Aishah Shahidah Simmons
Antirape Activist
Keynote Speaker
June 16, 2025
Virtual
Digging Up the Roots
of Sexual Violence
Digging Up the Roots of Sexual Violence
For over 25-years, Aishah Shahidah Simmons’ groundbreaking cultural work has focused on disrupting and ending sexual violence through a Black feminist lesbian survivor’s lens. Her 17-year Buddhist practice informs her commitment to respond to the inhumane scourge of sexual violence compassionately. Simmons’s journey to dig up the roots of sexual violence unearths some of the contradictions and complexities that allow the sexual violence epidemic to flourish while dispelling racist, classist, and heterosexist myths about who causes sexual harm, what enables it to happen, and why; uncovering these myths ultimately allows us to dismantle the silence and untruths that allow sexual violence to happen.
Aishah Shahidah Simmons (she/her) is an award-winning Black feminist lesbian cultural worker who, for 30 years, has examined the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and sexual violence. She is the editor of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press, 2019) and the director and producer of the 2006 groundbreaking film NO! The Rape Documentary. Aishah is a trauma-informed, certified Mindfulness meditation teacher who has been studying and practicing Theravada Buddhism for 20 years. Aishah spends her time writing, teaching, and traveling the world speaking on healing from childhood and adult sexual trauma, non-carceral accountability for harm, and Mindfulness as a resource for supporting balance and cultivating compassion amid the often turbulent vicissitudes in life. In 2024 she was a co-recipient of the inaugural Courage Fund Award. This financial award recognizes her long-term cultural work, particularly in breaking the silence about sexual violence, providing healing paths for trauma, and advocating for humane responses to inhumane actions.
Marlee Liss
Speaker, Survivor & Restorative Justice Advocate
Keynote Speaker
June 18, 2025
In-person Denver Metro Area
Restorative Justice
for Sexual Harm:
Why I Fought for a Circle,
Not a Courtroom
Restorative Justice for Sexual Harm: Why I Fought for a Circle, Not a Courtroom
In 2019, Marlee’s sexual assault case became the first in North America to conclude with restorative justice through the courts. She fought for the man who raped her to go to therapy instead of criminal trial and eventually, they met in an eight-hour restorative circle. After sharing with the media, she began receiving thousands of messages from survivors who shared their stories and the many reasons they wished they had known about Restorative Justice. Marlee takes a vulnerable and educational approach to talking about this alternative to the punitive system. In an environment rooted in hope and empowerment, listeners learn about breaking cycles of harm while challenging the notion of a ‘one size fits all’ approach to justice.
Marlee Liss is a somatic educator, social worker, Restorative Justice advocate and sparkle-loving lesbian Jewish feminist. As the Founder of the global coalition ‘Survivors 4 Justice Reform’, her work has been featured in Forbes, Huff Post, Buzzfeed and the Mel Robbins Show. As an award-winning speaker, she’s delivered talks for: National Sexual Assault Conference, Vanderbilt University, Justice as Trauma Conference, Women’s Mental Health Conference at Yale and more. Marlee was 1 of 25 survivors on an elite panel for the National Action Plan to End Gender Based Violence informing federal policy. Her story is currently being made into a documentary directed by Kelsey Darragh and her book on re-imagining justice will be published in Fall 2026.