At Elephant Circle we work with many people, organizations, families, and teams.
Our work in this field preceded Elephant Circle’s formal beginnings. For example we helped the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity plan an event in 2008 to bring the issue of personhood to the table from the perspective of pregnancy and childbirth, and wrote op-eds with Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women on the subject. Angela Moreno, NAPW Board Member, was a speaker at that event, and was involved in early Elephant Circle thinking (and helped us find our name).
Even before that some of our practice and our relationships were forged in the Luz Reproductive Justice Think Tank which started in 2006 after the Southwest Partnership convening initiated by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Choice USA. Seth O'Donovan, Jacy Montoya and Indra Lusero were active participants in that group and formative to Elephant Circle on many levels.
Jennifer Eyl, Edith Sargon, Elisabeth Long , Zoë Williams and Beth Chambers have played key roles in advancing Elephant Circle work, along with Neha Mahajan, Ben Jansen, Emily Flynn, Sunnivie Brydum, Rebecca Arno, Christopher Price, Adrienne Mansanares and the Community Economic Development Clinic at DU Law School who have provided discreet advice, guidance and help.
The members of the Incarcerated Survivors Initiating Social Change group at Denver Women's Correctional Facility have also been instrumental. They have educated the broader EC community about their experiences and helped develop our prison work, along with their founding facilitators Seth O'Donovan and Elisabeth Long. Laura Portalupi, Colleen Hackett, Sarah Tyson, Elliotte Krier, Maya Davis, and Rosie Yarrow have also been instrumental in developing and supporting that group.
Interns and fellows like Elisabeth Long, Shandanette Molnar, Laura Portalupi, Misty Saribal, and Briana Simmons have been critical to advancing our work along with an ever expanding list of organizations and their people like the Midwives Alliance of North America, the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, the Family Law and Cannabis Alliance, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, Birth Rights Bar Association, Human Rights in Childbirth, the Denver Health Doula Program, CoreAlign...
Our founding Board of Directors included: Claudia Booker, Lorena Garcia, Nekole Shapiro and Demetra Seriki. Today our board consists of: Lorena Garcia, Lyz Riley Sanders, Amanda Coslor, and Demetra Seriki. The core staff includes: Indra Lusero, Director; Heather Thompson and Vita Malama, Co-Deputy Directors; Sarah Lopez, Community Doula; Lauren Smith Policy Director and Manager of Black Civic Engagement; Anna Reed, Director of Legal Services; Michelina Ferrara, Creative Director; and Pia Long, Full Spectrum Reproductive Justice Birthworker Organizer. Of course we do all of this in partnership with key volunteers, and those people, organizations, families, and teams that make this work worth doing.
