Trystan Reese is a transgender parent and educator based out of Portland, Oregon. He is the author of How We Do Family: From Adoption to Trans Pregnancy, What We Learned about Love and LGBTQ Parenthood, as well as co-author of the children’s book, The Light Of You.
Read MoreJaimie Kelton and Robin Hopkins meet up each year at the Pride Family Picnic with their wives and kids in tow. That’s when then-pregnant Jaimie pitched Robin the idea to make a podcast about LGBTQ families. One baby and countless beautiful stories later, the popular and award-winning podcast If These Ovaries Could Talk was born. While shining a spotlight on all the different ways nontraditional families get made, Jaimie and Robin share their personal fertility journeys and their parenting adventures. Robin and Jaime are also the co-authors of the book "If These Ovaries Could Talk: The Things We've Learned about Making an LGBTQ Family." If ever there were two people you’d want to hang out with, it’s Jaimie and Robin. You just can’t help but love them.
Read MoreEntrepreneurship has always been Tess Kossow’s dream profession. And after having her miracle baby boy, Ferris, she realized this was a now-or-never moment to jump in and become an author with a product the world needs. Ferris was her last embryo and the answered prayer of faith, love, and science through IVF. Reading holds a very special place in Tess’s heart, and this next stage of her career has her creating something she is so very passionate about in the lives of children through her picture books: in vitro fertilization.
In November 2019, Tess was a finisher in the New York City Marathon. In October 2020, she survived sudden cardiac arrest and was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. Still through it all, she loved to host parties and celebrate life, no matter the occasion! She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Elmhurst College, which is also where she met her best friend and husband, Dan. She has a Havanese named Gatsby and a Siamese cat named James Bond. (Both of which are Ferris’ partners in crime).
Tess is a mother, first and foremost, and everything else comes second. She believes you really can have and achieve anything you want…but you are going to have to work for it and expect nothing to be handed to you. Her husband often calls her his real-life Steve Jobs, because of how she lives her life and leads by example for her son to believe in the following: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Ferris is her inspiration, and her husband, Dan, is the motivation that keeps her running the extra mile in all she does.
Read MoreDiahan Southard is a pioneer in the world of DNA testing and family history. She founded Your DNA Guide as a way to teach anyone with DNA how to use it to find out more about themselves and their family. She is the author of Your DNA Guide - the Book, and creator of Your DNA Guide - the Academy, an online learning platform. She spends all her spare time with her three kids and especially looks forward to date night with her handsome husband.
Jayne has 23 years of experience in the field of genetic genealogy. She had the extraordinary experience of being mentored by Dr. Scott Woodward and his visionary team that took shape in the earliest days of this burgeoning field. She has been a part of nearly every stage of driving the discovery process forward: field specimen collection, marker selection and assay design, data management and computational processes, analysis, and algorithms, and investigating population-level research questions. She has lectured throughout the United States and international venues on the applications of molecular biology to elucidating ancient and recent genealogical connections. She has authored and co-authored many peer-reviewed scientific publications, as well as general articles on genetic genealogy. It is a pleasure for her to see the accelerating developments in genetic genealogy, and the wide accessibility and application it has for the average human curious about their origins.
Read MoreAlison Motluk is a Toronto-based freelance journalist who works in print and radio. She has reported widely on the social fallout of reproductive technology, including about the first boy to find his anonymous sperm donor using only his spit and the internet, about the health uncertainties of egg donation, and about the Ottawa fertility doctor who used his own sperm to help patients conceive. She publishes a weekly newsletter, HeyReprotech and Ukraine Surrogacy Dispatches.
Read MoreJon Waldman is a multi-time published author, journalist, marketing and communications professional and photographer. From an early age, Jon knew that he wanted to enter the world of the written word and has scribed articles for the likes of the Toronto Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, The Hockey News, Winnipeg Men Magazine, CBS Sports and several others over his near 20-year career.
In 2009, Jon published his first book, SLAM! Wrestling: Shocking Stories from the Squared Circle with Greg Oliver. This was quickly followed in 2011 by Got'em, Got'em, Need'em. In early 2015 his third book, He Shoots He Saves, was released, his third with ECW Press.
Jon's fourth book, "100 Things Jets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die" released in 2015 with Triumph Books and has been his best seller thus far.
In 2021, Jon's fifth book, "Swimming Aimlessly", will release with Simon and Schuster's imprint, Tiller Press. Inspired by his TEDx Talk, the book takes a deep look at men and infertility and, in part, tells the story his family has experienced.
Read MoreSince beginning her journalistic career in 1993 as an intern at CNN’s Larry King Live, Ginanne Brownell has covered stories in over 45 countries and on six continents. She worked on staff for CNN (Washington, DC) and Newsweek (London) and is currently a London-based freelance writer covering arts, culture, development and education stories.
Her writing has been appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Conde Nast Traveller, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Scientific American, Salon, Foreign Policy and Washington Post. She has also done media consulting for UNICEF and J.K. Rowling’s Lumos Charity. Ginanne is the co-founder of she-files.com, a webzine highlighting stories about women written by women.
Ginanne is in the process of completing two narrative non-fiction books. "How I Became Your Mother: My Global Surrogacy Journey", is both a personal memoir about becoming a parent through surrogacy and also a journalistic deep dive examining a number of debates, discussions and conversations taking place internationally about surrogacy. Meanwhile her book "Ghetto Classics: How a Youth Orchestra Changed a Nairobi Slum" examines the role that music can play in community development.
Most importantly, she is the very proud mom of cheeky but exceedingly sweet three-year-old twins who were born via surrogacy in Illinois.
Read MoreJody Madeira is a professor of law and co-director of the Center for Law, Society & Culture at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University. Her scholarly interests involve empirical research; the role of emotion in law; the sociology of law; law, medicine, and bioethics; and the Second Amendment. Her most recent book, Taking Baby Steps: How Patients and Fertility Clinics Collaborate in Conception (University of California Press, 2018), takes readers inside the infertility experience, from dealing with infertility-related emotions to forming treatment relationships with medical professionals, confronting difficult decisions, and negotiating informed consent. Based on a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data (130 patient interviews, 83 interviews with reproductive medical professionals, and 267 patient surveys), Madeira investigates how women, men, and their care providers can utilize trust to collaboratively negotiate infertility’s personal, physical, spiritual, ethical, medical, and legal minefields.
Read MoreProfessor Zsuzsa Berend teaches sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the academic administrator of the sociology departmental Honors program. For over a decade, she has been doing ethnographic research on an online surrogacy support forum and published on surrogacy-related topics in Medical Anthropology, Sociological Forum, and American Anthropologist.
Zsuzsa’s book, “The Online World of Surrogacy” presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates’ views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.
Read MoreJacqueline Mroz is a veteran science writer and journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Science section of The New York Times, The New York Post, The Bergen Record, Parents Magazine and New Jersey Monthly Magazine. Jacqueline has been interviewed on national radio shows and television, including The Today Show, about her work. She has taught journalism at Montclair State University and Rutgers University. Her popular New York Times article about a sperm donor with 150 children became the book, Scattered Seeds: In Search of Family and Identity in the Sperm Donor Generation. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband and three children.
Read MoreKim is the author of The Very Kind Koala and The Pea That Was Me series, amazing children’s books about surrogacy and donor-conception. She’s also written books about dealing with infertility and loss. She’s a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has a private practice in psychotherapy and also works at Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine (CCRM), one of Colorado’s most well-known fertility clinics.
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