Ritwik Saliya Dutta is from the northeast (hails from Assam), is an OBC and has been living in Delhi for the past six years.  He is currently pursuing his master’s degree. He has been a contributing writer for YKA, FII and more. He has been working as a social media strategist with Transmen Collective. He has also worked on influencer marketing for quite some time. He has assisted with a report on “Understanding experiences of transgender persons under expanding militarism”, a study that was supported by Asia-Pacific Transgender Network and is currently writing a research report on masculinity among north eastern transmen and how it intersects with different spaces in Delhi, as part of a fellowship conducted by Writing Urban India. He is also working as a freelance copywriter for a company called as i-believe.

Madhusudana Battala, Ph.D., is Senior Program Officer at the Population Council office in New Delhi, India. He holds a Ph.D. and Masters in Population Studies from International Institute for Population Studies, Mumbai, India. He completed MSc. in Geography from Srikrishna Devaraya University, Anantapur. Dr. Battala has over 15 years of research experience in the fields of Family planning, gender equity, gender-based violence, reproductive health, community mobilization, and HIV. He has led the implementation of research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National AIDS Control Organization, and has published more than 25 peer-reviewed research articles in international journals. He is well-versed in mixed methods research skills. Prior to joining the Population Council, he worked as an IT consultant for WHO-SEARO on Global Adult Tobacco Survey. He engaged in large-scale sample surveys while working at IIPS, Mumbai, where he trained himself in public health research and evaluation methods.

Dr. Venkatesan Chakrapani, MD, PhD, is Chairperson of Centre for Sexuality and Health Research and Policy (C-SHaRP; www.c-sharp.in) in Chennai, and DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellow (https://www.indiaalliance.org/fellow/venkatesan-chakrapani-md-phd). For nearly two decades, his focus has been on applied and policy-oriented health research and policy issues related to sexual and gender minorities, in collaboration with those communities. His studies among sexual and gender minorities have provided evidence base on: stigma, discrimination and structural violence; barriers to HIV prevention/treatment and gender transition services; influence of sexual and gender minority stigmas on mental health, association between psychosocial problems and HIV risk, acceptability of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, presence of syndemics and effectiveness of syndemic theory-based interventions. He has published 60+ peer-reviewed research articles, five book chapters and 80+ policy/technical reports. He has conducted several training programs for healthcare providers on sexual and gender minorities (www.indianLGBThealth.info). He serves as the Chair of India’s National AIDS Control Organisation’s Technical Resource Group on transgender people. 

Carmen Logie, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Social Justice with Marginalized Populations, is an Associate Professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto. Her research program advances understanding of, and develops interventions to address, stigma and other social ecological factors associated with health disparities. She is particularly interested in addressing intersectional stigma and its sexual, reproductive and mental health impacts. Her current research focuses on HIV/STI prevention, testing and care cascades in Uganda, Jamaica, and Canada with people with HIV, refugee and displaced youth, LGBT communities, and Indigenous youth.

Podcast, Everybody Hates Me: Let’s Talk About Stigma: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1024792

Sari Reisner, ScD, is Director of Transgender Research in the Section of Men’s Health, Aging and Metabolism, in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Reisner is also Director of Transgender Health Research at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Trained as a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, his research addresses health disparities in sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations, with specialization in transgender health and in adolescent and young adult health. Dr. Reisner is an investigator of multiple LGBTQ health studies funded domestically and internationally, including a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) project to enroll and follow a cohort of 4,500 transgender patients in Boston and New York City to prospectively assess the impact of medical gender affirmation on physical and mental health outcomes. He has co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles in LGBTQ health. In 2016, he was profiled in The Lancet as a global leader in transgender health, and was honored as a member of the 2015 Trans100 List which celebrates work “by” and “for” transgender people, in recognition of his contributions in transgender health.

Ayden Scheim, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Drexel University in Philadelphia, United States and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Western University in London, Canada. Dr. Scheim is a social epidemiologist focused on achieving health equity for communities that face stigma and discrimination. For over 15 years, he has conducted community-based research in partnership with trans communities on mental health, sexual health, and access to health care. Since 2017, he has been collaborating with trans community leaders and researchers in India to develop Our Health Matters, with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He is Principal Investigator of Our Health Matters, as well as the co-Principal Investigator of Trans PULSE Canada, a national community-based research study.

Personal site: http://www.aydenscheim.com

Aakanshya Aryal is currently pursuing an MPH with a major in Epidemiology at Drexel University. Coming from a developing country like Nepal and studying at one of the most prestigious public health schools in the US has been a great opportunity for her to learn and share knowledge and skills. In Nepal, she worked as a Research Assistant and traveled to remote areas in the country, which motivated her to contribute to the health of communities at a larger scale. She has ample experience in qualitative research and has worked as a data collector, transcriber, translator and an analyst. Aakanshya was awarded a Dornsife International Research Fellowship by the Dornsife School of Public Health. Her research interests include mental health, substance abuse, HIV, LGBT health, and urban health.

Heather Santos is currently a PhD student at Drexel University. She completed her MPH in epidemiology at Drexel University in 2022. Prior to her graduate studies, she obtained a BS in Physics from Penn State, and then worked in quantitative epidemiology modeling the global burden of measles. Her research focuses mainly on mental health – specifically suicide and depression.