meet us
About-Face runs with one paid staff member and a huge cast of volunteers, board members, and interns. Check us out!
Board of Directors
Jennifer Berger, About-Face
Dan Dworkin, The Hamlin School
Kelly Greenwood, Skoll Foundation
Susan Kimberlin, Salesforce.com
Elizabeth Nartker, Practicing Attorney
Peggy Yu, CBS Interactive
Staff
Jennifer Berger, Executive Director, President of Board of Directors
Founder
Workshop Leaders
Stephanie Clowdus
Carrie Ellett
Gracie Janove
Nallaly Jimenez
Suzannah Tipermas Neufeld, MFT
Mallory Smith
Aubrey Toole
Ivette Torres
Interns and Volunteers
Kjerstin Gruys, Program Evaluation Consultant, Workshop Leader
Tessa Needham, Blog Manager
Stacey Jean Speer, Intern
Marcella Raimondo, MPH, Media Literacy Consultant
Blog Contributors
Audrey Brashich
Larkin Callaghan
Jarrah Hodge
Heather Klem
Hailey Magee
Yaisa Mann
Jodie Maruska
Tara McIntyre
Magdalena Newhouse
Joy Robbins
Cassandra Sheets
Board of Directors
Dan Dworkin
Dan Dworkin works for The Hamlin School as the Director of Safety and Technology, where he also teaches a sixth grade Media Literacy/Digital Life course. Dan’s work at Hamlin has evolved, as he started as a sixth grade Humanities teacher, and then served as the 5th through 8th grade Technology Integration Specialist. Prior to teaching at Hamlin, Dan worked at The Langley School in McLean, Virginia, where he taught 7th grade English and 6th through 8th grade Drama. Before working in private schools, Dan taught at a public high school in northern California. In addition to classroom and administrative work, Dan has become a leading voice in school safety, building relationships with the Red Cross and the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management.
Dan grew up amongst the political landscape of Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s, with parents actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, specifically the rights of women and homosexuals. Dan left LA for college to attend Humboldt State University, where he received a B.A. in English and continued his education there to receive his California Secondary Teaching Credential. More recently, Dan completed his M.A. in Education with a focus on Instructional Technologies at San Francisco State University.
Kelly Greenwood
Kelly Greenwood is a Program Officer at the Skoll Foundation, which seeks to drive large-scale change by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems. Previously, she was a Consultant at The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit strategy consulting firm. She has also done strategy, process, and operations consulting at both A.T. Kearney and Accenture. As a REDF Farber Intern during business school, Kelly worked on the national expansion plan for Juma Ventures, a youth-related social enterprise. After college, she taught English in rural Costa Rica and interned at two women’s issues nonprofits.
Kelly graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with a B.A. in Psychology and Spanish and a minor in Women’s Studies. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, where she was a leader of the Social Impact Club.
Susan Kimberlin
Susan Kimberlin is a Product Manager at Salesforce.com, an established leader in customer relationship management tools and pioneer of cloud computing, enabling businesses with world-class data-management applications and a full suite of tools for building custom-fit solutions to their business needs. As a product manager for search and collaboration tools, Susan owns the end-to-end product development process, doing market-needs analysis, functional specification, and working with teams through development and delivery to customers. She is focused on making information accessible and bringing the consumer web experience to business software. Previously, she has been a “Jill of all trades,” working on search technology in some form or another in roles required everything from rules coding and academic research to technical documentation and user training. She has applied this broad of range skills at a handful of diverse companies that include both the tiny research startup Discern and the tech giant eBay.
Susan spends some of her free time singing with San Francisco’s premier women of a cappella, the Loose Interpretations.
Susan graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a B.A. in Linguistics and concentration in Sociolinguistics, as well as minors in German Studies and German Literature. She spent her third year studying at the Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany, developing life-skills such as presenting in foreign languages and traveling alone, and enjoying the adventure of immersion in another culture. While at school, Susan also founded the TriTones, the first university-affiliated a cappella group at UCSD, and served as president and business manager for the group, as well as producer for their first album, “Size 12″.
Elizabeth Nartker
Elizabeth Nartker is an attorney focused on business needs, from formation to litigation. She previously worked at an international law firm in Chicago as a Business Litigation Associate. Prior to law school, Elizabeth was involved in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, CA. It was because of the eye-opening experiences that Elizabeth observed in the industry that she first became interested in fundamentally changing the way women are portrayed in media. Elizabeth has become even more attuned to gender portrayals in media after having her first child and attempting to raise that child in a gender-neutral atmosphere.
Elizabeth received her B.S. in Theatre from Northwestern University. While at Northwestern, Elizabeth was president of her sorority, created a student-run seminar that addressed issues in the entertainment industry, and worked part-time for an internet advertising startup. After her stint in Los Angeles, Elizabeth attended the University of Chicago Law School and received her Juris Doctorate.
Peggy Yu
Peggy Yu is Director of Business Development at CBS Interactive. She is responsible for Download.com’s monetization strategy and business development partnerships. Prior to CBS Interactive, Peggy worked at Communispace, helping turn customer insights into actionable brand and product strategy. She has also worked in sales, operations and logistics for the NOL Group, a global container transportation and logistics company.
Peggy holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University.
Outside of work, Peggy focuses her time and passion advocating on behalf of issues that impact women. She served as the 2007 Chair of the HBS Dynamic Women In Business Conference and was also Chair of the Women In Leadership Conference at Northwestern University. Peggy has also volunteered as a CASA, advocating on behalf of abused and neglected children, as well as tutoring students at Horace Mann Middle School.
Staff
Jennifer Berger
Executive Director, Member of Board of Directors
Before becoming About-Face’s first full-time Executive Director in 2008, Jennifer completed a ten-year career in magazine and web publishing, culminating in a top-ranking editorial position at Macworld magazine. She was a volunteer with About-Face since 1997, when she came back home to the San Francisco Bay Area after receiving her B.A. in Communication Studies with High Honors from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. At U of M, Jennifer completed her thesis project about media effects on men’s body image and was an intern at HUES (Hear Us Emerging Sisters) magazine, a national publication for young women of all cultures, shapes, and sizes.
Jennifer’s writing about body image and her experience with food allergies was published in the book Body Outlaws (also published as Adios, Barbie), ed. Ophira Edut (Seal Press, 2004), which is read across disciplines on college campuses. She has been interviewed in numerous publications, including O: The Oprah Magazine (June 2010).
As the Executive Director of About-Face, Jennifer develops and executes strategy to further educate young people about media messages and their formation of self-identity, self-esteem, and body image.
Founder
Kathy Bruin
Kathy has long been frustrated with the limited and limiting ways women are depicted in popular culture. She believes that our culture’s focus on physical appearance and consumerism has far-reaching negative implications for our society. She is also convinced that there is a profound relationship between our culture’s obsession with physical perfection and the decline in girls’ self-esteem as they reach puberty. It breaks her heart that at the moment girls develop the true characteristics of womanhood — hips, breasts, and rounded bottoms — they begin to hate their bodies. In the summer of 1995, she decided to do what she could to change that.
Using an image from a Calvin Klein ad, she created a spoof poster reading “Emaciation Stinks” and plastered it around San Francisco. About-Face was born. Her single act has grown well beyond what she could have imagined. For more than a decade About-Face, has been a leading voice in body-image issues — issues it helped bring to light. She is particularly proud that About-Face encourages women and girls to voice their own disenchantment, to make changes in their own lives, and to launch their own rebellions.
Kathy’s involvement with About-Face has been profoundly gratifying for her, and perhaps most importantly, it has taught her that all of us, as individuals, have the power to make significant societal change.
Workshop Leaders
Stephanie Clowdus
Stephanie Clowdus is a recent graduate of Sonoma State University with a B.A. in Human Development. She currently works for a substance abuse rehabilitation center in San Francisco. Returning to school for a Master’s in Social Work is in her near future, but she’s happy biking the streets of San Francisco in the meantime. A product of MTV, Stephanie is keen to pop culture’s influence on self-esteem in young women and men. She’s proud to be an About-Face workshop leader because she recognizes how important it is for young people to develop critical-thinking skills to navigate media imagery surrounding gender, race, sexuality, body image, and able-bodiedness.
Carrie Ellett
Carrie is earning her M.A. in International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco and is a co-Founder and Trainer for Collective Action Training, where she delivers trainings and consults on a variety of topics from multiculturalism to non-profit management.
Prior to starting graduate school, Carrie was the National Program Director for Girls For A Change for 7 years. She began her work in public service as a member of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, where she completed projects such as urban rehabilitation, trail building, and tutoring. Carrie started work in girl programming at the Girl Scouts of Santa Clara County (now Girl Scouts of Northern California). She has also worked as an instructor with the Princeton Review and helped coordinate the annual Walk For Hunger and Ride for Hunger events in Boston, MA.
Carrie was a member of the California Women’s Foundation Advisory Committee on Youth, Media, and Social Change and completed the Women Leaders for the World program at Santa Clara University in Summer 2008. She completed the Bank of America Emerging Leader training program in 2007, Youth Leadership Institute’s Rising Leaders Fellowship in 2006 and served on the Advisory Board of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network in 2004. She is currently the Marketing Chair of the International Development Exchange Young Professionals Group and a volunteer workshop leader with About-Face.
She has also worked as a sports writer for newspapers, magazines, and online services. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and currently lives in San Francisco.
Gracie Janove
Gracie is a recent college graduate and transplant to the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied sociology and anthropology in college, where she was first trained in visual literacy and to be critical of corporate media. Gracie sees mass media as one part of our culture that needs to be transformed. She is dedicated to empowering youth through teaching media literacy. As a birth doula, Gracie is interested in examining the media’s role in forming people’s lived experiences of childbirth. Someday, she’d like to launch a media campaign with other reproductive justice workers to help reconstruct the way people perceive and experience birth.
Nallaly Jimenez
Nallaly Jimenez graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Radio Broadcasting. Currently, she works as a Media Coordinator at a public relations firm in San Francisco. Nallaly is the first in her family to receive a high school diploma and pursue a higher education. Her involvement with About-Face is motivated in part by the desire to set a positive example to students who grew up with similar challenges. She enjoys being an About-Face workshop leader because she wants to enable students to be critical, analytical, media-savvy consumers. In her spare time, she takes pleasure in cooking delicious vegetarian meals, watching horror films, and spending time with friends.
Suzannah Tipermas Neufeld, MFT
Suzannah Tipermas Neufeld, M.A., MFT, has been a psychotherapist for women, girls, and families recovering from eating disorders and substance abuse since 2003. She received her B.A. with honors and distinction in Drama and Psychology from Stanford University in 2000. She went on to earn her M.A. in Counseling Psychology/Expressive Arts Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Suzannah is also a certified yoga instructor and loves incorporating body and breath awareness into a creative and strength-based therapy approach with recovering people. You can learn more about her work at www.suzannahtipermas.com.
Mallory Smith
Mallory Smith is currently attending the University of San Francisco and plans to graduate with a B.A. in Communication Studies in May 2012. She also works part-time at a restaurant in the Marina District of San Francisco. Originally from Orange County, Mallory is the first in her family to move away from home to pursue a college education. She enjoys being a workshop leader for About-Face because she is interested in educating other women and girls about how to critically analyze the media. Growing up with three younger sisters of her own, she understands the effects the media can have on one’s self-esteem. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with friends, watching movies, and exploring all the wonderful restaurants San Francisco has to offer.
Aubrey Toole
Aubrey Toole is a 4th year UC Berkeley student getting ready to graduate in May 2012 with a B.A. in Psychology, a major she absolutely loves. She is currently working on her senior honors thesis, which will examine the effects of self-compassion and self-esteem-based interventions on college women exposed to objectifying media images. While she loves research, she finds herself drawn to the application of empirical findings, with a desire to put what she has learned into practice. As a workshop leader, Aubrey is excited to gain a more tangible understanding of the real-life positive effects of empowering interventions that she so enjoys learning about through her research and study. Her dream is to be able to channel her passion for health and well-being (both physical and mental) to help women and girls develop positive relationships to their bodies, to food, and to physical fitness. As an About-Face workshop leader, her goal is to bring a message of hope, comfort, acceptance, and kindness to all of the girls, boys, and women she works with.
Ivette Torres
Ivette Torres earned her MBA from Dominican University in 2011 with a concentration in sustainability. She very involved with many projects in her community. Ivette is the current fundraising chair for her Net Impact chapter and helps plan events all over the bay area. Although she has worked in sales and marketing in the corporate world for many years, she has recently had an awakening to her new passion planning events for local non-profits including Eco-Fair Marin, California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, and currently as events and marketing fellow at Investors Circle. She received her undergraduate degree in Mass Communications from the University of California, Berkeley.
Interns and Volunteers
Kjerstin Gruys, Program Evaluation Consultant and Workshop Leader
Kjerstin Gruys, M.A., earned her undergraduate degree in Sociology, with a Certificate in the Study of Women and Gender, at Princeton University, where she wrote a senior thesis examining how sorority membership impacts women’s body image, body weight, and self-esteem. After a two-year stint working in the glamorous-but-scary fashion industry, Kjerstin returned to academia with a renewed commitment to making a (positive) difference in women’s and girl’s lives.
Today, Kjerstin is a Doctoral Candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. Her research broadly examines how cultural ideas about body size relate to social inequality, and her dissertation specifically compares body-size standards in the medical field with those in the fashion industry. Kjerstin’s writing has been published by the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, and in the scholarly journal Social Problems. You can learn more about her research and teaching at www.kjerstingruys.com.
Tessa Needham, Blog Manager
Tessa Needham finished her PhD in Performing Arts at the University of Western Sydney (Australia) in 2008. Her thesis explored the potential of performance to provoke change, and part of her research was Bodily, a solo theatrical performance about body image. She loves technology and the creative arts, and is passionate about the different cultural forces affecting the body image of girls and women. She teaches computers and does freelance creative work: www.tessaneedham.com. Tessa manages and writes regularly for the About-Face blog and completed a major update to the About-Face web site in 2011.
Marcella Raimondo, MPH, Media Literacy Consultant
Marcella’s first reactions to the media glorification of the impossibly and unhealthy paradigm for women came after her recovery from a 10-year battle with anorexia nervosa. After years of therapy and becoming a complete person, seeing thin and emaciated female models in magazines shocked and angered Marcella. They had the body sizes and shapes that mimicked hers while she was in the throes of her eating disorder. She had spent so many years moving away from that unhealthy ideal, only to have it glamorized and prized in pop culture.
Marcella received her B.A. from UC Berkeley, and then went on to earn a Master’s Degree in Public Health from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is a true public health advocate, believing that grassroots efforts and community spirit inspire change. Marcella’s passion to end eating disorders drove her to pursue her doctorate in clinical psychology, which she is working on now. Upon receiving her degree, she will continue working on the issue of body image and eating disorders on the clinical and community level. She has presented on the topic of eating disorders, media, and body image at the University of California, San Francisco; UC Berkeley; UC Santa Cruz Children’s Hospital; and Kaiser Permanente’s National Diversity Conference, to name a few.
Marcella currently does research for About-Face and is an advisor for About-Face’s Education into Action media-literacy workshops. Marcella feels About-Face brings out the spirited woman warrior in her. In her free time, she spends time with her friends and appreciates her healthy and strong body, kicking butt in martial arts and dancing hip-hop.
Stacey Jean Speer, Spring 2012 Intern
Stacey moved to the city of San Francisco in August 2010 with a passion for learning and making a difference. She is currently earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University and planning to graduate in May 2012. She enjoys planning fundraising events for local organizations through the use of her job as a receptionist at a hair salon. Past events have included Cut for a Cure to raise money for the SF AIDS Foundation, Create for the Cause to raise money for La Casa de Las Madres, and Keep Kids Painting, to raise money for Brush Fire Painting Workshops. Stacey enjoys utilizing the tools she gains as a student of Women and Gender Studies to critique pop culture and media from a feminist perspective.
Blog Contributors
Audrey Brashich
Audrey D. Brashich is the author of All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty, a body image guide for teens.
Larkin Callaghan
Larkin Callaghan is currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University in Health Behavior and Education. She also blogs about media representation of girls and women at her personal site, I’m Not Tired Yet.
Jarrah Hodge
Jarrah Hodge is a freelance writer and blogger from Vancouver, BC. Jarrah has a degree in Women’s Studies and Sociology and her writing takes an anti-racist, feminist look at pop culture, gender in the news, and politics. Currently Jarrah writes a column called Gender Files for the Vancouver Observer, and also runs her own blog, Gender Focus. When she’s not working or writing, Jarrah can usually be found playing board games. Jarrah writes regularly for the About-Face blog.
Heather Klem
Heather Klem is a blogger, yoga enthusiast, and impassioned body image and media-literacy advocate (when not working at her corporate day job!).
Hailey Magee
Hailey Magee is a first-year undergraduate student at Brandeis University. She loves writing music, eating chocolate, and combatting gender inequity on a daily basis.
Yaisa Mann
Yaisa Mann is a wife, mother, student, teacher, and body confidence activist. She is currently pursuing her PhD in American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, specializing in girls’ studies and body image.
Jodie Maruska
Jodie Maruska is a freelance writer, public speaker, and stand-up comic based in Minneapolis. Her popular talk “Belly Laughs” effectively combines humor with the powerful message of body acceptance as Jodie shares her experience and observations of the complicated relationship we have with our bodies. She is a regular contributor to the Minnesota Women’s Press and was a recent finalist in the Flash Fiction competition for MNArtists.org.
Tara McIntyre
Tara McIntyre is a recent Master’s graduate in Sociology from University College Dublin (Ireland). Her interests are in gender, media, and the body.
Magdalena Newhouse
Magdalena Newhouse is a a junior at Oberlin College, where she teaches a class on body positivity and fat acceptance.
Joy Robbins
Joy Robbins is a Professional Counselor and Yoga Teacher living in Australia. She specializes in the treatment of disordered eating and negative body image. Read more about her work here and here.
Back to top
Cassandra Sheets
Cassandra is a sophomore at Columbia College Chicago, where she studies Fiction Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies. In her free time, she enjoys exploring the Harold Washington and yelling at bad reality television shows.
Other Contributors
We want to thank these folks, who have helped us get to where we are today:
Sharon Adam
Margaret Banda
Jaimie Baxter
Shannon Brueckner
Andrea Davids
Jennifer Eames Huff
Katie Handler
Alyza Jehangir
Mara Kassoff
Miftah Leath
Marcella Leath
Annice Ormiston
Kelly Redanz
Nikki Roddy
Kristen Law Sagafi
Courtney Sims
Giovanna Vance
Mary Jane Weatherbee