Ashley Grice, moderator

As a senior diversity, equity and inclusion consultant in CU Boulder’s Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Grice provides support, tools and researched best practices to administrative units and executive leaders. The goal of this collaborative work is to operationalize a systemic approach to the implementation of universitywide diversity, equity and inclusion goals and initiatives.

Grice received her doctorate of education in social and comparative analysis in education from the University of Pittsburgh, centering her professional work around the interrogation of systems of oppression within and beyond educational contexts.

She is inspired by a Black feminist and intersectional praxis, pulling especially from her lived and professional experiences. Her ultimate goal in any endeavor is to inspire and achieve collective liberation.

Jordan Garcia

Garcia is the immigrant ally organizing director for the American Friends Service Committee at Colorado Immigrant Rights Program. He served as chair of the board of directors for the Colorado Anti-Violence Program, later called Survivors Organizing for Liberation, which worked to end violence within and against the LGBTQ+ community.

Garcia co-founded the Luz Reproductive Justice think tank, co-founded and operated the Underground Syringe Exchange Denver, and is a national nonviolent direct action trainer for the Ruckus Society, the Indigenous Peoples Power Project and Greenpeace USA.

Advocating for change through a communitywide, anti-oppression lens, Garcia works to engage vision-based leadership development within justice movements. He graduated from Colorado College in 2002 with a Bachelor or Arts degree in international political economy with an emphasis on urban studies.

Bruce Parker

Parker, deputy director of Out Boulder County and a community advocate and organizer, has fought for full equality and justice for LGBTQ+ people for more than 20 years. He has held various volunteer and professional roles in higher education, local and statewide community organizations, a gubernatorial campaign and state government.

Parker co-founded Equality Louisiana and Louisiana Trans Advocates and served as the executive director of Louisiana Progress. Most recently, he served as director of community programs in the office of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in cultural and interdisciplinary studies from Antioch College and a doctorate in curriculum theory from Louisiana State University. His educational background informs his intersectional and reflective approach to advocacy and community organizing.

Glenda Russell

Russell is a psychologist and CU Boulder graduate who has been active as a researcher, teacher, clinician and activist for many years. Her research and writing have explored the psychological and social impacts of anti-LGBTQ+ politics, the role of heterosexual and cisgender allies in queer and trans movements, LGBTQ+ youth scripts and LGBTQ+ history.

For almost three decades, Russell was a clinical psychologist for the campus’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Through 70 scholarly articles, book reviews and her book, “Voted Out: The Psychological Consequences of Anti-Gay Politics,” Russell has focused on how LGBTQ+ youth and adults are affected by anti-gay politics and on therapy issues related to LGBTQ+ identities.

Russell has been interviewed about her work and lived experiences by Colorado Public Radio and other news outlets. For the past several years, she has given talks about LGBTQ+ history at CU Boulder and in the broader Boulder community. She received bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from CU Boulder. 

Scott Skinner-Thompson

Skinner-Thompson is an associate professor at Colorado Law whose research and teaching center on constitutional law, civil rights and privacy law with a focus on LGBTQ+ and HIV issues. His book “Privacy at the Margins” examines how privacy can function as an expressive, antisubordination tool of resistance to surveillance regimes.

His scholarly work has been published in the Georgetown Law Journal, Michigan Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, University of California Davis Law Review, Yale Law Journal Forum and Columbia Law Review Online. He served as editor of and contributing author to “AIDS and the Law” (Wolters Kluwer, 5th ed., 2016; 6th ed., 2020). His work has also appeared in Slate, Salon, The New Republic, Muftah and other publications.

Before joining Colorado Law in 2017, he was an acting assistant professor of lawyering at the New York University School of Law. In 2014, he was selected as one of the Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association and, while in practice, served as co-counsel with the ACLU LGBT and HIV Project, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Transgender Law Center and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Skinner-Thompson clerked on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for Judge Dolores Sloviter and for Judge Robert Chatigny of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. He graduated from Duke Law School, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, in 2008, receiving both Juris Doctor and Master of Laws degrees in international and comparative law. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Whitman College in 2005.

Nishant Upadhyay

An assistant professor of Asian American and gender and sexuality studies at CU Boulder, Upadhyay’s research interests center on critical ethnic studies, Asian (North) American studies, queer and trans of color critiques, intersectional and transnational feminisms, anticolonial and decolonial thinking and transnational settler colonialisms in the United States, Canada, India and Israel, South Asian studies and anti-caste critiques among other academic foci.

Upadhyay joined the ethnic studies department in 2019. Their book manuscript, “Indians on Indian Lands: Transnational Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity,” studies the formation of dominant-caste Hindu Indian diasporas in North America and Indian diasporic complicities in processes of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, anti-blackness, heteronormativity, brahminical supremacy and Hindu nationalism.

Upadhyay's scholarship has been published in Cultural Studies, Interventions, Journal of Critical Ethnic Studies, Feminist Studies, WSQ and other journals, anthologies and online spaces.

Upadhyay holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and development studies from Queen’s University in Canada and master's and doctoral degrees in social and political thought from York University in Canada. Before joining CU Boulder, Upadhyay taught women and gender studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and at Northern Arizona University.