“I’m a children’s and young adult book author, which means I am in a rare industry that’s largely dominated by women. YA is, as a genre, so mature in its intersectional feminism, and so writing within that framework gives authors interested in that incredible leeway to ask difficult questions, to play more with more risk.

“There will always be a market for books about exceptionally beautiful girls who are deadly with a sword or something, but it’s a real gift not to be limited to that tough girl trope as a market expectation. However, the real world is not our very niche corner of a niche industry, and so there’s this bizarre mismatch between the general world that bumps up against our work and those of us who are immersed within it. And it’s in the moments when that mismatch is most apparent that I feel like it’s possible anything I’ve written could have some minute value in the world; a girl will reach out and tell me she’s come out because of something I wrote. Or she’ll write to tell me that she’d been sexually assaulted, and my goofy book helped her feel like she could talk about it. And it makes me grateful for the many women who’ve made YA what it is. Without them neither myself nor the girls who’ve written to me would have found our place.”
– Maggie Tokuda-Hall

“For the vast majority of my professional life, my focus has been to ignite positive social change through strategic communications, advocacy and partnership creation between the private and nonprofit sectors. Growing up, I was taught kindness, curiosity and compassion from the earliest days of my upbringing. Now as a grown Jewish woman, a day does not go by that I don’t incorporate those values that were embedded in me by my parents.”    – Susan McPherson

“Being a trans woman director and producer in Hollywood is unprecedented. I often feel like I am plowing through the woods with a machete, willing my way forward…(I champion women’s issues) because patriarchy is toxic poison and has devastated all of us irreversibly, and because I strive to be an embodiment of Tikkun Olam.

“My Jewish ancestors are alive inside of me: in my genes, my imagination, and my spiritual core. My Jewish values are infused in everything I do.”
– Zackary Drucker