Gender & Sexuality

Norah Covarrubias earned degrees in sociology, political theory, and social work. Norah has worked in direct service with children and adults in a wide range of settings including schools, residential programs, juvenile justice centers, adolescent outpatient clinics, and community primary care. Norah currently works in private practice while completing a doctorate in clinical social work, where she is investigating how Latine transgender young adults experience caregiver support. Norah enjoys doting on dogs, jogging, and hunting for the best pastry wherever they find themselves exploring.

Trained in sociology and public health, Anne’s teaching and research focuses on how health promotion and policy efforts attempt to create meaning about and control bodies, gender and sexuality. She tries to keep balance in her life by gardening, makes things with yarn, reading graphic novels & sci-fi (Becky Chambers is a current favorite) and drinking lots of tea.

Loran Grishow-Schade holds a triple masters from Penn in Law, Social Work, and Social Policy. Driven by the ideals within preventative services to meet social inequity, Loran’s work focuses on targeted interventions to reduce the overwhelming demand for supportive services. Loran is the founder and director of The Spillway (www.thespillway.org) and proud parent to Sunset Blush with Matthew.

Ari Gzesh, MSW (they/them) is pursuing a PhD in Social Welfare at Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice, and serves as a Fellow in Leadership Education and Adolescent Health at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Gzesh is passionate about improving psychosocial and health outcomes for LGBTQ+ youth, by exploring how identity-based supports like chosen families can provide corrective experiences for past attachment ruptures, embodied oppression, and complex trauma. Gzesh’s goal is to expand conceptualization of family systems to encompass non-biological kinship and chosen families, thereby harnessing cultural wealth embedded in queer communities for research-informed practice and practice-informed research.

Trained in social work and social welfare, Amy’s current research focuses on transgender children and their families with an emphasis on the support from the communities and institutions they need and crave. As the parent of an amazing transgender child, she brings her Mama Bear heart to this work. She’s still working to find ways to integrate these current research interests with her previous research using GIS and spatial analysis to understand historical and contemporary patterns of neighborhood disinvestment. In addition to spending time with her children and wife, she finds joy crafting, playing catch in the park, and riding her bicycle through the city.

Nathan Nyitrai is a social work student with focuses in the LGBTQ+ community and the criminal legal system. They have experience helping formerly incarcerated individuals transition to life back in their communities and with providing peer and crises support for the transgender community. He would like to further his work with the trans and queer communities. In their free time they enjoy doing crafts and playing solo and cooperative board games with friends.