OPENING KEYNOTE: LAICIE HEELEY, FOUNDER AND EDITOR IN CHIEF, INKSTICK
Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor-in-Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change.
Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.
In her role at the Center for Arms Control and NonProliferation, Heeley served as part of the independent Sustainable Defense Task Force, formed in response to a request from Members of Congress to explore possible defense budget contributions to deficit reduction efforts in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Her work has appeared in well-known newspapers, journals, and periodicals including Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Associated Press, and she has appeared as an expert on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.
Heeley currently serves as a trustee of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and on the board of the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship. She also serves on the advisory committee of the War Prevention Initiative. She is a Partner with the Truman National Security Project and a Fellow with N Square. She previously held positions at Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Counter Terrorist Finance Organization, and Global Green USA where her research focused on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons in addition to the financing and structure of terrorist organizations. She holds a BA from George Washington University and an MA from St. Mary’s University.
RIGHTS, RESILIENCE, RESISTANCE: LGBTQ+ ADVOCATES ON THE GLOBAL STAGE
Speaker – Innanoshe Richard Akuson is a lawyer, New York Times and Washington Post-published writer, and the founder and former editor-in-chief of A Nasty Boy magazine, West Africa’s first queer fashion publication. Innanoshe’s advocacy for affirmative LGBTQ media visibility and inclusion began in 2015 during the course of a career-defining stint as a fashion journalist at BellaNaija, Nigeria’s foremost lifestyle publication. There, he wrote stories that affirmed the diverse and richly textured sartorial expressions of genderqueer Nigerians — a complete departure from the all-pervading bigoted stereotyping of LGTBQ people across mainstream Nigerian media.
Speaker – Feruza Aripova is a PhD Candidate in World History at Northeastern University and a Center Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Currently, Feruza is a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Her research primarily focuses on gender and sexual politics in late Soviet era. Her doctoral dissertation-in-progress, tentatively titled, “Silencing of SameSex Desire in the Post-Soviet Space: Deconstructing the Soviet Legacy” investigates the legacy of same-sex violence in carceral spaces and its profound impact on public perception of associating homosexuality with crime; as well as the medical establishment that subjected individuals with same-sex attractions to psychiatric treatment in the 1950s through the 1980s.
Speaker – Ayesiga Herbert is an LGBT activist, researcher, YALI Alumni and social worker by profession. Currently, he is the Programs Director at Icebreakers Uganda, a non-profit support organisation for LGBT persons, which is focused on Sexual Health Rights advocacy and community mobilisation for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention for all LGBT Ugandans. He pioneered the first research on mental health issues within the LGBT community in Uganda and the #SeeTheInvisible campaign, aimed at raising awareness of mental health issues. The campaign also ensures that those at risk receive proper, timely and effective treatment. His in-depth understanding of relevant legislation procedures and techniques has led him to push for change against stigma and discrimination based on sexuality and gender issues.
Speaker – Arsham Parsi is a well-known Iranian LGBTQ+ rights activist. He left Iran in 2005 on the basis of his sexual orientation and activism and has dedicated his life to the cause. Arsham is the Executive Director of the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees (IRQR), an international non-profit organization based in Toronto, Canada that helps queer Iranians and those who escaped Iran on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression. The organization provides food, shelter, guidance, and education until they are eventually resettled. His work earned him several human rights awards including the 2008 Felipa de Souza Award from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the 2008 Pride Toronto Award.
Moderator – Mitchell Collins currently works as a Senior Associate, at the social change agency, Metropolitan Group (MG/ISMG). Prior to joining MG/ISMG, Mitchell was a Fulbright Scholar in Asunción, Paraguay, where he taught English to students at the National University and explored Guaraní sociolinguistic identity. He was
also a cohort member of the U.S. Department of State’s two-year U.S. Foreign Service Internship Program, which allowed him to gain experience in the U.S. and abroad on foreign policy, democratic governance and human rights. He has a B.A. in Spanish and International Studies with a concentration in International Development from Centre College and an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
SECURING WHAT FOR WHOM? MYTHS AND REALITIES ABOUT MILITARISM
Speaker – B. Arneson is the Director for WPF’s Global Arms and Corruption Program. She also is a Research Coordinator for the Corruption Tracker, an up-to-date, online database of all cases and robust allegations of corruption in the global arms trade. She is also the Founder of Paperbacks for Perpetrators, a project that provides books to individuals who are incarcerated in the US. B got her MSc in the Politics of Conflict, Rights, and Justice at SOAS, University of London. Her previous research and grassroots organizing has focused on LGBTQ+ rights, the occupation of Palestine, drone warfare in the MENA region, and the US prison-industrial complex.
Speaker – Margo Okazawa-Rey, Professor Emerita San Francisco State University, is an activist and educator working on issues of militarism, armed conflict, and violence against women examined intersectionally. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, working closely with Du Re Bang/My Sisters Place and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, respectively. She also is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, serves on the International Board of PeaceWomen Across the Globe in Bern, Switzerland, and is President of the Board of Directors of Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID).
Speaker – Brenda Oppermann serves as an advisor, researcher and senior program manager for military and civilian organizations focusing on human domain issues and organizational effectiveness. Her areas of expertise include: leadership, transition, stability operations, human rights, informal justice, civil-military operations, international development, and women and security. She has extensive experience working in fragile states and areas of conflict and post-conflict in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Europe.
Speaker – Wanda Muñoz is a long-time activist and international consultant on humanitarian disarmament, improving the lives of people with disabilities and providing assistance to victims of war. She is a former member of the Human Security Network in Latin America and the Caribbean where her work focused on the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. She contributed to the implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty and to the development of the victim assistance provisions in the Convention on Cluster Munitions. She was a consultant on inclusion, victim assistance, and humanitarian disarmament in the global Working Group on Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence.
Moderator – Monica Duffy Toft is Academic Dean and Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Before joining Fletcher, Professor Monica Duffy Toft taught at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. While at Harvard, she directed the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs and was the assistant director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She was educated at the University of Chicago (MA and Ph.D. in political science) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA in political science and Slavic languages and literature, summa cum laude). Prior to this, she spent four years in the United States Army as a Russian linguist.
EMPOWERING MENTAL HEALTH CONVERSATIONS THROUGHOUT THE GLOBAL HEALTH SPACE
Speaker – Sawsan Abdulrahim is Associate Professor of public health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut. Her research focuses on social inequalities and health, and the structural conditions that influence the wellbeing of women refugees and labor migrants. She is currently undertaking research on the health of Syrian refugee adolescent girls in Lebanon, with an emphasis on sexual and reproductive health. She teaches courses in health promotion theory, forced migration and health, and global public health.
Speaker – Hailu Tamiru Dhufera is a Graduate Teaching Fellow and Health Financing Research Specialist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Hailu Tamiru Dhufera completed his Master’s degree in Global Health at the University of Bergen in 2020 with a special interest in road traffic injuries and the accompanying economic burden on households in Ethiopia. The thesis explores the economic burden of trauma care related to road traffic injuries (RTI), indicating that a very high proportion of households are negatively impacted by immense out-of-pocket expenditure after RTI-related trauma care, with poor households being affected the most. Hailu is widely published and cited for his research contributions on topics including COVID-19 and intensive care in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Moderator – Saloni Dev is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine. Her research interests include global mental health, social drivers of mental illness, and implementation science. The goal of her research is to make mental health
accessible and available to all by simultaneously addressing mental health stigma, the drivers of mental illnesses, and bringing evidence-based mental health interventions closer to those who would benefit the most from it. Saloni’s global mental health work has spanned across many countries, especially India, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the United States and focuses on the lived experiences of marginalized populations around mental illness and understanding mental health stigma in cross-cultural contexts.
BUSINESS WORKSHOP: ESTABLISHING WORK-LIFE BOUNDARIES FOR MISSION DRIVEN WORK
Facilitator – Alnoor Ebrahim is a Professor of Management at The Fletcher School, and the Tisch College of Civic Life, at Tufts University. His research addresses several core dilemmas of social change facing businesses, nonprofit organizations, and public agencies: What strategies should they adopt for delivering and scaling social change? How can they best measure and improve their impacts? How should they handle competing demands for accountability from diverse stakeholders? How can they influence “system” problems such as global poverty that require collective action?
POWER LINES: THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN ADVOCACY
Speaker – Morgan Klaus Scheuerman is a postdoctoral associate in Information Science at CU Boulder researching identity representations in technical
infrastructures. He recently graduated with his PhD in Information Science at CU Boulder, where he was supported by a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship. Morgan was advised by Jed Brubaker in the Identity Lab. Broadly, he is interested in identity theory, infrastructure studies, AI ethics, and digital identity. He focuses primarily on machine learning infrastructures that operationalize human identity characteristics, like gender and race. In particular, Morgan explores the real-world implications of machine learning for those with historically marginalized identities
Speaker – Lenny Lopatto is a Program Coordinator at the Kennan Institute. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, Lenny worked for the National Organization of Veterans’ Advocates in Washington, DC. They hold a B.A. in Modern Languages and Literatures (specializing in Russian and French) from Kenyon College, and an M.A. in Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University. At the Kennan Institute, they are responsible for information management and the Institute’s digital presence, including online publications and social media accounts.
Speaker – Alexandra Novitskaya‘s research interests include post-Soviet queer migration and asylum and politics and geopolitics of gender and sexuality. She is studying how contemporary political and state-sponsored homophobia in Russia and other post-Soviet states is informed by the geopolitical competition between Russia and the United States and especially their mutually constitutive discourses of sexual exceptionalisms; and the real and everyday life impact this discursive competition leaves on post-Soviet queer and LGBTQ Russian-speaking migrants and asylum-seekers. She has held visiting research appointments at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University, and the Summer and Virtual Research Labs at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Center at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.
Moderator – Carolyn F. Gideon is Assistant Professor of International Communication and Technology Policy. She is also Director of the Hitachi Center for Technology and International Affairs. Gideon’s research focus is policy, access, and industry structure issues of information and communication technology. She has been a Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, and a research affiliate with the MIT Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence. Past experience includes Asst. Vice President of Parker/Hunter Incorporated, Manager of Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, and Consultant with Strategic Planning Associates (now Mercer Management Consulting).
COLLAGE WORKSHOP: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES TOWARDS INDIVIDUAL REPRESENTATIONS
Facilitator – Lu Adami‘s artwork centers their history and understanding of quilting techniques to explore themes including childhood and mental health. Lu has been able to gain energy and inspiration as an artist outside of the studio through their career as an educator. Working with young people as a teacher, coach, club
coordinator, and more has reintroduced a level of care and play into their practice. Lu is currently working on a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art at School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. They previously received a Master of Science in Education from the University of Pennsylvania and earned a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Visual Arts at Brown University. Lu has exhibited three times in the past year, at venues in Milton, Massachusetts, Mexico City, Mexico and Chicago, Illinois.
FROM INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS TO ACTION: POWER DYNAMICS AND “NATURAL” DISASTERS
Speaker – Colette Pichon Battle is an award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer. She is a trusted voice in the climate justice and Black liberation movements, and her work focuses on creating spaces for frontline communities to gather and advance climate strategies that help us steward the water, energy, and land. A generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, she is a 2019 Obama Fellow and is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the 2023 Heinz Award for the Environment, the 2022 Catalyst Award from Rachel’s Network, and the 2022 William O. Douglas Award. Colette is the co-founder and Vision & Initiatives Partner for Taproot Earth and is a former corporate lawyer
Speaker – Big Wind Carpenter is a Two Spirit member of the Northern Arapaho tribe from the Wind River Reservation. At a young age, Big Wind
recognized many injustices and degrees of oppression within their community. They became involved in youth and climate leadership at the age of 13 when they learned of environmental racism happening near their home. Since then, they have worked on numerous campaigns throughout “Indian Country” and currently is the Tribal Advocacy Associate for the Indigenous Land Alliance of Wyoming.
Speaker – Istiakh Ahmed is a PhD student in Public Policy at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, with a concentration in Sustainability and Resilience. He has completed both his BSS and MSS in Anthropology from Jahangirnagar University. His study in anthropology has allowed him to have in-depth knowledge of
socio-cultural dynamics, social research, and its different methodologies. Prior to joining the PhD program, Istiakh spent seven years researching climate change adaptation and climate-induced loss and damage. He worked as an Advisor –Climate Adaptation at the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and was a Program Coordinator at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD).
Moderator – Bethany Tietjen is a PhD student at The Fletcher School and a Junior Research Fellow at the Climate Policy Lab. She received her M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from Fletcher and her B.A. in International Studies and German Studies from American University in Washington, D.C. Her current research looks at
adaptation policy gaps in the United States as well as international adaptation assistance and its integration into foreign policy decision-making. In addition to her dissertation research, Bethany has conducted research on climate migration, urban climate adaptation, climate finance, and the gendered impacts of climate change. Prior to Fletcher, Bethany worked at NGOs and schools in Guatemala, Vietnam, and Thailand.
CLOSING PLENARY: CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ, FORMER MAYOR, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
Carmen Yulín Cruz is the former mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the author of “El Poder está en la Calle (Power is in the Street).” Cruz was elected San Juan’s mayor in 2012, defeating a 12-year incumbent, and came to national prominence in 2017 as an outspoken advocate for federal support to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Educated at Boston University and Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked in the private and public sectors in Puerto Rico and the United States, including an appointment at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and a four-year term in the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico.
She is the recipient of awards from numerous humanitarian organizations, including the Martin Luther King Center and the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. In 2018, Time magazine named her to its list of 100 Most Influential People. She is a distinguished fellow at the Harriet L. Weissman and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership at Mount Holyoke College.
