Annual Meeting 2023

Confirmed speakers!!!  

king yaa - Queer Reproductive Care

• participants will start with an introduction to queer reproductive justice framework
• interrogation of what queer reproductive care can look like
• 7 actionable tips for how to integrate queer reproductive care into practice
• prompts for diving deeper exercise

king yaa (always lowercase, thank you!), pronouns are they/them/king! king yaa is a genderqueer person of trans masculine experience and their sexuality is queer AF. Their Blackness is their superpower!

king is an intersectional feminist and their work centers queer, trans, and non-binary folx well-being through full spectrum of life experiences, including grief & loss and sex & pleasure. They also train intentional health and wellness practicioners on developing the competencies to care for and to create safer and inclusive practices for queer, trans and gender diverse people.

king yaa supports folx of all gender identities, sexual orientations in all bodies to have the audacity to intentionally & unapologetically have compassion for self, in all their complexities, as a radical act of taking up space and insisting on themselves. They are invested in decolonizing health and queering up reproductive justice, as well as, the collective healing and liberation of queer, trans and nonbinary folx, especially People of the Global Majority, aka BI&POC.

king yaa facilitates Birthing Beyond the Binary https://kingyaa.thinkific.com/courses/birthing-beyond-the-binary

Gabriella Grant, MA - "Acknowledging Sex Work Safely: A trauma informed approach”

Gabriella Grant, MA is the director of the California Center of Excellence for Trauma Informed Care in

Santa Cruz, California, overseeing the Center’s research and policy analysis activities. In addition, she

convenes the Santa Cruz Trauma Consortium and the Annual Fall Trauma Conference.

Through Gabriella Grant Consulting, Inc., Ms. Grant consults with publicly funded agencies and trains

professionals in the social services topics that cover trauma, substance abuse, PTSD, eating disorders,

domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse. As a trained policy analyst, Ms. Grant applies the

public health model to understanding the neurobiological effects of trauma, safety and coping. She helps

agencies use trauma-informed practices to create a therapeutically beneficial milieu for a variety of

treatment modalities and outcomes. Her focus on effective programming and enhancing safe policies

and procedures for staff has provided a strong public health foundation to agencies in healthcare,

criminal and juvenile justice, housing and mental health treatment.

Her background highlights include heading the nation's first community-corrections-based victim

advocacy program for the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation (1996–1999) and running a

three-year project funded by the California Department of Public Health to increase access to domestic

violence shelters by women with mental health and/or substance abuse issues (2006–2009).

She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College; a Latin teaching certificate from the Pontifical

Gregorian University in Rome, Italy; and a Master of Arts in Public Policy from The Johns Hopkins

University. She has taught at the primary, secondary and university levels and has trained professionals,

advocates and consumers in a wide variety of settings.

Ms. Grant is a certified trainer of the Seeking Safety treatment model who oversaw a statewide project

in California to increase access to domestic violence shelters by women with mental health and/or

substance abuse issues when she started working with the developer of Seeking Safety, Dr. Najavits, in

2006. She coordinated a training series on Seeking Safety and helped guide and evaluate its

implementation within domestic violence shelters. She currently conducts Seeking Safety for women in a

community setting, among other locations, and works with clinicians to support their practices.

Dr. Anna Glezer - Integrative Treatment for Reproductive Mental Health

Dr. Glezer began her training at Harvard and then transitioned to the University of California, San Francisco, where she has been a practicing physician, teacher, mentor, and is a volunteer associate professor. She is board certified in adult and forensic psychiatry, a member of the American Psychiatric Association, and a past President of the Northern California Psychiatric Society. Dr. Glezer is the founder of Women's Wellness Psychiatry, a reproductive & integrative psychiatry clinic serving patients across California. She also developed the online Fellowship in Reproductive & Integrative Psychiatry and the Bay Area Perinatal Mental Health Conference, now in its 7th year. She enjoys mentoring and consulting clinicians who are starting out in private practice and has written a guidebook on the topic, and she has been a speaker at various local, regional, and national events and conferences. You can find her online (www.AnnaGlezerMD.com; www.PsychiatryFellowship.com; www.StartAPsychPractice.com), in your podcast app, and on social media where she aims to raise awareness of topics related to women's mental health

Ximena Rojas Garcia, CNM

CNM Ximena Rojas Garcia is a Midwife and licensed Obstetric Nurse from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  Ximena has 14 years of experience in her field and as a Midwifery Professor, she has certifications in Obstetrical Emergencies, Neonatal Resuscitation, Water birthing and Acupuncture.  Ximena founded “Partería y Medicinas Ancestrales,” the only Mexican Midwifery NGO that includes Midwives from all paths and programs, which was instrumental in providing maternal health access during the humanitarian crisis after the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers from Haiti, Congo and Central America to the US-Mexico border. Ximena has been collaborating with Stanford University’s Obstetricians, Gynecologists and Pediatricians to train Midwives and Health providers at the US San Diego-Tijuana border to improve birth outcomes. She organizes direct relief to support trauma recovery responding to crises and disasters as a member of Acupuncturists Without Borders. Ximena also created a Doula training program, responsible for training more than 300 Doulas in Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala, aimed at eradicating obstetric violence, lowering the frequency of unnecessary c-sections, and decreasing maternal and newborn mortality. Ximena is one of the founders and co-directors of Refugee Health Alliance and currently practices clinically at Justicia en Salud RHA Sexual & reproductive health free clinic.  She established the first free birth center in Baja California, Mexico that serves vulnerable populations  including displaced migrants, asylum seekers, deportees, sexual assault survivors, black, brown and indigenous families who historically had faced forced sterilizations, higher maternal death and newborn death. She will serve as the Director of Maternal and Reproductive Health and work closely with IMC and the country director to assist with protocols and compliance related to reproductive and sexual health.