Happy Third Birthday, Gender Across Borders!

April 2, 2012 7:00 am Comments Off

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Today is our third anniversary at Gender Across Borders. To celebrate, we’re going to do something different than previous years of listing our best posts (you can check out our best posts of all time here and here).

First, Emily Heroy, Executive Editor of Gender Across Borders, will tell a brief story of how Gender Across Borders got started. Following story time, we’d like to boast and brag of the accomplishments GAB has made as a team and individually.

The story of how Gender Across Borders got started from Emily Heroy:

It seems like only yesterday when I wanted to start a feminist blog. I had recently returned from the Peace Corps and wanted to continue my interests in international development and feminism. After some planning, I put a call for writers out on Idealist.org and Craigslist in the beginning of February 2009. I interviewed people (one of which was Carrie Nelson, a co-founder of GAB) and we planned out how we wanted to execute GAB through conference calls and emailing back and forth. We decided to launch on April 1, 2009.

After only our families and friends reading GAB (which adds up to a 100 hits per month), three years later we’ve reached 60,000 hits per month. Our team members now include six staff writers, five monthly contributors, five interns, and a host of contributing writers.

Accomplishments of GAB from this past year:

“Future of Feminism: One World, Many Gendered Voices” at Ms. Magazine Blog, for their Women’s History series on the Future of Feminism
“Blog for International Women’s Day,” an event going three years strong co-hosted by CARE, with more than 200 participants and over 5,000 hits. For the event, GAB Executive Editor Emily Heroy, wrote an op-ed at the Global Post about the status of girls’ education around the world. You can read that here.

Accomplishments of GAB team members from this past year:

We’d like to showcase our individual team members as we think that we’re a pretty awesome group, continually active in feminist and social justice activism. Check it out:

Kyle Bachan, Internship Director: Kyle recently completed an internship at Ms. Magazine last year (BTW, he was the first guy intern there! How cool is that?). He also freelances around at Huffington Post and Torontoist. He is currently developing a new medium in which to explore topics in feminism.

Avory Faucette, Staff Writer: Zie was selected for the 2011 class of Progressive Women’s Voices and started as Director of Operations at the National Center for Transgender Equality in October 2011. Zie started the popular Sunday #transchat Twitter party in October and launched QueerFeminism.com in January, a place for diverse contributors to discuss how feminism can better serve their communities. Zie has taught workshops on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sexuality at several national conferences.

Emily Heroy, Executive Editor and Co-Founder: Last year, Emily was named one of the top 100 ”most inspiring people delivering for girls and women ” from the NGO Women Deliver and in June 2011, she was named one of the top 40 Under 40 Leaders by the New Leaders Council. Getting married in less than two months, Emily will be starting at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education this July in pursuit of a MsEd degree in history teaching.

Colleen Hodgetts, Associate Editor: Just a month ago, Colleen moved to San Francisco where she is now the Social Media Intern at Camfed (The Campaign for Female Education). At the end of the month, she will attend NOI’s New Media BootCamp and join the ranks of progressive organizers changing the world through Twitter.

Ashley Lauren, Staff Writer: This past year alone, Ashley’s work has been featured on The Huffington Post, Teaching Tolerance, Feministe, Ms. Blog, Offbeat Home, and Offbeat Bride. She also writes at her personal blog, Small Strokes.

Amy Littlefield, Editor: Amy won an award this year from the New England Newspaper and Press Association for a three-part series on nepotism in city government for a local paper in Massachusetts. She is currently a fellow at Democracy Now! in New York City. and is the Founder of The Provider Project (you should really check it out!). Its mission is: “The Provider Project was created by women who have worked in various areas of sexual and reproductive healthcare, as abortion counselors, medical assistants, desk workers, doulas, alternative healthcare practitioners and supportive friends. We share in common our experience on the inside of the healthcare industry and our commitment to radically changing the way healthcare is understood and delivered.”

Chally Kacelnik, Staff Writer: She ran a workshop at the Network of Women Students Australia conference, which brings together fierce young feminist minds from around Australia. She spent December 2011 raising money for the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia. She has been freelancing her little heart out on gender and sexuality issues around the world.

Avital Nathman, Comments Moderator and Contributor: She has been writing frequently for Ms. Magazine’s blog and will start her own series there in April called “The Femisphere” (1st post goes up this week). Her work has also been featured in other outlets like RH Reality Check and Role/Reboot. Her activist roots will get a chance to grow when she moderates a panel on gender & children at the Civil Liberties & Public Policy Conference at Hampshire College in mid-April!

Carrie Nelson, Staff Writer and Co-Founder of GAB: Carrie is a monthly Guest Contributor at Bitch Flicks, and she is writing a series about bisexuality at Bitch Media from now through the end of April!

Nadia Smiecinska, Staff Writer: Nadia wrote for Save A Mother blog attached to an organization that works on health care issues of women/mothers in India. Their blog is health oriented to the poor (especially women) all around the world and discusses latest developments in that arena. Nadia has also been volunteering locally with a number of organizations that are focused on helping struggling children with poor school achievement and helping to organize various events for elementary/middle school girls as empowerment exercises.

Imen Yacoubi, Junior Editor: In the last 2 years, Imen has been working on a project which is a cultural review in English concerned with Maghrebi or North African issues, called MOORings.

And be sure to check out a more complete list on the bios of our GAB team members and contributing writers.

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