Laurie Loveland Speaker Series

Laura Ling is an acclaimed journalist known for her in-depth reporting on critical global issues, including human trafficking, energy poverty, and the challenges faced by military families. As a correspondent and director at Discovery Communications’ Seeker Network, she created impactful content that inspires millennial audiences. Ling has also hosted two documentary series on the E! Network, E! Investigates and Society X with Laura Ling, both of which explore important social issues.

Her career includes the creation of the award-winning investigative series Vanguard at Current TV, as well as producing work for SoCal Connected, Channel One News, and PBS. In 2009, Ling was detained by North Korean soldiers while reporting on the trafficking of North Korean women. She was held captive for 140 days before being released. Her memoir, Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home, co-written with her sister, Lisa, chronicles this harrowing experience.

Ling’s work has been recognized with an Emmy, a national Edward R. Murrow Award, and multiple other honors. She was also named one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year in 2009. Ling continues to inspire social change as a Service Ambassador for Points of Light, an organization dedicated to solving social issues through voluntary service.

Chanel Miller is a writer and artist who received her BA in Literature from the Universtiy of California, Santa Barbara. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Know My Name, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, as well as a best book of 2019 in TIme, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and People, among others. She is a 2019 Time Next 100 honoree and a 2016 Glamour Woman of the Year honoree under her pseudonym, Emily Doe."

Janet Mock is the New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs, Redefining Realness (2014) and Surpassing Certainty (2017), the host of the conversation series, Never Before, a writer and producer on Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX series Pose, and a feminist tackling stigma through storytelling. Janet broke ground in 2014 with the release of her first book Redefining Realness, a pioneering and profound memoir which was the first biography written from the perspective of a young trans person. It debuted on the New York Timesbestsellers list in 2014 and Janet was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for Super Soul Sunday. Her second book, Surpassing Certainty, a memoir about the years in her life when she was not public about being trans, was praised by Kirkus as a “defining chronicle of strength and spirit…brimming with liberated self-discovery.” On January 21, 2017, the sought-after speaker and advocate (who founded #GirlsLikeUs and #TransBookDrive) addressed millions on stage at the Women’s March on Washington, where she urged for an intersectional and inclusive movement that included all women: trans women, undocumented people, sex workers and disabled folk. “I stand here today, most of all, because I am my sister’s keeper…Our approach to freedom need not be identical, but it must be intersectional and inclusive.”

Janet began her media career at People.com (People magazine’s website), where she worked for five years climbing the ranks at Time Inc. from Staff Writer to Staff Editor upon her departure in 2012. She has since produced the HBO documentary The Trans List, where she conducted all interviews and worked with Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. She also created the column “Beauty Beyond Binaries” for Allure.com, which broke ground by exploring pretty privilege, and the interview podcast Never Before with Pineapple Street Media, which featured in-depth conversations with Tina Knowles-Lawson, Rep. Maxine Waters, Kris Jenner and Lena Dunham. She also served as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight (interviewing Queen Latifah, Jeffrey Tambor), a contributing editor for Marie Claire (for which she wrote the November 2016 cover story on Nicki Minaj), and an on-air contributor and host for MSNBC, where she helmed the groundbreaking series, “So POPular!” interviewing Salma Hayek, Issa Rae, and Amber Rose.

Born in Hawaii, Janet’s story of growing up trans caught the nation’s attention in a 2011 Marie Claire article. Since then she’s become a millennial media powerhouse. Variety named her one of its 2017 “Power of Women,” TIME called her one of “the most influential people on the Internet” and one of “12 new faces of black leadership” while Fast Company named her one of 2015’s “most creative people in business.”

Janet has been interviewed on Wendy Williams, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Desus & Mero, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Marie Claire, and The Advocate. She wrote the foreword for famed photographer Mark Seliger’s collection, On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories, contributed to the anthology, The Feminist Utopia Project, and has appeared on the covers of Paper, OUT and C☆NDY magazines. The Ms. Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Feminist Press, GLSEN, Shorty Awards and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project have all honored Janet for her work.

A native of Honolulu, Janet attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, earned her MA in journalism from New York University, and serves on the board of the Arcus Foundation. She lives with her husband Aaron and their dog Cleo. janetmock.com

Jessica Valenti - called one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world - is a columnist for the Guardian US and a feminist author. Her most recent book, Sex Object: A Memoir, was a New York Times bestseller. In 2004, Jessica founded the award winning blog Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review called “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.” Jessica’s articles have topped the most-read lists at The Atlantic, the Guardian US, The Washington Post, and The Nation. She has also written for The New York Times, Salon, Bitch, Ms. Magazine and The Toast. Jessica has been interviewed on The Colbert Report, profiled in The New York Times magazine, and is a widely-sought after speaker. She has a Masters degree in Gender Studies from Rutgers University and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. https://www.jessicavalenti.com/

Journalist, historian, and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fifteen books. In 2001, Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (Metropolitan Books) became a New York Times bestseller, and has since sold over one million copies. Nickel and Dimed, a trenchant examination of working-class poverty that chronicles Ehrenreich's own attempt to live on minimum wage, is now required reading at more than 600 colleges and universities, from University of Ozarks to Yale University to Western Wyoming Community College. In 2005, Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch, also a New York Times bestseller, exposed the ever more prevalent phenomenon of white-collar unemployment. In 2008, Metropolitan books published This land Is Their Land, a collection of her published columns. Ehrenreich's most recent book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America, was published by Metropolitan Books in October, 2009. A frequent contributor to Harper's and The Nation, Ehrenreich has been a columnist at the New York Times and Time magazine. In 2004 she received the Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship, given annually to an American who challenges the status quo "through distinctive, courageous, imaginative, socially responsible work of significance." Ehrenreich lives near Washington, DC.

"No, no. Women should not be generals," a male voter once told candidate Gregoire. Known for her articulate and assertive style, the three-term Attorney General negotiated a $206-billion settlement with the tobacco industry that prohibited marketing to youth. In 2004, Gregoire made American history when she narrowly won the Governor's Office by a breathtaking 133 votes. Roughly 2.8 million Washington voters cast ballots in the race. Gregoire is Washington's second woman governor and the first to win re-election. https://www.sos.wa.gov/legacy/biographies/christinegregoire.aspx