Creators of Stand UP, Speak OUT women’s rights online docuseries

The Creators

Sponsoring Organization

BC Voices, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization dedicated to gathering and telling the stories of the lives of women who came of age in the late 1960s to early 1970s, an era of profound social, political and cultural change in American society, through the process of collecting their oral histories and creating documentary films.

BC Voices has created The Barnard College Class of 1971 (BC’71) Oral History Collection, a rich archive of the life histories of 79 BC’71 alumnae housed in the Barnard Archives and Special Collections. Using the BC’71 oral histories, BC Voices commissioned two short documentaries that tell the story of the seismic shift in the lives of women of the 1960s generation as they came of age during the turmoil of late 1960s/early 1970s –The Way It Was – and forged new paths for themselves and future generations of women when doors opened for women, but not all the way – Making Choices, Forging Paths.

Producers

Katherine Brewster, MBA, Executive Producer

Katherine Brewster, President of BC Voices and Executive Producer of Stand UP, Speak OUT, is an entrepreneur, and manages a practice in somatic healing and wellness. She has more than 50 years of experience in sales, marketing, business management, and fundraising for non-profit artistic enterprises. She is a 1971 alumna of Barnard College and earned an MBA at Columbia Business School in 1978.

Elisabeth Harris, Producer

Elisabeth Harris has worked as a producer for more than 20 years on projects for CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Travel Channel, History Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery and other outlets. She spent seven years at CBS News on long-form documentary specials and breaking news, and directed the hit PBS show “History Detectives” for two seasons. Her subjects have ranged from a documentary on Paul McCartney and his band Wings to a short film about a hermit in Maine. Since 2015 she has been the Supervising Producer of the longest-running history show on cable TV, “Mysteries At The Museum,” on The Travel Channel. Elisabeth holds a BA in Women’s Studies and an MFA in Film and Television Writing & Production.

Associate Producers

Susan Shapiro Metz, Barnard 1971, M. Ed., is retired after 25 years in human services regulation and database training for the State of New Jersey. Her volunteer experience includes 20 years of marketing and grant writing for nonprofit choral music organizations, including Monmouth Civic Chorus, Princeton Pro Musica, and New Jersey Choral Consortium.

Joy Montgomery Rocklin, Barnard 1971, MBA, CPA, is retired after 40 years of financial services, marketing, strategic planning, promotional products, management consulting, and information systems executive positions. She currently volunteers with Ballet West and not-for-profit community organizations.

Ruth M. Louie, Barnard 1971, retired from her position as CEO of a nonprofit loan fund in 2015. As a Standards for Excellence® Licensed Consultant, she assists nonprofit organizations in organizational development and management. She turned her 40-year passion for international travel into a business, Joy of Travel, offering custom vacation-planning services for groups and independent travelers.

Rabbi Cheryl Weiner, Barnard 1971, PhD, is a community rabbi and board-certified hospice chaplain and bereavement specialist. With the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, she directs volunteer programs on visiting elders and training people to facilitate end-of-life conversations. In a former life, she was a founding leader in the educational computing and training field. As a Vice President for McGraw Hill Interactive and Executive Producer for Activision, she developed award-winning educational computer programs and games. Throughout her life, she has been a social justice advocate. As a 1971 graduate of Barnard College, she is honored to be part of the BC Voices team.

Kathy Galvin, Barnard 1971, JD, MPA, represented tenants, women, and non-profits in public interest practice and legal services in Massachusetts. In the San Francisco Bay area, she wrote and edited law books for non-lawyers, taught Media Law, and practiced law at an asbestos plaintiff firm. She worked as a program officer for the Rockefeller Family Fund, and spent 25 years at the San Francisco Asylum Office where she supervised and trained asylum adjudicators, authorized their asylum decisions, and assisted the Refugee Corps in adjudicating refugee petitions in Jordan and Turkey.

Humanities Advisory Team

Celia E. Naylor, PhD, is Professor of History and Africana Studies at Barnard College. She currently teaches lecture courses on African-American History, with seminars on the history of women of African descent in the U.S. and the Caribbean. She advises on issues related to African-American women’s experiences and women’s rights in U.S. history.

Annelise Orleck, PhD, is Professor of History at Dartmouth College and the author of five books on the history of US women, politics, immigration, and activism, including Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty. She currently teaches a senior seminar on Race, Ethnicity and Immigration in American History. She advises on race and class issues in American women’s history.

Deirdre Cooper Owens, PhD, is Associate Professor of History and faculty member of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She is also an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology (UGA Press, 2017) won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the OAH as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history. She will advise on reproductive justice.

Rosalind Rosenberg, PhD, is Professor Emerita of History at Barnard College. Specialist in American history with a focus on women’s, social, and legal history. Author of Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray. She advises on the historical background of various women’s rights and roles of key women in the suffrage movement.

Vicki Breitbart, MSW, EdD, has taught at Columbia University, NYU and CUNY on public health, and was director of the graduate Health Advocacy Program at Sarah Lawrence College. Her publications include books on education and parenting, and peer-reviewed articles on reproductive health and intimate partner violence. She has produced and directed documentaries on health care and non-sexist education, and served on boards of national reproductive justice organizations. She advises on issues of activism and reproductive justice.

Photo credit: Alex Irklievski

Dána-Ain Davis, PhD is Professor of Urban Studies, Anthropology and Critical Psychology at Queens College, and director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her most recent book, Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (2019) received the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Senior Book Prize from the Association of Feminist Anthropology, and was named a Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Award, given by the Association of American Publishers, in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category. She advises on reproductive justice.

Iris López, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist and Professor at The City College of New York/CUNY, where she is the director of the Latin American & Latina Studies Program. An international expert on sterilization among poor women of color, she conducted a 25-year intergenerational ethnographic study on Puerto Rican women in Brooklyn, published in the book, Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom (Rutgers University Press 2008). Dr. López co-authored the book, Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Durham: Duke University Press 2001), which won the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights at Simmons College. She advises on reproductive justice.

Ellen Ross, PhD, Professor Emerita of History and Women’s Studies at Ramapo College, co-chaired the women’s studies program and taught courses in Women’s Studies and in British and European history. She was formerly a member of New York City Committee for Abortion Rights and against Sterilization Abuse. She will advise on issues related to women’s rights in American history.

Jennifer Nelson, PhD, is a United States historian with an emphasis in women’s history. She teaches in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Redlands. Her dissertation became her first book, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (NYU Press 2003). Her second book, More Than Medicine: A History of the Women’s Health Movement (NYU Press 2016), extended her research on the feminist and women’s health movements in the United States. She also co-edited with Barbara Molony a volume on transnational feminism, Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism: Transnational Histories. She advises on reproductive justice.

Lina-Maria Murillo, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the departments of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and History at the University of Iowa. She is completing her first book, Fighting for Control: Reproductive Care, Race, and Power in the U.S-Mexico Borderlands, and received a 2021-2022 Humanities Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies to support this endeavor. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Rewire News, and Notches. Murillo is also co-director of the Maternal Health and Reproductive Justice Obermann collaborative with her colleague Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz at the University of Iowa. She advises on reproductive justice.

Elena R. Gutierrez, PhD, is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women’s Reproduction (University Of Texas Press, 2008) and co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice (Haymarket Books, 2016). She has served as a consultant and on the boards of multiple reproductive health and justice organizations across the nation. She advises on reproductive justice.

Gloria Feldt is an acclaimed expert on women, power, and leadership, a bestselling author, and in-demand keynote speaker. She is cofounder and president of Take The Lead, whose mission reflects her life’s passion: to prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025 by providing breakthrough training, mentoring and coaching role modeling, and thought leadership. She is the bestselling author of five books. Her latest, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics and How Women Will Take The Lead, shows how we can seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of massive disruption to build back stronger with women at the center of the recovery. She is formerly president and CEO of the world’s largest reproductive health and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She invites you to connect with her online gloriafeldt.com.

Joyce Antler is the Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies Emerita at Brandeis University, where she taught courses on American Love and Marriage for many years. She is the author of The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America; Talking Back: Jewish Women in American Popular Culture; America and I: Short Stories by American Jewish Women Writers; You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother; and Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices of the Women’s Liberation Movement. She also co-wrote the prize-winning documentary drama, Year One of the Empire.

Sascha Cohen, PhD, is a writer and historian of gender, sexuality, and popular culture in the 20th century U.S. She teaches in the Boston area and her bylines can be found in The Nation, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, NPR, and The Washington Post.

Ruth Reichard, JD, PhD, is the author of Blood and Steel: Ryan White, the AIDS Crisis and Deindustrialization in Kokomo, Indiana. She served as a Judge and Senior Judge in the state of Indiana, where her caseload in Indianapolis/Marion County included major felonies, criminal family violence cases, and civil protection order cases. After her time as a judicial officer, she pivoted to academia and worked as an Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of the Legal Studies Program in the Political Science Department at Ball State University. Blood and Steel, her first book, is an urban and social history that made the 2022 nonfiction shortlist for the Indiana Humanities’ Indiana Authors Awards. Ruth is passionate about social justice, the humanities, education, and fine arts.