Join us for a virtual forum on “Trans Representation & Media Coverage” on Thursday, Jan. 27, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. via Zoom.
Please register for the Zoom session with this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrdOqvrDosGNeVUJmCYRvoGO2_CEOpcQjb
(The program will also be livestreamed on the East Tennessee SPJ Facebook page.)
The forum includes:
Jennifer M Jabson Tree Ph.D., MPH: Associate Professor, Department of Public Health, University of Tennessee.
Leticia Flores: Director of the UT Psychological Clinic and volunteer with the Tennessee Equality Project and East Tennessee Civil Rights Working Group.
Fox Schweiger: Transgender representative, grew up in Knox County and now attends college out of state.
Aly Chapman: mother of Fox Schweiger and Co-Chair and Policy Coordinator of GLSEN Tennessee, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating safe and inclusive K-12 schools for LGBTQ+ youth.
Tearsa Smith, news anchor at WATE 6 On Your Side, will moderate.
More information on the forum participants:
Jennifer Jabson Tree, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Tennessee. She earned her MPH (2006) and PhD (2010) at Oregon State University College of Public Health and Human Sciences. After completing her doctoral training, she completed three years of focused, post-doctoral fellowship training and research in LGBTQ+ cancer control and prevention, at Boston University School of Public Health. She joined the University of Tennessee Department of Public Health faculty in 2013.
Leticia Flores is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Director for the University of Tennessee Psychological Clinic. She specializes in working with late adolescents and adults regarding sexual orientation and gender identity issues, and trains and supervises graduate psychology students providing psychotherapy to sexual and gender minorities. Dr. Flores is current President of the Association of Psychology Training Clinics (APTC); and a member of the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (Div 44) and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). She engages in outreach, education and advocacy in the Knoxville community on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community, serving as a current member of Knoxville’s Police Advisory and Review Committee (PARC) and volunteering with the Tennessee Equality Project.
Fox Schweiger was born and raised in Knoxville and is in his second year of college in Oregon, majoring in Sociology. He experienced high school as a trans person and has been involved in activism and politics surrounding the trans experience in the South for the past several years. He is passionate about maintaining an open dialogue and an open mind and hopes to help others do the same in order to create a safer world for everyone.
Aly Chapman serves to protect and champion the voices of our LGBTQ youth, children and mothers living through substance abuse, active addiction and recovery. As a consultant and passionate advocate in public health policy, keynote speaker, and 20-year accomplished researcher and educator, she focuses upstream to confront the stigma and systematic barriers that lead to mental illness and addiction in our most vulnerable populations.
With GLSEN Tennessee, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating safe and inclusive K-12 schools for LGBTQ+ youth, she has served as a Chair, Policy Coordinator, and Certified Professional Development Facilitator for the last five years. She has Master of Science and Master of Public Health Policy degrees from the University of Tennessee.
(Photo: From left, Jennifer M. Jabson Tree, Leticia Flores, Fox Schweiger and Aly Chapman.)