Hurt To Healing Workshop

Ashley-Lauren Elrod is an Emmy-nominated social-impact founder, board-certified mental-health coordinator, and exploitation-prevention strategist working at the intersection of storytelling, policy, and healing. As founder and CEO of Visionary Woman Productions, she builds creative campaigns with nonprofits to safeguard children and dismantle systems of abuse. A Black and Indigenous changemaker and survivor of exploitation, Ashley-Lauren leverages lived experience plus decades of service to advance survivor leadership and equitable media representation. Her flagship early-childhood initiative, The Maya’s Magic Word Project, equips caregivers and educators worldwide with creative tools that teach body autonomy, consent, and empowerment. Ashley-Lauren’s insights have informed audiences from the United Nations to grassroots youth collectives.

Farhan Manjiyani is an Ismaili Muslim of South Asian descent and a male survivor of childhood sexual assault who spent twenty years in silence before stepping into advocacy in 2025. He speaks to dismantle the cultural stigma that keeps men — especially men of color — from naming and healing their trauma. Through storytelling, he serves as a permission slip for others to begin their own healing journeys. His identity is rarely heard in survivor spaces: male, Muslim, South Asian, and American. His talks center on healing through vulnerability, cultural silence, and the radical power of telling your own truth.

Bamby Salcedo is a prominent transgender Latina activist and President and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, a nationally recognized organization advocating for transgender Latinas throughout the United States. She holds a master’s degree in Mexican and Latin@ Studies from California State University, LA, and developed the Center for Violence Prevention & Transgender Wellness, a multimillion-dollar, multipurpose space for trans people in Los Angeles. Bamby’s activism has brought visibility and a voice to the trans community and others by addressing issues including immigration, HIV, at-risk youth, LGBTQIA+ issues, and incarceration. Through her leadership, Bamby has developed organizations and networks supporting marginalized communities and continues to advocate for the rights, dignity, and humanity of those often silenced.

Mia Schachter is the author of How to Do Consent (Without Sounding Like A Robot), a multi-media artist, and an intimacy coordinator for TV, film, and theater. It’s their mission to make consent education as digestible and widely available as possible so others can identify their desires, needs, and boundaries and authentically express them to others in their own unique voice. Mia has taught and spoken for organizations including XBiz and the Directors Guild’s Women’s Steering Committee. Drawing on a background in philosophy, gender studies, ethics, and neuroscience—as well as their lived experience with chronic illness—Mia explores consent as a creative, anti-carceral practice that links body, desire, and imagination. Relationships are their life’s work.  

Katie Koestner is the first woman in the United States to speak out nationally and publicly as the victim of campus “date” rape at age 18. Katie has been featured on the cover of TIME Magazine, The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC Nightly News, CNBC Talk Live, CNN, Larry King Live, Good Morning America, Later Today, MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight and other national television programs. Katie is the subject of an HBO movie and has lectured for over 5000 schools and organizations in North America and around the world.