2024-2025 Directorate Board Candidates
S. Gibson
Running for: Co-Chair, Convention Relations Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hi everyone! My name is S. Gibson-I go by Gibson. I use they/them pronouns. I work at Amherst College as the Assistant Director of their LGBTQ+ Resource Center. I am a much newer member to ACPA, and am looking forward to bringing all of that energy and excitement into CFI-whether I am on the Directorate Board or not! On a personal note, I love all things food-cooking, eating…all of the above. I’m neurodivergent, very queer and trans, and love thinking about new ways of being in community, in family, in the world! I’m a nerd and live for the integration of theory into practice.
co-chair-I am at my best when I’m working on a team that I believe in, supporting in a variety of capacities. The work of the Co-chair mirrors that which I do in my professional career-supporting a team and ensuring everyone has what they need to be successful, while also representing that team in other spaces. Motivated by the identities which I hold, one of my main focuses would be connecting CFI with other Coalitions and Networks to help us to continue progressing towards our intersectional aims. I operate under an ethic of care, liberatory love, and trust.
convention relations-One of my favorite parts of my current job is working towards a big event. It’s so fun to put intentional planning, thought, and time into one particular event. I continue to marvel at the ways that so many spaces are inaccessible, simply because no one thought practically about how to make the space more accessible. My hope would be that as Convention Relations Chair, I would be able to advocate for fat people and put work into making the convention experience even more positive and connective.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
In my personal politics, I want to align with the most marginalized and consistently push towards voices that are less heard, less prominent, or less centered in any environment. CFI has been the space within ACPA where I have seen and felt that work happening! My hope is that we will continue to center Black, Trans, Queer, Low Income voices in our conversations around our fat identities. It is also vital to me that while I may be in a role within CFI, my work and approach will look to those more marginalized than I am and not stop the work of advocacy when I feel my needs are met and my concerns are being centered.
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Janae Due
Running for: Awards & Recognition Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hi y’all! My name is Janae (they/them), and I am interested in being the Awards and Recognition Chair for 2024-2025. I am the director of the Prism Center for Queer and Trans Life at Middlebury College in Vermont. I also do a lot of community work with the local teen center, Palestinian liberation, and abolition. In my free time, I like to game, read romance novels, and garden.
As the immediate past Co-Chair of CFI, I spent the last three years working towards CFI into coalitionhood with an amazing team. Now that my term is up, I want to continue on with this team to keep propelling the coalition forward. CFI is still so new, and I see this as an opportunity to continue building towards an inclusive, rad space.
Fat liberation is deeply important to me, not only as a fat person, but as a person deeply invested in the liberation for all people. I see fat liberation integral to this work. It is important for fat student affairs practitioners and fat students to receive the recognition of their work, advocacy, and scholarship. Oftentimes fat people are hyper visible due to fat bias and stereotypes rather than fat activism, intellectualism, and community. Because of this, I would love to be the Chair of Awards and Recognition.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
It is impossible to do fat liberation work without understanding anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity. I pride myself on my critical consciousness, and I use Black queer feminist thought as means to make sense of the world and to advocate for justice. I will continue to advocate for policy and procedure change in ACPA to better support fat people. I am a systems thinker, and prefer to think about how systemic oppression is the main obstacle, rather than focusing on the illusion of individual choices made. Thus, I focus on body liberation as a means of (fat, racial, queer, disabled) freedom, versus utilizing body positivity.
Awards and Recognition are crucial in showcasing the amazing fat people in our field. They also need to be sensitive to who is applying, who is getting recognized, and who of this is perceived through a racially just, queer, and fat liberatory lens. As Chair, it would be important for me to think about how we are attracting people to nominate themselves/others for awards, and potentially giving separate awards for fat BIPOC, given the compounding factors of identity. I am excited to do this work, to figure out what awards are meaningful for us as a coalition, and to start recognizing fat practitioners for ACPA25.
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Grace Riggert
Running for: Convention Relations Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
My name is Grace Riggert and I currently serve as a Resident Director at Loyola University Chicago. I am interested in serving as CFI’s Convention Relations Chair after being in community CFI at this year’s ACPA conference. This year was my second year attending ACPA and it has truly reestablished my “why” in student affairs.
In looking at CFI’s core mission and values, I find that they mirror my own in wanting to create spaces that are inclusive. As a queer practitioner who has worked in university housing for many years I have been able to advocate for both students and professional staff to makes spaces accessible and ergonomic to all identities and the bodies they inhabit; whether it is advocating for operations to examine the weight limits of university purchased furniture, or offering accessibility during high heat times of move in. I greatly appreciate CFI’s inclusion of all abilities and bodies for all folx who have been historically denied a seat at the table. I would love to work with CFI whose work I feel continues to ask whether the table is even the best place to have this conversation. It would be my honor to serve as the Convention Relations Committee and to continue my ACPA journey by both finding space s in which CFI can continue to grow while encouraging others to help volunteer to spread the work this emerging coalition presents. Thank you for your consideration of my application.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
As noted in the mission and values, fat liberation is a goal born of intersectionality. Intersectionality being key in CFI’s foundation along with the connections between anti-blackness and anti-fatness is so important as this movement is only possible through the work of Black women in particular. With liberation being the ultimate goal I am reminded of a quote from the Strategic Imperative, saying that, “colleges and universities become homes for circumstances that reproduce outcomes of push-out and exclusion” and that “the institutional promotion of grit, resilience, and belongingness subject Indigenous and racially minoritized students to rhetorics of disadvantage that presume they are in need of fixing, instead of our institutions” (ACPA, pg. 6). At ACPA I attended a session titled “Unreasonable Hospitality: Implications for Reimagining Student Affairs Practice” where the presenters emphasized transformation over resilience. Liberation is only attainable through breaking the mold instead of shrinking ourselves to fit. While serving on the directorate board I look to contribute to the SIRJD by helping CFI continue to take up space by clearing a path and having ACPA make room for CSI, not out of obligation, but as tenant of true justice for every person in every body.
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Liz Wallace
Running for: Fundraising & Finance Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hello, Friends! I am Lizzie Wallace and am applying for the position of Fundraising and Finance Chair. I am challenging myself to apply to this position – I had originally intended to be an active member for a year until I saw Jessica’s post on the remaining open position. Why? My day job is serving as director of my campus DEIAB office. In Oklahoma. As a fat-bodied, disabled, queer, Asian American woman, I do not have a community of support at my own institution at the level I felt with the Coalition at ACPA and I didn’t realize just how much I needed it. I want to be an active and engaged member of the Coalition to be part of co-creating this beautiful community, to work collectively toward liberation and to uphold others as we do the work together.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
If elected, as a member of CFI’s board, I will actively continue my own unlearning, hold space for others in their place in the journey, remain dedicated and determined to the work of decolonization. I pledge to continue working towards collective liberation and support the Coalition and ACPA in the work.
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Jo Wilson
Running for: Fundraising & Finance Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hi all! My name is Jo Wilson (they/them pronouns) and I currently work in Housing and Residence Life at George Mason University. Although my involvement with the Coalition for Fat Identities (CFI) has been recent, I have already felt a warm welcome and positive affinity with others in this space. I have been involved with ACPA since late 2019 and after finding much of who I want to be personally and professionally alongside ACPA, the CFI has also shown me an affirming community that I have searched for since joining the organization.
I am writing to show interest in the Fundraising and Finance Chair for the CFI as this is a pivotal role in the amplification of the CFI’s mission to create fat liberation and justice for all in higher education. With the CFI’s new Coalition status and expanding research, engagement, awareness, and fat joy, this Chair position is crucial to and correlates with the CFI’s success in these areas. Particularly as the CFI wants to expand membership and methods of involvement, I would be beyond willing to expand awareness of the CFI’s mission and work have the support and resources to reach its full potential.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
Given the history and modern implications of fatphobia, healthism, and other similar systems of oppression having deep intersections with anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity (just to name a few), it is impossible to support the CFI holistically without considering the strategic imperative. During the past business meeting, other members expressed potential interest in CFI faculty and practitioner-in-residence positions, and I believe expanding the financial capacity of the CFI to focus on anti-racist and decolonial voices would be critical to begin initiatives like this. Continuing to center these voices and histories is critical to supporting all fat lives and bodies to thrive within higher education as it is now and can be in the future.
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Priyanka Bharadwaj
Running for: Marketing & Communications Chair; Membership & Engagement Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hello! My name is Priyanka (she/her), and I am currently the Assistant Director of LGBTQ Student Services at Rutgers University – Newark. I have been fat since I was quite young, so I have dealt with the repercussions of being fat in modern society for much of my life. I understand folks’ experiences with not fitting into desks, being the last one to finish the mile, and asking for a seatbelt extender on airplanes. Attending ACPA and becoming involved with CFI over the past couple years has opened so many doors for me, from finding more fat community to learning about fat studies as a research area. I am nominating myself for the Marketing & Communications Chair or the Membership & Engagement Chair.
I would like to be Marketing & Communications Chair as my first choice, as I have a passion for designing social media content. So much advertisement and recruitment happens through social media, so our graphics need to be appealing and eye-catching as a draw-in for folks to get involved with CFI. I would also emphasize doing highlights of fat individuals, fat research, and general tips and tricks for fat folks to be more comfortable in life. This reflects the core values of Advocacy, Education, and Engagement that CFI upholds. By encouraging social media engagement, we will be able to create a stronger community for fat folks, promote education around fat liberation and justice, and work towards accessibility for all fat identities.
My second choice of chair position is the Membership and Engagement Chair. My career is devoted to facilitating social and developmental programs for students, so I would love the opportunity to showcase these skills in programming for other fat folks. I love the work that I do because it helps create inclusive and safe spaces for folks with marginalized identities, and this can be a reality for folks joining CFI as well. In order to keep members engaged, we need to have a combination of fun spaces where folks can feel comfortable in their bodies, as well as educational spaces for folks to learn more about fat justice and liberation, and how to work on dismantling systems of oppression in order to achieve liberation for all marginalized identities.
Regardless of which position I serve in, I will always bring passion and positive energy to the work I do. I hope to bring a fresh feeling to this new Coalition, and establish some traditions that will carry on through the legacy of CFI. I have so much love for this community I have found at ACPA, and even if I am not on the Directorate after these elections, I will still always stay connected and involved!
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
The Strategic Imperative for Racial Justice and Decolonization emphasizes first and foremost that all forms of oppression are linked. This is something that I want to keep very centered in the work I do with CFI, emphasizing that racism and colonialism are very real, present, enduring, and intersectional. In our fight to end fat oppression, we must never forget the oppression of other marginalized identities and people, and always advocate for marginalized communities in our work in higher education. As quoted from the Strategic Imperative for Racial Justice and Decolonization, “Our collective education, research and scholarship, advocacy, and capacity will create positive change in higher education.” I truly believe that by speaking about different forms of oppression linked to identities I hold as a Fat, Queer, Woman of Color, without ever forgetting my privileges in society and utilizing those privileges to uplift the struggles of other communities and advocate for equity for all people.
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Sophie Calhoun
Running for: Marketing & Communications Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
I have had the most amazing experience being the Marketing and Communications Chair for this year—and I do not feel like I am done! It was my intention in my time on directorate this year to awaken our presence on social media, strengthen our engagement across our platforms for communication, and establish our unique branding, and I feel we have made marked strides in those directions and accomplished much of what we hoped to do! One of my proudest achievements on the directorate up to this point has been the creation of our logo. We as a directorate felt strongly that we wanted a new design from what we had as a task force, and we also felt like a silhouette was not the way to go, as there is not a singular silhouette that can represent fatness in all of its variance. I workshopped ideas for the logo, and landed on a sketch that would inform its final design, which is an “X” intersected with an infinity symbol. This logo, to me, represented 3 things that are representative of fatness, which are:
1) The need for extension. Whether it be clothing, furniture, support, opinions, or legal protection, people who inhabit fat bodies require an extension to existing structures.
2) Intersectional experiences. Fatness sits at the intersection of a vast array of oppressive and marginalizing forces. Those who hold multiple marginalized identities feel the societal and structural realities of anti-fatness in an entirely different way.
3) Community. Fat individuals in community with one another are powerful. Through sharing of resources, disruption of standard practices, and deconstruction of assumptions, the fat community is a force.
When I joined the directorate, we had an Instagram page that had 15 posts, the last of which was posted in 22, and a Discord with 31 members that had fallen largely dormant. I am very proud to say that with the support of my fellow directorate members, we now have an active Instagram where we are seeing steady additions to our following each week, an X account that is in its developmental stage, and a new Discord that has surpassed our prior membership in only 3 months that remains active. I started revamping our socials and Discord in January of 2024 after our logo was completed and approved, and the directorate unanimously to go in a creative direction. This, I feel, was a very important choice in the legacy of CFI—because it is a statement on how we view fatness and fat people. Fatness is so often viewed as a deficit, a barrier to the experiences that thin people can have in society—and we are rejecting that! We contest, that instead, fatness allows creation of new ways, new ideas, and fresh perspectives. I feel strongly I have just scratched the surface on all that our brand can become and all of the ways that CFI can engage the fat community and disrupt anti-fat structures to build new ones that serve all bodies
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
Anti-fatness, like most forms of oppression, finds its roots in white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and colonialism. The only way to promote equity and justice are to disrupt those forces by embodying the antithesis of their ideals. Fat bodies are the living representation of what these structures preach against, and to live in a fat body and demand the sanctity of that body is an act of resistance. Marketing and Communication can certainly be an ancillary component of a team like CFI—it can be a complementary sidekick if not approached with intention. My professional role is in the realm of communication, and has taught me the value of intentional communication structures—because if done correctly, these can be the tools to de-mystify, to reveal, and to empower. I will work to make our channels of communication platforms upon which to uplift fat voices, demonstrate fat work, reveal fat scholarship, and distribute fat resources. I will ensure the voice of CFI is a voice that rejects structures of white supremacy and colonization, and promotes equity and liberation for all bodies, which can never be possible in a world where Black, brown, indigenous, queer, disabled, and non-Christian bodies are oppressed and endangered.
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Jordan Dedrick
Running for: Membership & Engagement Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hello! My name is Jordan Dedrick and I am interested in serving as the Membership and Engagement Chair for the Coalition for Fat Identities Directorate Board for 2024-2025! I currently work at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and am a recently thin person. I mention this because, for about 20 years of my life, I was a fat person, and becoming thin has shown me some of the inequities fat individuals can face. I think about how I have been treated differently during my transition, and I have made it a goal of mine to think through accessibility and how individuals connect.
In this position, I would love to connect with others and build a community to talk about our intersecting identities and how they frame our way of thinking. I am hoping to build a community of support for individuals to think through how we support others and one another in our bodies.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
I would contribute to the SIRJD by thinking about how we can dismantle systems that benefit others in various ways through building a community where we can share ideas and how we have battled systems geared toward supporting white supremacy. This can include topics around accessibility, community, and common thoughts that have become pervasive and second-nature.
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Mikayla Pruitt
Running for: Membership & Engagement Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hello! I am Mack Yohe, I use She/They pronouns, and I work at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. My day job consists of serving as the Senior Student Affairs Specialist for our Student Activities and Organizations office. Outside of work, I find life in cooking; movement of all kinds; organizing; and spending time with my community, partner, and two cats. I became a member of the Taskforce for Fat Identities during ACPA22, served on the Membership and Engagement Committee for the 22-23 year, and served as the Membership and Engagement Committee Chair for the 23-24 year.
I would be honored to serve as the Membership and Engagement Chair again this year as we continue to establish ourselves as ACPA’s newest coalition! Something I lead with in my own life is the inherent need for community, and I believe this position is integral in helping us develop a community within this coalition. As Membership and Engagement Chair, my goals align directly with the coalition’s goals of continuing to build membership, encourage conference attendance, and creating ways for us to intentionally engage with each other.
To meet these goals, I would seek to build collaborative partnerships with the entire directorate, but specifically the Marketing and Communications and Research and Scholarship Chairs. The Marketing and Communications Chair/Committee will be deeply important to help us reach not only our current members, but people who haven’t joined us yet. Additionally, the Research and Scholarship Chair/Committee will be deeply important to work with to avoid programming over each other, but also a great partnership to have so we can develop intentional academic and/or professional development programming for our members.
Finally, outside of collaborative initiatives, I also want to get us to a point where we have one optional social event a month for our members, one academic and/or professional development program a year (with the hope of setting us up well to do one twice a year in coming years!), a monthly newsletter, a hybrid synchronous and asynchronous book club, and an interactive way to connect members outside of our regularly scheduled programming (ex. Pen pals, gift exchanges, fat Stanley, etc.).
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
The existence of the Coalition for Fat Identities is inherently contributing to ACPA’s SIRJD. However, beyond doing the general work of building coalition, I find that the role of the Membership and Engagement Chair has the opportunity to center ACPA’s SIRJD to build a community foundation rooted in these practices. This looks like grounding all social programming in the foundation of love for ourselves and each other through ensuring our programming is inclusive, meets the interest of all members, and allows us to build authentic community. This also looks like ensuring our academic and/or professional development programming centers the voices of Black, Indigenous, and Other People of Color, who hold a myriad of gender identities, through the books we read, the best practices we share, and the ways of knowing we utilize. Failure to do so means we are not honoring the history of anti-fatness, fatphobia, or Fat Identities, thus not learning from it or utilizing it to inform our ways forward in addressing fatphobia or anti-fatness in higher education.
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Mia Wilson
Running for: Research & Scholarship Chair
Please introduce yourself and describe why you would like to serve in the chair position(s) you chose (please separate your answers for each position, making sure to label them), describing how you will contribute to the specific goals of the committee.
Hi! My name is Mia Wilson (she/her), and I am a new professional within the field of higher education. In May of 2022, I graduated from The Ohio State University, earning a Master of Arts in Educational Studies, with a specialization in Higher Education and Student Affairs. It was during my time at OSU that I started to engage with the topic of fatphobia in a deeper way. Throughout my two years in the program, I situated many of my papers and projects within anti-fat bias as it pertains to university settings. With recognition that fat studies is a (relatively) new area of study, it did not take me long to realize that this work within the context of higher education had a long way to go. I sought to introduce/increase awareness of fatphobia, and began to prompt student affairs professionals with new ways of thinking by challenging previously held notions, and interrogating anti-fat bias.
My interest in engaging with research and literature on the topic of fatphobia, and newly, the concept of fat joy, of which CFI has so clearly centered in its efforts, combined with my passion for challenging and reimaging the ways that we think about fatness, I believe would make me a strong candidate for the Research and Scholarship Chair. Last month, I attended my second-ever ACPA annual convention. The year prior, I was fortunate to be present for the annual convention in New Orleans, and it was here that I first connected with the Coalition for Fat Identities (then: the Task Force for Fat Folx.) It was through this space and the connections that I made within it that I felt a degree of belonging in which I had not ever experienced before. The relationships that I have established as a result of the coalition are ones that I do not take for granted, and it has allowed me to feel a newfound connectedness to higher education and the work that we do as student affairs practitioners.
It was incredible to attend CFI-sponsored sessions this past month that intentionally centered fat joy amongst practitioners by bearing witness to the testimonies of fellow fat students affairs professionals sharing their experiences. Something that I have continued to think about upon my return from ACPA24 is about what it means for something to be considered “research.” This was prompted by one of the current CFI Directorate Board members, Sophie Calhoun, during the open business meeting at the convention. Sophie so clearly put to words that there are many instances of (fat) scholarship, though because this work is not formally published, or considered as “scholarly,” it goes unseen, or is invalidated. I believe that the Coalition for Fat Identities has full potential, and the passion, to truly challenge the confines of research and scholarship, anti-fatness, and what it means to feel joy as student affairs/higher education professionals, and as a field at large, and I would love to contribute in this effort.
Please describe how you will contribute to ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization in your role on the CFI Directorate.
If selected to serve as Research and Scholarship Chair on the Coalition for Fat Identities’ Directorate Board, I would demonstrate a commitment to advancing ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization by helping cultivate an environment within the coalition that operates under full recognition of the inextricable link between anti-Black racism, and anti-fatness. This would mean prioritizing and centering scholarship by Black voices, and naming the historical origins of fatphobia–Much of which is tied directly to the slavery of Africans upon being forcibly brought to the United States–in all that we would do.
It is to my understanding that a book club within CFI has already been planned, and that members will be reading The Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’shaun L. Harrison over the summer. This aids nicely to the above-described plan in that it creates the opportunity for the Directorate Board, in addition to participating general members, to enter this next chapter of CFI under this imperative. I would aid in the planning of additional programming and resources that would center racially diverse voices within the fat community to further the goals and efforts of the coalition, as well as ACPA more broadly.
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