignorance, and hysteria around AIDS itself. It's hard to imagine that people were treated as if they were pariahs, as if they had leprosy like in the old adages of the Bible. And so we knew, I knew, and the volunteers that I started organizing knew right away that this was clearly a reproductive rights issue that also intersected with the sexual health and rights issue. Now, I didn't have anywhere to put that, right? And so I'm looking for a place where the folks are doing this work at the intersections and it's not happening. But then of course, I end up meeting people like Loretta Ross and having the opportunity to go to international meetings where this is actually starting to take frame. We're talking about reproductive health and rights in the same conversations talking about HIV and AIDS was actually happening. So, I started SisterLove in 1989 for that very reason because somebody had to be doing the work for these particular women who were dying without any information, in some instances without diagnoses. Now if you bring that forward a little bit, in '94 when reproductive justice was initially coined, I was already a part of those conversations. We were organizing for the International Conference on Population and development with the full intention to make sure that the HIV discourse made its way into the overall UN conversation on what is sexual and reproductive health and rights for women in the world. The meeting of the Black women that had created reproductive justice, that also just happened right before ICPD. We, I had signed onto that big ad that they put in the Washington Post to respond to Congress and to the White House around including reproductive health in the healthcare reform discussions that were happening. And so again, we show up as ICPD in Cairo, Egypt in 1994 to advocate for HIV to be in this huge global agenda on sexual and reproductive health and rights. And it didn't make it in there. Next year, we go to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing with the expressed emphasis of making sure now that the HIV piece, the sexual reproductive health and rights of women of African descent. And the going phrase at that time, of course is that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights, famously quoted by First Lady Hillary Clinton at the time, where finally we were able to present workshops, we were able to present sessions, we were able to present testimonials in tribunals and places. We actually organized the first international panel. We co-organized the first international panel of women living with aids, but it was about their sexual and reproductive health and rights. It was about abortion stories, contraception stories, birth stories living in the midst of all of these challenges and dealing with domestic violence, violence against women. So all of these intersections were coming to play. And now with the reproductive justice framework, we had the language and the framing within which to hold these conversations and make sure that the intersections were alive and well. So, since that time in the mid-nineties, we have continued to build on the RJ movement. SisterLove, along with 15 other organizations in the late nineties, in 1997, came together and formed in 98 SisterSong. So that's why I'm a co-founder of SisterSong. After the founding of SisterSong, everything takes off from there. Everything takes off from there. So, that means that I was a co-convenor or co-planner of the very first national meeting for the SisterSong Collective. And was one of the SisterSong members who part of the planning at least at the SisterSong level planning for the March for Women's Lives, the historic March in Washington in April of 2004, the first ever national conference on Let's Talk About Sex in Chicago in '07 and then later in Miami in 2011 and ongoing. And so SisterLove while still participating in the development of SisterSong, what I began to do is make sure that at SisterLove, the work that we were doing was intersecting in all the ways, not just in terms of the issues that we were identifying as priorities from and with the communities we serve, but also the way we respond to those, the intersectional ways we respond to those. And so as a result, I am also now responsible for convening WomenNOW!, which is an international meeting on the intersections of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice in the lives of women and girls of African descent worldwide. Also SisterLove is based in South Africa as well as in Atlanta. So, we have an international post in Johannesburg. My story in this whole movement has come from my introduction to the movement work, not from an actual lived experience or story per se, other than my story of wanting to be a part of the change in terms of injustices happening to women and to Black women in particular. So now what I do is I'm still at Sister Love for now. However, what we've done is we have intersected service delivery. So, we have mobile clinic, we have community education, in-reach, outreach, community engagement. We have interventions at community level. We teach, we organize, we mobilize within the service side of things, sexual health and reproductive health. We do policy and advocacy work at the local level, at the state level, at the national level and at the international level. And that work intersects with the service delivery work because it's the lived experiences of the people we serve that inform how we need to go after some of these policy challenges. And then of course we have a research program because there's an important need to inform our work and to be in charge of how we collect that data, what we do with that data, and how we share that data with equity, with dignity, with justice and with respect to our communities. So, that's my journey. This is where I am. I've known since I was 24--as a matter of fact, that's how old I was when I founded SisterLove--I've known since I was 24 that whether it was in this particular role at this organization or anywhere in life, that this was my purpose. That my work is all about being a part of the winning struggle, 'cause it will win, the winning struggle to secure the sexual and reproductive freedom that all women deserve, especially those of African descent. And once we have achieved that, then we know that we have addressed some of the other key issues, the other key structural impediments to our total liberation like racial justice and economic justice and climate justice or environmental justice and language justice and all of the things that within a human rights framework help us secure our dignity, secure our autonomy, secure equity in everything that we do and need. So that's my story and I'm gonna keep doing this until we win this.

Sarah Craven: Hi, this is Sarah Craven. I am the Director of UNFPA's North American Representation Office. My origin story kind of goes far back. I moved to Washington DC when I was straight out of graduate school and was very lucky to be able to work for Senator Tim Wirth from Colorado, who was a very dynamic and inspirational senator who really believed in a lot of very progressive ideas, especially in seeing the both like the local and global connections. After working for Senator Wirth, I went to Georgetown Law School and something there sort of ignited in me and that I was at this incredible law school in the nation’s capital and through my student fees, I had to pay to be part of the student health system, but I was not allowed access to contraception or any kind of reproductive healthcare because it was against the teachings of the Catholic Church. So, to get that kind of service, I had to go offsite and not get that service through my student healthcare. And at the time I thought, this seems really unjust and wrong and maybe it was sort of the spark on what I was going to do later with my career. When I graduated from law school, I spent a year at the National Women's Law Center as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow. And in that I got to work with Marsha Greenberger on doing a piece at the time--this is gonna age me--my origin story was when Hillary Clinton was the First Lady and was working on the first attempts on healthcare in this country. And so, I worked with Marsha Greenberger on doing a piece on how to get reproductive healthcare coverage under healthcare, which later as we see developed into Obamacare and coverage for contraception. So, that was sort of a long process, but really, even though I was working this in a domestic front, I still really had an interest. It had been kind of sparked and the work that I'd done on Capitol Hill and really trying to do something global. And that's when I had this really amazing opportunity because Senator Wirth had become under the Clinton administration under Secretary of State for Global Affairs. And through that I had the opportunity to work with this incredible network called the CEDPA Network of grassroots women leaders all around the world working on ensuring that the, so many acronyms, the International Conference on Population and Development, the ICPD in Cairo, Egypt would have a right centered approach. And I was part of that working with this network of grassroots women around the world who were helping to shape and advocate for that progressive viewpoint. And so, I guess I'll just say this one anecdote from there that's sort of like the thread or the through line on what inspires me or what has kept me going and seeing the promise of Cairo and its longevity. And that was the delegation of women that we worked with from Romania. At that time, right around 1994, contraception had just become legal in their country. Prior to that, women who were looking to space a pregnancy or plan a family, the only access they had was abortion. So, you could meet women who had had access to many abortions in their life but had not had access to contraception. And now that contraception was legal, these advocates from Romania were finding that there was a lot of advocacy and education they needed to do because there was a lot of mistrust on birth control based on decades of kind of government sponsored propaganda or misinformation. So, they were working kind of against all odds. And when we had our first prep comm for the Cairo Conference, they were very discouraged. There were four of them and the Romanian official delegation to the ICPD were three men. And they felt very discouraged, but they kept going. And by the time we got to the final prep com before Cairo, these young advocates, one of them was a medical doctor, they had gotten to the point where they were writing the talking points for the Romanian delegation. And on the last day of our, we had a closing dinner, they couldn't come because they were dining at the Romanian Embassy and getting driven back to the airport. And by the time we got to Cairo, one of those four young advocates, the medical doctor was actually on the official delegation to the Cairo Conference. And just to see that evolution and also to see their personal empowerment was so inspiring. And I just feel like it has been, like, the greatest privilege of my life to be able to work with advocates such as those young Romanians and other advocates around the world who have been ensuring that women and girls have equal opportunities, equal access, and of course access to good quality healthcare. There certainly have been huge bumps in the road, lots of challenges and we continue to fight against that or the pushback on the pushback. But overall, I think what's been exciting to me is to see the growth and the longevity of that vision that those advocates fought for at the ICPD. So, that's my origin story. Thank you for letting me give the opportunity to talk about it today.

Jennie: Okay y'all, I hope you enjoyed our origin stories and we'll be back with you next week. [music outro] If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprosfightback.com. Thanks all!