Breaking Down Patriarchy

Amy is joined by Myriam Ben Farhat to discuss her experience of patriarchy and gender roles in Tunisia, Spain, and the United States across her careers in law, art, and beyond.Myriam Ben Farhat is an entrepreneur, originally from Tunisia. She has two master's degrees, one in financial and public law, and one in contemporary art. She also studied professional coaching and got her certification from the International Federation of Coaching. In 2020, Ben Farhat joined the Play Magnus Group to become chief people and culture officer. When the company was acquired in December 2022 by Chess.com, she became Head of L&D and DEI, and currently leads the "Chess is for everyone" initiative.

Amy is joined by sisters Alex Peterson and Bronwen Pugh who share the alarming data surrounding child sexual abuse before telling their own staggering story of survival and offering hope in the form of The Safe Child Project, a new initiative helping to spread awareness and to keep children safe.Alex Peterson serves on the board of Prevent Child Abuse Utah and is the Director of Strategic Development & Impact for The Policy Project. Formerly, Alex worked for a United States Congressman before serving as the National Director of Donor Relations and personal aide to Ann Romney during Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Alex graduated from California State University, Long Beach, with honors, followed by an M.Ed. Policy from Harvard University. Alex and her husband Ben reside in Utah with their four children.Bronwen Pugh lives in Marin County, CA with her husband and 3 spunky daughters. Her happy place is in nature with her family. She loves to sail, surf, paddle board, bike, rock climb, and ski/snowboard. Prior to raising her children, Bronwen received her JD from UCLA Law and worked for the ACLU. She is currently Operations Lead for Conduit Tech, a climate-focused software startup.

Amy is joined by Dr. Susan Madsen to discuss the current gender inequality experienced by girls and women in Utah, what we can do to create change, and why we need A Bolder Way Forward.Dr. Susan R. Madsen is the Karen Haight Huntsman endowed professor of leadership in the John M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. She's also the founding director of the Utah Women in Leadership Project and is leading a statewide social change movement titled A Bolder Way Forward. Professor Madsen and her team have written extensive resources on women's leadership and they host many events each year to support the mission of their work. Susan is also a well-known global scholar, authoring or editing nine books and publishing hundreds of articles, chapters, and reports. Her research has been featured in the U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and she is a regular contributor to Forbes. She's a well-known speaker in local, national, and international settings, and she's presented at Argentina's Parliament Palace, the House of Commons in England, Lithuania's Presidential Palace, the Costa Rica Parliament, and NGO sessions at the United Nations. She and her husband, Greg, are the proud parents of four adult children and six grandchildren.

Amy is joined by FIDE Grandmaster, Maurice Ashley, to discuss his incredible journey from not making his high school chess team to becoming the world's first Black Grandmaster, plus how patriarchy manifests in the world of competitive chess, and valuable life-lessons we can all take from this remarkable game.Maurice Ashley is an American chess player, author, and commentator. In 1999, he earned the FIDE title of Grandmaster, making him the first Black person to do so. Ashley is well known as a commentator for high profile chess events. He also spent many years teaching chess and is the author of Chess for Success, Move by Move, and a children's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Chess.

Amy is joined by Dr. Dee Mosbacher and Dr. Boden Sandstrom to discuss their documentary, Radical Harmonies, exploring the history of the women's music movement, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and how countless lesbian lives were transformed through lyrics and song.Dee Mosbacher, M.D. Ph.D., is a psychiatrist and an Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker. Dr. Mosbacher has been an activist for women's health since the early 1970's. She has directed and/or produced a total of nine documentaries on homophobia, including Out for a Change, Addressing Homophobia in Women's Sports, All God's Children, De Colores, and No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Dee and her spouts, who is also a psychiatrist, Dr. Nanette Gartrell, worked to eliminated homophobia in the DSM. Dr. Mosbacher is the founder and president of Woman Vision, a nonprofit organizations whose mission is to promote social justice through the production of educational films and video.Boden Sandstrom, Ph.D., was the winner of the American Musicology Society Philip Brett Award. She was a leading sound engineer on the women's music circuit, and in 1975 she founded Woman Sound with singer Casse Culver. She toured with many performers, including Chris Williamson and Lily Tomlin, and did sound for the major women's music festivals and concerts at the time. She has a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, an M.S. in Audio Technology, and an M.L.S. in Library Science. Before retiring, Dr. Sandstrom was a lecturer and technical coordinator in the School of Music at the University of Maryland. 

Amy is joined by creators Alex Masse & Frankie Gunn to discuss their podcast, I'm Feeling Queer Today, and explore the critical importance of listening to queer youth, plus Alex and Frankie share guidance for those questioning their identity and for those interested in becoming better allies to the LGBTQIA+ community.Alex K. Masse is a writer, musician, and communications specialist from what is colonially known as British Columbia. Their work has been seen everywhere from the Scholastic Writing Awards to Autostraddle, as well as in collaboration with Penelope Scott, Vancouver Pride, Simon Fraser University, and more. They’re also a neurodivergent nonbinary lesbian, which greatly affects their process. When not writing, they’re making music, and when not making music, they’re writing. Occasionally, though, they can be seen working on their degree, or cozied up with their cat.Frankie Gunn is a transmasc interdisciplinary artist, musician and producer, currently working as a gardener in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Having not attended a traditional 4 year college, Frankie has acquired an a la carte education, doing everything from hairdressing and sound engineering to farming and agriculture. The thread that ties their work together is a hands on approach and a love of all things beautiful. 

Amy is joined by storyteller and founder of The Trevor Project, Celeste Lecesne, to discuss his incredible life of acting and activism, plus how a story can save a life, and exciting new ways our world is changing for (and thanks to) queer youth.James Celeste Lecesne is an American actor, author, screenwriter, and LGBT rights activist, best known for the Academy Award winning short film 'Trevor'. Lecesne has written several books, including Absolute Brightness and Virgin Territory, and is also active in the entertainment industry as an actor and producer. In 1998 Lecesne co-founded The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention for LGBT youth.

Amy is joined by activist and advocate Troy Williams to discuss his incredible coming out journey from the Eagle Forum to Equality Utah, plus how changing our perspective can help turn enemies into allies, and why people of all identities are needed in the struggle for equality.For the past two decades, Troy Williams has been a community organizer playing pivotal roles in passing laws and protections for the LGBTQ community in Utah, including the historic Utah Compromise, a statute against LGBTQ and racially inclusive hate crimes, and a ban on LGBTQ conversation therapy. In 2010, he co-wrote the award-winning play, "The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon" with the late Charles Lynn Frost, and has since worked on various movies and series centered around real-life stories and people from the Mormon faith. He became the executive director of Equality Utah in the fall of 2014 and was named one of the nation's 50 LGBTQ Champions of Pride in 2022 by The Advocate magazine.

Amy is joined by author Kara Loewentheil to discuss her book, Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get It Out, plus strategies to change our thought patterns, break out of sexist social conditioning, and live our values from the inside out.After graduating Harvard Law School, litigating reproductive rights, and running a think tank at Columbia University, Kara Loewentheil did what every Ivy League feminist lawyer should do: quit a prestigious academic career to become a life coach! Less than a decade after leaving the law, Kara has taught hundreds of thousands of women how to close the “Brain Gap” that keeps them feeling anxious and dis-empowered. Her work enables women to identify the ways that sexist social messages impact their brains and how to rewire their thought patterns to create true, authentic confidence from within. Her internationally top-ranked podcast, UnF*ck Your Brain, has been recommended by sources from The New York Times to the We Can Do Hard Things Podcast with Glennon Doyle.

Amy is joined by Sola Mahfouz & Malaina Kapoor to discuss their book, Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education, and explore the ongoing struggle for women's education in Afghanistan as well as Sola's remarkable journey from Kandahar to quantum computing.Sola Mahfouz was born in Afghanistan and immigrated to the United States in 2016 to attend college. She is currently a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University Quantum Information Group. In her free time, she is focusing on reading and studying different styles of fiction, as well as writing about the rugged homeland he's left behind. Malaina Kapoor is a writer from Redwood City, California. She previously served as a fellow at PEN America, where she advocated for international hu man rights, press freedom,. and election integrity. Kapoor served on the management team of a refugee resettlement organization an was the producer of In Deep, a nationally syndicated public affairs radio broadcast program. She as received national awards for her poetry, personal essays, and short stories, and will graduate from Stanford University in 2025.