Within every society, sense makers—researchers, journalists, documentarians, and storytellers—play a critical role in providing evidence for advocacy, shaping public opinion, documenting the effects of policy on communities, and strengthening accountability. While attacks on clinicians and advocates working on sexual and reproductive health rights and justice frequently make headlines, efforts to suppress research, journalism, and diverse forms of evidence within the movement are also underway – and sometimes under the radar.

Join the Universal Access Project and C.A. Goldberg for an intimate dinner on the sidelines of the Commission on the Status of Women to discuss the importance of diverse forms of evidence in the movement, common suppression tactics leveraged by the opposition and the legal, policy and philanthropic pathways forward.

Program

6:30pm Arrivals & Mingling

6:50pm Program Begins

Opening Remarks

Dilly Severin, Executive Director, Universal Access Project

Carrie Goldberg Esq., Founder, C.A. Goldberg

Remarks from Special Guests

Dr. Andrea Swartzendruber, Associate Professor, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of Georgia

Dr. Chelsea Polis, Senior Scientist of Epidemiology at the Center for Biomedical Research at the Population Council

Open Discussion

8:30pm Program Ends

Speakers

Dilly Severin

Executive Director, Universal Access Project

Dilly Severin is a dynamic leader and strategic communications and advocacy expert with more than 15 years of experience in the fields of international development, sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender equality. Before coming to UAP, she served as Senior Director of Advocacy and Communications for Data2X, a civil society organization working to improve the use of gender data to drive gender equality and the Sustainable Development Goals. As Senior Director for Global Initiatives at FP2020, Dilly oversaw the Global Initiatives team and managed the Reference Group. Dilly also served as the director of communications at PAI and worked at the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity and at the International Youth Foundation. Dilly holds a master’s of public policy in international development from the University of Maryland and a master’s of communication from American University.

Carrie Goldberg, Esq.

Founder, C.A. Goldberg

ACarrie is the founder of C.A. Goldberg, PLLC. She is a victims’ rights attorney who has built a team that provides cutting edge legal help for clients under attack. She is the author of Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Perv, and Trolls. Carrie’s work includes pioneering product liability litigation for victims of catastrophic injuries against technology and social media companies and representation of numerous abortion providers and clinics under attack by extremists. Prior to opening her firm in 2014, Carrie was the Associate Director of Legal Services at The Vera Institute of Justice, Inc. Guardianship Project and was a case manager for Nazi victims and Holocaust survivors with Selfhelp Community Services in Manhattan.

Dr. Andrea Swartzendruber

Associate Professor, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of Georgia

Dr. Swartzendruber is an associate professor in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department in the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia. Her areas of expertise include sexual and reproductive health, adolescent health, and health policy. Dr. Swartzendruber is Co-PI of CPC Map, an online geocoded directory of all of the crisis pregnancy centers currently operating in the United States. She is also currently PI of a research study that aims to identify barriers, facilitators, and policy recommendations to expand access to contraception and maternity care through primary care physicians in the state of Georgia. Prior to her university faculty appointment, Dr. Swartzendruber worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 9 years. There she contributed to randomized controlled trials of HIV prevention interventions for injection drug users, led evaluations of national programs to prevent perinatal HIV transmission in multiple countries, and independently provided technical assistance to Ministries of Health and U.S. government offices in Africa and Asia to scale up national perinatal HIV prevention programs. Dr. Swartzendruber has authored >55 scientific peer-reviewed publications. Her research has informed local, state, and federal policy and been featured in major international and national media outlets, including The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Time Magazine, NPR, NBC News, and CBS News. Dr. Swartzendruber earned her doctorate in reproductive health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health.

Dr. Chelsea Polis

Senior Scientist of Epidemiology at the Center for Biomedical Research at the Population Council

Chelsea Polis is senior scientist of epidemiology at the Center for Biomedical Research (CBR) at the Population Council. Polis serves on CBR’s leadership team, advising on product development strategy, providing essential perspective on key attributes for sexual and reproductive health products, and contributing to the understanding of the actual and potential impact of CBR’s work.

Polis is an epidemiologist who works toward improving global sexual and reproductive health on issues including contraception, HIV, abortion, and infertility. Her collaborations with the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have contributed to efforts in updating global contraceptive guidance in the World Health Organization’s Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use. Between 2011–2014, Polis served as senior epidemiological advisor to the Office of Population and Reproductive Health at the United States Agency for International Development. From 2014–2021, Polis worked for the Guttmacher Institute, leading projects on sexual and reproductive health in collaboration with scientists from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ghana, South Africa, and elsewhere. She has also worked or consulted for organizations including Ibis Reproductive Health, the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UCSF, the International Consortium for Emergency Contraception, ETR, and the Initiative for Multipurpose Prevention Technologies.

Polis has published more than 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has been cited in outlets including BBC News, Time Magazine, NPR, CNN, The Economist, Kaiser Health News, Scientific American, Pacific Standard, STAT News, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Popular Science.

Polis received her doctorate in reproductive health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and her undergraduate degree in medical anthropology from Brown University.