the girls who gather podcast

Anna Jepson is an art director, writer, designer, photographer, recipe developer and all-around multi-hyphenate. She’s spent the last decade building a career in the food, beauty, and retail industries, but has found her creative home in fashion. She started her own blog about her adventures in cooking, community, and savoring the slow moments called The Féministe – whose mission is to spur us on towards unity, understanding and acceptance through recipes and authentic conversations. She has worked for some of the world’s biggest brands in beauty and apparel, including Sephora. She currently works as Art Director for Old Navy and Gap. New to New York City, she plans to take the next step of her creative calling through the pursuit of filmmaking. 

Lauren speaks with health coach, plant-based chef, architect, digital designer, and new mama, Sanza Monleon, on what it means to build a world for future generations.

Sanza is also the founder of the digital magazine the-eosia.com, and creator of The eosia Lifestyle, a digital magazine that helps busy women to improve their health and wellbeing while taking care of the planet.

In this episode, Lauren speaks with writer Elizabeth Moore about how she pursued her dreams, dwells in what she has created, and her creative process of listening and dictating.

Elizabeth is a graduate of Mississippi College and the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford University. Prior to her time at Oxford, she worked as a writing consultant, content manager, and virtual assistant to authors. She now works for Penguin Random House as a Publishing Associate for Vintage & Anchor Books. Elizabeth’s forthcoming book Liturgies for Hope (Waterbrook), co-authored with Audrey Elledge, will be published on November 1, 2022. Follow her writing at elizabethmoorewriting.com or on Instagram at @elizabethjmoore.

A mid-season check-in with our co-hosts Lauren Franco and Noelle Boyd where we talk about where we are as individuals and an organization.

A believer in turning dreams into realities, and a lover of all things good - Zipporah is a native of Northern Virginia and a recent graduate of Hampton University with a B.S. in Business Management. With her coexisting passions of being her own boss, uplifting women and girls, and sharing her passionate love for Christ, in 2018, Zipporah founded the nonprofit organization of Everyday Esther - an organization dedicated to the core pillars of education, service and sisterhood, and building partnerships with organizations in the Greater DC and Virginia community. 

 Today, she remains the Chief Executive Officer of Everyday Esther, and has also recently relocated to Dallas-Fort Worth, TX where she now also serves as a Community Specialist at Chirstian Vision - a non-profit ministry dedicated to globally reaching communities for Christ through optimized social media advertising, digital pioneering, and effective Gospel content creation. Zipporah is deeply passionate about youth, community development, marketing, non profit operations and faith-based leadership.

In this episode, Ha-Young and Noelle chat with Dr. Mary Cazabón about the ways in which language, verbal or otherwise, forms the way we see ourselves in our communities and in the world.

Dr. Mary Cazabón, Ed.D. is the Assistant Director of the Brockton School Community Engagement Project in Lesley University and a former professor of University of Massachusetts Boston of Applied Linguistics. She was also the former Director for Bilingual/ESL programs at Cambridge Public Schools for K-12 grades from 1994-2008, where she rendered technical services to dual and foreign language programs and instructional programs for ELLs as well as evaluations through her work from 2008 to present at WestEd. She has extensive experience in conducting research and evaluation, and in delivering technical assistance to schools, districts, universities, and state departments of education.

Kat Harris is the host of The Refined Collective Podcast, author of Sexless in the City, and Founder of the online publication The Refined Woman. She has also been a full-time photographer for over a decade with her work featured in: The New York Times, WWD, Vanity Fair, GQ, Forbes, People, Who What Wear, US Weekly, Glamour UK and more. In everything she does, her goal is to create a safe space to have honest and layered conversations around faith, sexuality, relationships, culture, identity, and everything in-between.

A passionate advocate with a demonstrated history of working in the fields of Human Rights, Gender Equity, and Immigration Law, Haddy Gassama is currently the National Director of Policy and Advocacy at UndocuBlack Network - a multigenerational network of currently and formerly undocumented Black people that fosters community, facilitates access to resources, and contributes to transforming the realities of those in the black community in order to thrive and lead fulfilling lives.

Becoming licensed to practice law in Washington D.C., she has since worked with organizations such as the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Washington College of Law International Human Rights Clinic, and represented survivors of torture from sub-Saharan African countries in their asylum proceedings. 

In this episode, Noelle chats with Haddy about her work as a lawyer and advocate in building a more just world.

You can find more of Haddy's writing here, and UndcouBlack statement on termination of Title 42 here.

Nathalie is a co-founder of Hearth Display and product builder passionate about design and technology. She’s led product design for B2C fintech and two-sided marketplace products and led design for global construction teams. Nathalie holds her Master’s in Architecture and Design and is an expert in design thinking, UI/UX, product strategy, and project management. As a first generation immigrant, Nathalie understands the desire to belong and the importance of building a solid foundation from scratch - in both her community and career.

Ale Siekmeier is a life coach, relational health expert, and founder of multiple businesses, including Between A+B, a relationship coaching business that she runs with her husband, Ben as well as her most recent endeavor, The Nett, a boutique match-making business based out of New York City. Ale is also a teacher, leading a course throughout the year called the Healthy Soul course, and she travels to speak, teach, and coach throughout the country. 

But for Ale, much of her current endeavors came from what she experienced growing up, having struggled for many years with trauma-induced shame and self-hatred, and eventually finding breakthrough. In this first episode of Season 3 of the podcast, we speak to Ale about how she has been able to lay a healthy foundation in both her personal and professional lives.