Image Description: A sweet-faced white Jewish nonbinary trans person with short hair, sitting in a wooden chair in a luscious garden space with California poppies in the foreground. They are wearing a gray argyle sweater, gray pants and silvery sneakers, with a furry little light brown dog on their lap.
Mordecai Cohen Ettinger
Founding Director
Mordecai Cohen Ettinger (they/them) has nearly 30 years experience as a multi-sector social justice activist and organizer, holistic healer, radical scholar, and educator. Mordecai co-founded the TGI Justice Project, served as an Interim Co-Director at Justice Now, and as Interim Executive Director at Caduceus Outreach Services, a radical mental health organization. They are adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Their field is critical science, technology, and medicine studies. Mordecai’s research spans environmental health and toxicology, to the workings of the Medical Industrial Complex, to the neurobiology of the social nervous system, and its implications with regard to collective and historical trauma, healing, resilience and social change. Schooled by years of movement work, and trained in Somatic Experiencing, Reiki, and Cranial Sacral therapy, they have studied with Dr. Peter Levine, biophysicist and founder of Somatic Experiencing and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Finally, Mordecai is queer/gender non-binary. They are a survivor of radiation poisoning and what is designated by the UN to be medical torture. They’re here for transforming the Medical Industrial Complex for our futures to be possible.
Image Description: Diana, a golden brown skin queer femme with long dark wavy hair, is outside on a bright day. She wears large glasses and looks at the camera. They are wearing a black top and long white earrings.
Diana Mendoza
Administrative and Development Coordinator
Diana Mendoza (she/they) is a queer parent of two living in Tewa land, also known as New Mexico. She was born and raised in Southern California and Mexico. Their maternal line comes from the Nahua people of Guerrero, Tierra Caliente region. Her 15+ years of work experience include working as a program manager for a domestic worker program, a union organizer for social workers and public health nurses, and leading outreaching, advocacy and education efforts in non-profit and clinical settings. When she is not working she enjoys home cooked meals, movie nights, writing and drawing with her kids, living room dance parties, and being sweet on the Sandia mountains.
Image Description: An East-Asian masc-presenting person that is smiling with a buzz cut wearing a blue and yellow striped polo shirt. They have glasses and are standing against a background with leaves and a semi-wall.
Image Description: Rise, a Black disabled femme, is pictured from the chest up in a black hoodie and a leopard print headwrap. Jelly, a black cockapoo, is sitting on their forearm in a teal hoodie. They are both looking forward into the camera.
Image Description: Brunem, a white femme with long wavy red hair and bangs, looks directly at the camera. They are wearing a rosy lip color, winged eyeliner, a black mesh shirt, bronze chainmail earrings, and a small gold necklace.
Image Description: A Black transmasc person with orange and red dreadlocs smiling. They have an eyebrow piercing, a septum ring, and two blue studs on one nostril. They are wearing a green shirt and are standing against a blue background with pink clouds.
Dominick Ming-Fai Yu
Logistics and Movement-Building Intern
Dominick (they/them) is a Senior at Pitzer College as a Community Health and Justice major and Asian-American Studies minor. They are currently exploring community and organizational structures that offer support in the form of care, joy, community, and security for trans* youths. They are passionate about stories, new things, their communities, and taking the time to do nothing. In their free time, they like to play video games and lay around. Post-graduation, they hope to continue working with HJC and find a job that will allow them to save up to pay off their student loans.
Rise (Nerissa Osby)
Health Justice Commons Facilitator
Rise (they/them) is a queer, Black, disabled writer, poet, and artist living on Potowatomi Land (Chicago). They are a Trauma and Disability Justice facilitator. They are also a meditation facilitator and Birth / Abortion / Grief & Loss Care Worker. Rise is deeply invested in disability justice, access, centering wellness for Black queer folk, trauma education, and rest. When they are not doing the most, they are daydreaming and hanging with their support pup, Jelly Ferocious.
Brunem Warshaw
Social Media & Community Engagement Coordinator
Brunem (they/them) is a white Jewish nonbinary femme with invisible disabilities living on eastern Cherokee land in Nashville, TN. In addition to organizing with HJC, Brunem is a clinical herbalist, standardized patient, and sexual health educator. Their clinical herbalism practice Well Deep Remedies focuses on serving their communities with navigating trauma recovery, addiction, mental health, disability, and ancestral connection. When they are not working, they can be found gardening, doting on their cat, eating desserts, doing arts and crafts, and building community with other disabled queer people.
Ziggy
Social Media & Community-Building Intern
Ziggy (they/he) is a mad transmasc grad student studying neuroengineering. His research interests are primarily biomedical imaging systems. He would like to study and develop efficient, non-invasive imaging techniques for things such as cancer detection. Originally from coastal Virginia, he now lives in Indiana, attending Indiana University Bloomington. Very passionate about abolishing carceral systems and removing hierarchies in access to knowledge, they began prison abolition and radical science movement work with Indiana Department of Corrections Watch and Free Rads two years ago. They spend their free time skateboarding, roller skating, drawing portraits, and hanging out with their cat.