Workshops

PRESENTER BIOS

Robin C. Benton
Robin has been a health educator for 20 years, primarily at the college level. As a nationally known speaker on health, recreation and diversity Robin addresses cutting edge issues with realistic tools. 

Vickie Boisseau
Vickie Boisseau is an Activist/speaker on Intersex isues, and is cofounder of The Annual Intersex Day of Awareness on herms birthday Oct 26. Herm has written a chapter about herms life in Hermaphrodeities 2nd Edition by Raven Kaldera, and is on the Steering Committee of New England Trans United.

Joni Christian
Christian has created a place to welcome and embrace all the people in such a way to find their inner (child) voice. It is from this point of restoring the passion we become who we really are. Joni, who started The Open Door Coffeehouse is celebrating its seventh year. She is a community educator for Working for a Hate Free Society/All the People. She is also a video artist, musical soloist for religious worship, theater and public performance.

Keri Clinton
Keri is a gradute of Johnson State College where she received her BA in Outdoor Education and minor in Theatre Arts.

Sammi Cornell

Kyle Cortis
Kyle is an activist who focuses on topics such as transgender issues and domestic violence and sexual assault. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and is pursuing a M.A. in Women’s Studies. When not working or in school, he enjoys quilting and taking his rabbit on walks.

Clyde Dillard
Long-time activist, participant in bi/transcendent community

Diane Ellaborn, LICSW
Diane Ellaborn, LICSW is a Gender Therapist with over 30 years experience. She is a NASW Diplomate in Clinical Social Work, a member of WPATH, formerly the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIDGA), and a past elected Board of Director’s Member of IFGE. She has presented and provided trainings on gender conditions and treatment locally and internationally. Diane can be reached at Diane Ellaborn, LICSW at: 152 Edmands Road, Framingham, MA 01701. (508) 788-5406 or at Ellaborn@aol.com.

Lorelei Erisis
The super fabulous Lorelei Erisis is a transgender performer, writer, activist, adventurer and Pageant Queen. She received extensive training in improvisation and sketch comedy at the renowned Second City in Chicago and Los Angeles and has performed all across the country including as the Emcee of this year’s Noho Pride Celebration!!

She is also a director, teacher and independent filmmaker.  She is especially proud to have directed and performed with “The Fully Functional Players” in Los Angeles, the first and only all-transgender improv group in the country! 

In addition to her Second City training she has also studied at a number of other theater workshops and schools.  Including an apprenticeship in Pantomime and movement with Ryszard Choroszy, the assistant to and disciple of the great Polish artist Henryk Tomaszewski, the founder and director of the Wroclaw Mime Theatre.

Follow her blog on The Web at: transprov.wordpress.com and watch out for her monthly column: “Ask A TransWoman”, in The Rainbow Times!!!

Marah Fellicce
Marah Fellicce is an artist and activist living in New Jersey.

Tony Ferraiolo
Tony is the President of the Jim Collins Foundation, a registered non-profit which he co-founded in 2008 with Dru Levasseur to honor the legacy of New Haven, CT, based therapist Jim Collins. The Foundation provides national funding for the transgender community to assist qualified recipients with financial support for gender related surgeries. Tony also serves as the Co-Chair and Treasurer of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.

He is a former Board member for the Stonewall Speakers, and volunteers with the LGBT teen mentoring organization True Colors. In 2007 Tony founded Translation, the New Haven based support group for transgender teenagers, which he facilitates. A sought after public speaker at corporations, universities, and community groups, Tony is known for infusing his talks on transitioning from female to male, with insight and humor.

Chelsea Elisabeth Goodwin
A daughter of the late Sylvia Rivera, Chelsea Elisabeth Goodwin is a post-op Transsexual Pansexual, Polyamourous woman, a practitioner of Sex Magick,  a professional Psychic, a science fiction author, a piano player and the partner for 18 years of Dr. Rusty Mae Moore with whom, along with Sylvia Rivera, she managed Transy House, which was a shelter for otherwise homeless transgender people

Greater Boston PFLAG
Greater Boston PFLAG is a volunteer consortium of PFLAG chapters in Arlington, Cape Ann, Concord, Dorchester, Easton, Fall River, and Reading. We offer a support group for parents of transgender and gender variant children in Boston. Our membership includes parents, families, friends, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons (GLBT) who are committed to our mission: Support, Education, and Advocacy.

Ruben Hopwood (Fenway Health)
Ruben Hopwood currently works part-time as the Coordinator of the Transgender Health Program at Fenway Community Health, a multidisciplinary program of care and case review that oversees the care of transgender persons receiving care through the mental health and/or medical services of the health center. He is a PhD-candidate in Counseling Psychology and Religion at Boston University and has an extensive history working in mental health and social services in several states. He has been working at Fenway with the Transgender Health Program since September 2005 as part of the clinical treatment team.  He has presented cultural competency trainings on transgender health care needs and barriers to access with each department at Fenway as well as organizing and presenting an in-depth, 10-session, continuing education training series for mental health providers on transgender needs and issues encountered in society, mental health settings, legal concerns, and medicine. His other trainings in the New England have included multiple mental health centers, medical facilities, and area sexual assault response agencies as well as Harvard Medical School, and several regional universities.  In addition he has assisted local businesses in accommodating transgender employees who transition while on the job and provides consultation to area clinicians in developing skills for counseling gender variant clients. 

Kay Kilty
Kay is a Sophmore at Johnson State and persuing a Degree in Technical Theatre and Criminal Justice.

Rosa Lee Klaneski
Identifying as a transgender woman, Rosa Lee Klaneski is an advocate for individual rights for all of the queer community. She attended Amherst College where she studied mathematics, physics, and played men's rugby. She graduated in 2005 from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut with a B.A. in Women, Gender and Sexuality as the 2005 Presidential Fellow in her discipline, having been honored with the IDP Council Award for Special Accomplishment, and the Sicherman Prize in Women, Gender and Sexuality. She received a Master's Degree in Public Policy Analysis from Trinity College in 2009. She has twice presented her academic work at the National Women's Studies Association annual conference, as well as at Trinity, CCSU, University of Hartford, Marist College, UCONN, and Columbia University. She describes her first book, Why Feminists Are Wrong: How Transsexuals Prove that Gender is Not a Social Construction, as "a work of art - a profoundly pro-feminist statement written as an anti-feminist statement using language only a feminist would understand." Her second book, The Letter F: The Process of Civilly Changing Sex, describes the process of changing sex socially and through the eyes of the State, and details the civil repercussions of the transsexual experience. Rosa was born and raised in Connecticut, where she currently resides with her partner of four years.

Vivienne Kramer
Vivienne Kramer has been a passionate activist for 20 years, starting with NOW and women’s reproductive rights. She joined the kink community in 1995 and has held leadership positions in the New England Leather Alliance, National Coalition for Sexual Freedom and the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities; she also volunteers for The Network/La Red. Her work with people of color was honored by Black Beat and she received a regional Pantheon of Leather Award, a Vice President Award from NLA:I and is currently the Director of NELA’s Fetish Fair Fleamarket ™ . Vivienne would like to be mistaken for Cher. Barring that, she’ll settle for being a dedicated sexual freedom fighter.

Dru Levasseur
M. Dru Levasseur is Staff Attorney for Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc. (TLDEF), a national nonprofit based in New York that works to achieve equality for transgender people through public education, test-case litigation, direct legal services, community organizing, and public policy efforts.  He recently co-founded the Jim Collins Foundation, Inc., an organization that works to provide financial assistance to transgender people for gender-confirming surgeries.  Dru serves on the Foundation Board of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Law Association of Greater New York (LeGaL) and chairs LeGaL's Transgender Committee.  He is also a member of the Legal Issues Committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).  Prior to moving to New York, Dru initiated and co-organized New England’s first-ever Transgender Pride March and Rally, which was attended by a thousand people in Northampton, Massachusetts in June 2008.  Dru received his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts and his J.D. from Western New England College School of Law.

Tom Limoncelli
Tom Limoncelli is a 40 year old bi/poly organizer, trainer and speaker from New Jersey. He founded BiZone/NJ, a support group for bi and bi-friendly people. His speaking and training repertoire includes time management, leveraging the web for your organization, and facilitating support groups. He created the regional bisexual conferences that evolved into Transcending Boundaries.  His activism has earned him 3 awards, including the Brenda Howard Award.  More recently he has written 4 books about computers and IT.  He is invited to speak at conferences around the world. Tom lives in New Jersey.

Atreyu (Tre) Luna, LMSW, M.Ed.
Atreyu (Tre) Luna, LMSW, M.Ed., is a transman, social worker, and educator whose work focuses on sexual and gender minorities. He works at Choices Counseling and Consulting as a Clinician Trainee, and he also works for Schenectady Community Action Program (SCAP) as an Instructor/Therapist.

Samuel Lurie
Samuel Lurie has been training health care providers on transgender issues since 1997 and has trained more than 25,000 people in 28 states as director of Transgender Training and Advocacy (www.tgtrain.org). He also has a private practice in Body-Mind Health in Burlington, Vermont (Transform and Grow Hypnosis www.tghypno.com). Samuel loves being part of community conferences where we can share our skills and stories, and hopes that his workshops help transform lives through support and empowerment.

AndreA Neumann Mascis, Ph.D.
Dr. AndreA Neumann-Mascis is a clinical psychologist. AndreA is a queer person with a disability and has lived and worked in both communities in Boston and San Francisco for more than fifteen years. AndreA does individual, relationship and group therapy, and works as a trainer and consultant. Areas of specialty include working with trauma, complex PTSD, lesbian, gay, queer and gender variant people and people with physical and psychiatric disabilities.Most recently AndreA presented as part of a panel discussion at the 4th Annual Havard Lambda Legal Advocacy Conference Queering the Health Gap LGBT Health Disparities and the Law AndreA was subsequently involved in creating a follow up conference at Harvard focused on the Queer Disability Community. AndreA is founder and developer of The Meeting Point a Multidimensional Center for Healing and Growth in Jamaica Plain MA that serves the LGBT community, survivors and the Disability community and is growing to meet the unique strengths and needs of queer people and their allies through community activity and personalized approaches to wellness.

Rev. Matthew
Rev Matthew is an ordained protestant minister who works at the intersection of social justice and pastoral ministry.  A strong believer in the power religion and spirituality have to transcend boundaries, as well as the importance of naming the terrible damage the church has done in the name of God, Matthew has written and spoken in numerous settings about the interconnections of religion, sexuality, and justice.

Robyn Ochs
Robyn Ochs is a long-time activist, and the editor of the Bisexual Resource Guide and the anthology Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World The second edition was released this summer, and Spanish and Chinese editions are expected in 2010. She is current editor of Bi Women, a quarterly newsletter. She has taught courses on topics including GLBT history & politics in the United States, the politics of sexual orientation, and the experiences of those of us who transgress the binary categories of gay/straight, masculine/feminine, black/white and/or male/female. Her writings have been published in numerous bisexual, women's studies, multicultural, and GLBT anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts, and on May 17th, 2004—on the first day it was legal—she married Peg Preble, her long-time partner. She is a professional speaker and workshop leader.

Daniel J. O'Donoghue
Daniel O’Donoghue is the Program Director at GLSEN Massachusetts and has worked extensively with youth and in various capacities throughout his career.  He has presented workshops on Safe Schools Anti-Bullying and Harassment, The GLSEN Lunchbox and Trans 101 & 201.  Daniel is currently a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, pursing a M.Ed. in Social Justice Education. 

Oshee
Oshee is the founder of GDESS (Gender Diversity Education & Support Services), and has been leading workshops and groups for 25 years. Since coming out as transgender/two-spirit/pansexual, ze is experimenting with life outside the gender boxes. Ze is writing a book entitled "Beyond Men and Women: Gender Diversity and the Healing of Our World”.

Gunner Scott
Gunner Scott is a founding member and the Director of The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition where he is currently involved in the campaign to pass statewide legislation for gender identity and gender expression protections. He has been involved with the transgender rights movement for the last ten years and is a nationally recognized activist, educator, and community organizer on LGBT health issues, LGBT partner abuse, and addressing access issues for the transgender community. He has written articles for What's Up magazine, Sojourner Women's Forum, and "Agitate and Activate", the introduction to Pinned Down by Pronouns, a 2003 Lambda Literary nominee anthology published by Conviction Books. He is on the National Board of Advisors for the National Center for Transgender Equality, a former Commissioner on the Massachusetts Commission for GLBT Youth, founder of Gender Crash Open Mic, and founder of XGender Productions. He holds a B.A. from Goddard College. 

Hadley Smith
Hadley Smith, a Translate Collective Member and a Translate Trainer, co-founded Translate Gender, Inc. in 2006 with Shannon Sennott and Rebekah Heilman. Hadley graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in history, with a primary focus on postmodern social history and conflict transformation and special attention toward repetition, language, collective memory, and media. Along with speaking on panels surrounding activism, gender and gender expression, Hadley has acted as a consultant for the New York Times article "When Girls Will Be Boys" and they co-authored the article "Translating Gender on Women's College Campuses" in Issue 114 of Transgender Tapestry. Additionally, they've organized and facilitated action sessions focused on alternative organizational structures, existing within and without the nonprofit industrial complex. Hadley is an active participant in the reproductive justice and immigration justice movements.

Jessamyn Smyth
Jessamyn Smyth is a writer, producer, professor, and community educator for social justice. She is the former Director of the Educator/Advocate Community Education for Violence Prevention Program at the University of Massachusetts, where she successfully transformed the hiring and training practices to include staff identifying as transgender or male. Her short story "A More Perfect Union" from American Letters and Commentary Issue 17 (November 2005) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize  and selected as one of the 100 distinguished stories of 2005 by Best American Short Stories. Her poetry, short stories, and prose appear or are forthcoming in various print and electronic journals and anthologies, including Nth Position, Abalone Moon, qarrtsiluni, SNReview, and others. She also writes, directs, and produces plays and mixed-genre performances, and is currently working on a novella about battering in a queer relationship, several chapbooks, a fabulist novel, and a collection of essays called "Real Femmes Aren't Afraid To Get Their Hands Dirty."

Ron Suresha
Ron J. Suresha is an editor, anthologist, and creative nonfiction writer. He is a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, and is considered an authority on emergent queer masculinities, in particular the subcultures of gay and bi male Bears and of male bisexuality. Suresha edited another special issue for the Journal of Bisexuality (Haworth/Taylor & Francis Journals) on Bisexual Perspectives on the Life and Work of Alfred C. Kinsey. This work, which commemorated the sexagennial (60th) anniversary of the publication of the Kinsey Report, was a finalist for the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in bisexual literature, and will be released by Routledge as a special hardbound trade/library edition in 2009. Suresha annually presents talks on his current lines of inquiry in queer men’s studies at the University of Rhode Island GLBTIQA Symposium. Suresha participates and presents at GLBTIQ conferences on aspects of his work in contemporary queer masculinities. He was married in October 2004 to Dr Rocco Russo, in Provincetown, Mass., and the following year they received a Connecticut civil union. He is also a licensed Justice of the Peace in Connecticut, an ordained minister, ULC, and an active member of the New London Green Party.

Cecilia Tan
"Cecilia Tan transcends time, space, gravity, and cultural norms in her line of work: erotic science fiction," according to the San Francisco Weekly. Susie Bright calls her "simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature." Tan always considered herself a writer, but her career took off in 1992 when she self-published a chapbook of three kinky science fiction stories entitled Telepaths Don't Need Safewords--and thus Circlet Press was born. Since that time Circlet Press has published over 70 books of erotic fantasy & science fiction edited by her, with many more on the way, and in her own writing career she has written everything from short stories to paranormal romance novels. Her books include Black Feathers (HarperCollins, 1998), The Velderet (Circlet, 2001), White Flames (Running Press, 2008), Mind Games (Ravenous Romance, 2009), The Siren and The Sword (Ravenous Romance, 2009), and others. An erotic novella, Royal Treatment, is forthcoming in December 2009 from Torquere Press.  Tan has also edited numerous erotica anthologies for other publishers, including Sex In The System (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), The MILF Anthology (Blue Moon Books, 2005), Cowboy Lover (Carroll & Graf, 2007), Bites of Passion (Ravenous Romance), SM Visions (Masquerade Books), and many others. Her stories, essays, and articles in have appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies including Best America Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Women's Erotica, Playboy Online, The Mammoth Book of New Erotica, On A Bed of Rice, Dark Angels, Penthouse, Ms. magazine, Asimov's, Nerve, Gothic.net, Fenway Fiction, Periphery, and many more. Learn more at ceciliatan.com and circlet.com.

Carolyn Thompson from Mountain Meadow
Mountain Meadow is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping youth from LGBTQ families, and their allies, succeed in school and daily life. Started in 1981 by a lesbian rabbi, Mountain Meadow continues to be the only organization in the Eastern United States specializing in the needs of youth from LGBTQ families. Each summer Mountain Meadow offers a two-week residential summer camp program where 80 youth from across the country learn leadership skills in a community of peers. Throughout the year, Mountain Meadow youth are active in the community through Keeping It Real, Mountain Meadow’s youth speakers program. Youth represent the organization at community events, speak on panels and are interviewed by the media. The organization was recently approved to begin leading LGBTQ family focus diversity trainings in the Philadelphia school district.

Representing Mountain Meadow will be Carolyn T. Thompson, Mountain Meadow former Executive Director and the current Director of Keeping It Real, and the youth of Mountain Meadow. Mountain Meadow’s youth come for all walks of life and are trained to speak publicly about their experience through Mountain Meadow’s speakers program.

Peterson Toscano
As a gay man, Peterson's journey out of the closet has been long and complicated. After years of submitting to reparative therapy through counseling, ex-gay support groups, and even three exorcisms, Peterson enrolled in the ex-gay residential program, Love in Action. He graduated successfully from the program nearly two years later, but in January of 1999 he finally came OUT and fully accepted himself as a gay man. In 2003 he premiered his one-person comedy, "Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House" and over the next five years help build the Ex-Gay Survivor Movement (www.beyondexgay.com). He most recently has been touring with a new play about transgender and gender-variant Bible characters. A comic, a Quaker, a vegan and an obsessive blogger, Peterson is committed to educating non-trans LGB folks about the T.

Anita Wagner
Anita Wagner is a polyamory advocate, writer, spokesperson and educator. She has appeared on television in interviews on polyamory in Washington, DC and Baltimore, in news articles in the Newsweek, Baltimore Sun, Washingon Post and Salon.com amongst many others. She authored articles on polyamory and bisexuality published in Loving More® Magazine and ITCR’s Relating© newsletter, respectively.

Michelle Wexelblat, MSW, LCSW
Michelle Wexelblat is a Social Worker, Poly spokes-person, Writer, Counselor, Therapist, Mystic, Lady of Perspective, and Comforting One. She has her MSW degree from Boston University School of Social Work, her BA in psychology from Queens College, CUNY.

Valerie White
Lawyer, parent, and director of Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, Valerie White has spoken on sex, law, polyamory, and parenting at numerous national and regional conferences.  Her writing on polyamory has been published in “Loving More” magazine and “The Humanist”.  She served as vice-president of the American Humanist Association. A long-time sexual rights activist, she was president of the Vermont Civil Liberties Union.  Currently, she serves on the advisory councils of Secular Organizations for Sobriety and the Institute for 21st Century Relationships.  She is a trustee of Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness and serves on the coordinating council for Family Tree, the Boston-area polyamory group.  She has lived in a polyamorous triad for 15 years and co-parents 7 year old twins.