http://www.theopedproject.org

KATIE ORENSTEIN, Founder and CEO of The OpEd Project, writes and speaks frequently about the intersection of media and mythology – that is, what we think is fact or fiction and how that shapes our ideas about politics, culture and history.  She has contributed to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald. Her commentaries on women, power, popular culture and human rights have been nationally syndicated. She has lectured at Stanford and appeared on ABC TV World News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, CNN and NPR All Things Considered.  A graduate of Harvard (BA) and Columbia (MA) universities, she is the author of Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, which explores stories told about women over 500 years and how they shape our lives today.  Orenstein has worked around the world and particularly in Haiti, where she reported, consulted with the United Nations, and worked with a team of human rights lawyers to assist victims of military and paramilitary violence in seeking justice.  She is a recipient of The Diana P Scott Integrity in Action Award, and a fellowship from Echoing Green, which selected The OpEd Project as one of the most innovative social enterprises worldwide, out of 1500 applicants. Click here for more. 

 
ZEBA KHAN is the Director of The OpEd Project's Public Voices Fellowship Program.  She is also a writer and social media consultant. Having never written an op-ed, Zeba attended the Op-Ed Project seminar in early 2009. Later that fall, she was first runner-up in the Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit” competition, beating out nearly 5000 other aspiring writers. Zeba has since written in numerous media outlets, including the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post.  As a social media consultant, Zeba has worked in the nonprofit and higher education sectors. Most recently, she consulted with Harvard University’s Law Lab at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Ashoka Foundation’s GenV, and the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. Her insights and work have been featured in numerous media outlets including NPR, Newsweek, Reuters, Voice of America, The Guardian and The Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her work with the List Project was also highlighted at the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York and on the tech site Mashable.com. A Fulbright Scholar, Zeba received a Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a joint MA/BA from the University of Chicago.

ALYSSA BEST is the East Coast Regional Manager for The OpEd Project.  As a career coach, trainer, and speaker, she offers guidance and skills on topics related to career and professional development to build leadership for social change. She has mentored and worked with emerging leaders at Wider Opportunities for Women, the Center for Progressive Leadership, and the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University. Her writing has appeared in scholarly and mainstream media, including The Huffington Post. She contributes to a group blog on career issues: LYJ: Love Your Job, Love Your Life.

CHELSEA CARMONA serves as The OpEd Project’s Manager of the Public Voices Fellowship Program and West Coast Regional Manager, managing programs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Since attending the "Write to Change the World" seminar in January 2012, Chelsea's work has been featured in media outlets like The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, Al Jazeera English, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2008, she conducted a comparative study at UCSD, which examined drug policy and incarceration demographics in the U.S. and in the Netherlands. Chelsea enjoys learning from the incredible OpEd Project community every day. 

COURTNEY BAXTER is the Chief Wrangler at The OpEd Project, one of a few positions in the New York City Headquarters office.  She graduated from Denison University with a B.A. in gender studies and international studies, where she specialized and wrote about gender relations in West Africa, social justice movements and queer culture in the university sphere.  She wakes up in the morning to spend time with people addressing the world's problems, and thus is thrilled to be at The OpEd Project.  To find out more about her path to The OpEd Project, read her piece in the New York Times here.

LIBBY ASHTON joins The OpEd Project as our interim Operations Coordinator at HQ and to help manage the partnership with the National Council For Girls Schools, where she'll pilot a curriculum to support high school girls as they conduct their own Byline Project: Who Narrates the World? She recently graduated from The University of Michigan, where she studied philosophy, wrote opinion pieces for The Michigan Daily, and founded rEDesign, a student organization that engages college students in the project of transforming K-12 education. rEDesign was featured on The Huffington Post and GOOD online magazine, while Libby, as the founder, was invited to speak to an audience of 1300 at TEDxUofM. She has worked for multiple New York City-based not-for-profits and is eager to continue her real-world education in the bold vision and rigorous execution that it takes to disrupt the status quo. 

CLAUDIA GARCIA-ROJAS is The OpEd Project Media Fellow. A writer and commentator, she provides expert opinion on issues of gender, media, and culture. See her website here. She continues to work as an anti-gender-based violence speaker, and as a senior trainer and consultant for the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women's Network. Awarded a Teaching Assistantship Grant to Nantes (France) in 2006, she served as a public relations intern for Le Lieu Unique's Estuaire 2007 Project. Claudia has also lived in Germany, Mexico, and spent time in Tunisia before the uprising. She is fluent in French and Spanish, and has experience in Modern Standard and Classical Arabic. In 2008, Claudia was chosen as Amnesty International's "Stop the Violence Against Women" campaign coordinator for the Midwest. She is co-author and editor of Reporting on Rape and Sexual Violence: A Toolkit to Better Media Coverage. Claudia is also a contributing writer at PolicyMic, Gozamos, Chicago Indy Media, and an editor of AREA Chicago. A contributor to Vocalo - a WBEZ sister station - she guest co-hosts and provides commentary on issues relating to rae, gender, and sexuality on The Morning AMp! and the Barber Shop shows. Claudia was named a 2012 Fulbright Alternate to Morocco. She continues to pursue her interests as co-founder of Liberation Education and Facilitation. Claudia begins graduate studies in the Department of African American studies at Northwestern University in the Fall. You can reach her via twitter: @ClaudiaStellar

RAVENNA KOENIG is the Junior Fellow at The OpEd Project. An English major in her junior year at Barnard College, she is interested in print journalism, public radio, creative writing, dance and education. After serving as an intern for The OpEd Project over the 2009-2010 academic year, she is very excited to be returning to the ranks of the amazing OEP staff as the Junior Fellow. In this capacity she will be assisting in the operation of various projects throughout the year beginning with the Public Voices Faculty Fellowship Program.  

BARBARA FIELD (BA, Barnard College/Columbia University) serves as The OpEd Project San Diego Regional Manager. She is a writer, editor, marketer and consultant. She was on staff at CBS (NY), Harcourt Brace Publishing, and Scripps Research Institute. She published in newspapers, magazines and online (Salon.com, etc.) and was a contributing writer to MyHero.com, a global learning community that promotes peace and tolerance. Her novel, The Deeper, The Bluer, won a Writer’s Digest fiction award.  She is currently a UC San Diego communications manager, Afghan Women’s Writing Project mentor and she also teaches for UC San Diego Extension and at Whidbey Island Writers Conference.

ERIKA FRY manages the Mentor-Editor program for The OpEd Project.  She is a reporter at Fortune and has previously worked as an associate editor at Columbia Journalism Review and an investigative reporter in Thailand for the Bangkok Post.  Prior to her life as a journalist she was a defense contractor and a high school teacher in the Marshall Islands. She graduated from Dartmouth and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and is originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

CONNIE K. HO is the West Coast Regional Management Intern for The OpEd Project and is excited to empower minority voices through op-ed writing. She is also a Freelance Writer whose writing has been featured in AOL Patch.com, MochiMag.com, The Orange County Register, Pacific Citizen, and RedOrbit.com. A life-long learner, she graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a double major in English and International Studies as well as a minor in Spanish. She has also volunteered internationally in Spain, Taiwan, and Panama. You can connect with her on Twitter at @conniekho.

ZEBA KHAN is the Director of the Public Voices Fellowship Program.  She is also a writer and social media consultant. Having never written an op-ed, Zeba attended the Op-Ed Project seminar in early 2009. Later that fall, she was first runner-up in the Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit” competition, beating out nearly 5000 other aspiring writers. Zeba has since written in numerous media outlets, including the Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post.  As a social media consultant, Zeba has worked in the nonprofit and higher education sectors. Most recently, she consulted with Harvard University’s Law Lab at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Ashoka Foundation’s GenV, and the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. Her insights and work have been featured in numerous media outlets including NPR, Newsweek, Reuters, Voice of America, The Guardian and The Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her work with the List Project was also highlighted at the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York and on the tech site Mashable.com. A Fulbright Scholar, Zeba received a Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a joint MA/BA from the University of Chicago.

JANUS ADAMS - Emmy Award winner, journalist/historian, talk show host, cultural critic. A scholar of African American and women’s history, Adams specializes in putting current events into historical perspective. An NPR commentator and publisher/creator of BackPax children’s media, her column is in its fourteenth year. Read more about her at www.JanusAdams.com

Read the OpEd Project Interview with Janus Adams

Rose Aguilar hosts Your Call, a daily call-in radio show focusing on politics, social issues, the environment, and the arts. It airs from 10-11am PST on KALW in San Francisco and KUSP in Santa Cruz. Listen online at yourcallradio.org. She's also an op-ed contributor for Al Jazeera English and provides a weekly commentary about undercovered activism for KPFK's Uprising. She has written for Truthout and is the author of "Red Highways: A Liberal's Journey into the Heartland," which is about a six-month road trip she took through the so-called 'red states' to interview people about issues they care about and why they vote the way they do (or not). Rose has appeared on the BBC and GritTV with Laura Flanders. She speaks on panels about women's issues, the media, and current events. Connect with Rose on Twitter: @roseaguila

CHLOE ANGYAL a writer and commentator from Sydney, Australia. She is based in New York City. Chloe is an Editor at Feministing, where she blogs about gender, sex, politics, pop culture and body image. Her freelance writing has been published in The Atlantic, The LA Times, The Guardian, Jezebel, Slate, and Salon. Her writing covers a range of topics, including sexual assault prevention, women in politics, and reproductive rights. She has also appeared on MSNBC, Al Jazeera English, and NPR. Chloe’s academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis, currently in progress, is about how the genre depicts gender, sex and love.

JENNIFER BLOCK, an OpEd Project Fellowship Leader, has been a journalist for twelve years, writing and editing for magazines, newsweeklies, and blogs, frequently covering women's health and politics and the intersection of the two. Her work has appeared in Time, The Daily Beast, The Village Voice, Babble, ELLE, ReadyMade, Walrus, and many other publications. Her investigative pieces have tackled such provocative issues as police harassment of street prostitutes, the ethics of "gestational" surrogacy, abortion tourism, and the politics of sex ed.  A former editor at Ms. magazine, Jennifer was also a senior editor at the short-lived but well-loved sustainable lifestyle magazine Plenty. There she wrote about human composting, the international bicycle protest Critical Mass, and the raw-food diet. Since the publication of Pushed, she writes and speaks frequently on maternity care issues. She splits her time between Tucson, Arizona and Brooklyn, New York.

ABBY ELLIN is the author of "Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can't) Help." For five years, she wrote the "Preludes" column, about young people and money, in the Sunday Money and Business section of the New York Times. She also regularly writes the "Vows" column in the New York Times Sunday Styles section, as well as feature assignments for that section. Her work has appeared in a range of publications, including Time, the Village Voice, Marie Claire, More, Self, Glamour, the Boston Phoenix, and Spy (RIP). Her 14-part series, "How to Raise a Millionaire," ran on Msn.com. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. But her greatest claim to fame is naming "Karamel Sutra" ice cream for Ben and Jerry's.

E.J. GRAFF’s award-winning reporting and provocative commentary have, over the past 25 years, appeared in venues ranging from early gay and lesbian publications to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The New Republic, and Slate. Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004), written while she was a fellow at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, was called “the bible” of the same-sex marriage movement. Her work on Getting Even: Why Women Still Don’t Get Paid Like Men–and What To Do So We Will (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 2005) launched lead author Evelyn F. Murphy’s campaign to end the gendered wage gap. Graff’s work has been cited widely in academic and law review articles, governmental and quasi-governmental reports, NGO research, court filings, textbooks, syllabi, and other policy discussions. She regularly gives talks, keynotes, and presentations at colleges, churches, conferences, and other forums in the U.S. and internationally, and has been interviewed on public, private, and cable news and documentary outlets such as NPR, ABC, BBC, CBC, Logo TV, MTV, PBS, and beyond. Currently, she is a contributing editor at The American Prospect and The Advocate, and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

KATHERINE LANPHER is the OpEd Project Senior Seminar Leader, leader of our 2012-2013 Public Voices Thought Leaders Fellowship at Dartmouth College and led the pilot 2011-2012 Public Voices Thought Leadership Fellowship at Yale University. A veteran public radio journalist, she has been heard as a host on WNYC New York Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and Minnesota Public Radio, most recently as the host of PRI’s foreign policy documentary series “America Abroad. She was the host of a weekly podcast on the economy for TIME.com and in 2008 received a Gracie for best national radio magazine show from the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television for her work as host and creator of “More Time,’’ an hour-long magazine radio show that broadcast on XM Satellite Radio. She is the host and executive producer of "Upstairs at the Square," a reading and performance series for the Barnes and Noble Studio page (www.bn.com/upstairs) that Daily Candy has described as "an awesome literary salon on a date with an intimate rock concert.” Her op-eds, travel pieces and essays have appeared in the New York Times, MORE, Marie-Claire, Slate.com and other publications. Her memoir “Leap Days,’’ an account of her simultaneous move to both Manhattan and midlife, received four stars from People magazine and was reviewed in the New York Times and featured on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.’’ She moved to New York in 2004 to serve as the co-host of “The Al Franken Show,’’ as heard on Air America Radio and seen on the Sundance Channel. She began her career as a reporter and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota.

SHARON LERNER is a journalist focusing on work-life balance, education health equity and other issues affecting families in the United States.  A Senior Fellow at Demos, she is writing a book, “Chutes and Ladders: Learning from the Best – and Worst – Places to Raise Children in America.” She has also written extensively about reproductive politics.  Lerner’s first book, "The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation" (Wiley, 2010), put a human face on American family policy. NPR called it “A stinging account of how public policy and private businesses have failed to adapt to working mothers. ” “The Los Angeles Times” described it as “An infuriating, galvanizing read — a page-turner for working moms.”  Lerner has worked as a writer, reporter and public radio producer. A former Village Voice columnist, she has also written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Nation, Salon.com, DoubleX/Slate.com, and Ms, among other publications.  Lerner is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including the Front Page Award for News Coverage, and the Jane Cunningham Croly/GFWC Print Journalism Award, and a special award from the Women and Politics Institute. She went to Brown University and the Columbia School of Public Health. Before coming to Demos, she was a senior fellow at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.

KELLY NUXOLL is a freelance writer and writing teacher. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, Publishers Weekly, and the Huffington Post, and she co-authored "Work on Purpose," a nonfiction book about social entrepreneurs. She's taught writing for over ten years, including the Logic and Rhetoric course at Columbia University. She has a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia and a BA from Yale.

CATHERINE O’NEILL GRACE is a longtime editor and writer. She edited Tufts Veterinary Medicine magazine for the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine from 2008-2010, and has been editor of Creative Living magazine, a quarterly published by Northwestern Mutual, since 2001. In the 1990s, she edited Independent School magazine for the National Association of Independent Schools in Washington, D.C. She wrote “How & Why,” a health and science column for kids, for the Washington Post, from 1985-2000. Her first job in publishing was as “literary assistant” at The New Republic.  Catherine co-authored Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children (Ballantine 2001) with psychologists Michael G. Thompson and Lawrence J. Cohen. Her children’ book, The White House: An Illustrated History, was published by Scholastic in 2003. Her many other nonfiction titles for children include Mayflower 1620: A New Look at a Colonial Voyage (2003); and 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving (2002), published by National Geographic.  Catherine grew up in New Delhi, India, and Washington, D.C. Her father was a U.S. diplomat and novelist, her mother an editor. She holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MA from Georgetown University. She lives in New York City.   

DEBORAH SIEGEL is an expert on gender, politics, and the unfinished business of feminism across generations. She is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, co-editor of the literary anthology Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo, founder of the group blog Girl w/Pen, and co-founder of the webjournal The Scholar & Feminist Online. She is a Founding Partner of She Writes, the largest online community for women who write, with over 14,000 active members from all 50 states and more than 30 countries. Deborah’s writings on women, feminism, contemporary families, sex, and popular culture have appeared in venues including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate’s The Big Money, The Huffington Post, The American Prospect, Ms., More, and she has been featured on tv and radio including The Today Show, CBS This Morning, WNBC, WCBS, New York 1, Good Morning America Radio, Pacifica Radio, The Wendy Williams Experience, The Judith Warner Show, and The Joey Reynolds Show. She serves on the Board of the Council on Contemporary Families and has been a Visiting Fellow at Barnard College and the University of Michigan. Deborah lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their toddler twins and lives online at The Pink and Blue Diaries, where she blogs about gender, parenthood, writing, and life.

MARTHA SOUTHGATE, an OpEd Project Fellowship Leader, is the author of four novels; her newest is The Taste of Salt, published by Algonquin Books. Her previous novel, Third Girl from the Left, won the Best Novel of the Year award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was shortlisted for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy award. Her novel The Fall of Rome received the 2003 Alex Award from the American Library Association and was named one of the best novels of 2002 by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. She is also the author of Another Way to Dance, which won the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award for Best First Novel. She received a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts grant and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her July 2007 essay from the New York Times Book Review, “Writers Like Me” received considerable notice and appears in the anthology Best African-American Essays 2009. Previous non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere, and Essence.

MICHELE WELDON: An award-winning journalist and author for more than three decades, Michele Weldon is an assistant professor of journalism at the Medill School of Northwestern University, where she has taught since 1996. Her first book, I Closed My Eyes (Hazelden/ HCI, 1999),was translated into seven languages. Writing to Save Your Life (Hazelden/HCI, 2001), has been translated into four languages and has been the basis of her Writing to Save Your Life Workshops over the last 10 years. Her third book, “Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page” (University of Missouri, 2008), won the National Federation of Press Women nonfiction book award in 2009. Weldon has written chapters in This I Believe on Fatherhood (Wiley, 2011), Encyclopedia of 21^st Century Media (Sage, 2009) and Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates (University Press of Mississippi, 1989). She has written columns, news and features for newspapers, websites, magazines and radio such as Chicago Tribune, Dallas Times Herald, Dial, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, More.com, Newsday, Nieman Narrative Digest, Parenting, Seventeen, U.S. Catholic, Writer’s Digest, West Suburban Living, womensenews, Woman’s Day and hundreds more. She recently completed a series of narrated, animated lessons in journalism on TED Ed and competed in the Moth Story Chicago GrandSlam in 2012. A popular public speaker, Weldon has delivered close to 200 keynotes across the country and Canada on issues related to women and the media, and has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television shows in the United States, Europe and Canada including “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “"The Bob Edwards Show" on NPR, “Milt Rosenberg Show,” “WBEZ’s 848 Chicago,” “NBC’s Later Today,” “ABC Sunday Morning,” “CBS Morning Show,” and BBC-TV. She is a former member of the board of directors of Journalism & Women Symposium and has been working with The OpEd Project since 2011.