Megrette Fletcher (She/Her) is a registered dietitian, diabetes care and education specialist, public speaker, and author. She is a mindful eating leader and co-founder of The Center for Mindful Eating and InclusiveDiabetesCare.com, a continuing education company for professionals working to improve inclusion and health equity in diabetes care. Her focus on decreasing stigma fuels her passion for weight-inclusive diabetes care, treatment, and prevention.

Dr. Schneider graduated from Brown University, and attended medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her residency was in Pediatrics at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, followed by a fellowship in Adolescent Medicine was at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York. She remained at North Shore for a total of 13 years and during that time became Associate Chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine, and Medical Director for the Eating Disorders Day Program. She was recruited by Greenwich Hospital to start an Adolescent Program, which ran from June 1999 through June of 2005. Since July 2005, she has been in full time private practice of adolescent medicine at Greenwich Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine in Greenwich CT. Additionally, since 2012 she has served as medical consultant for Center for Discovery’s Fairfield county adolescent and young adult residential facilities. Dr. Schneider is board certified in Pediatrics and in the subspecialty of Adolescent Medicine. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. She has served on the board of directors of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and was a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition from 2005 - 2011. She served on the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Adolescent Health from 2013- 2019.

Rekha Nath is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama. She specializes in moral and political philosophy. She has published on global justice, social equality, and responsibility. In her 2024 book Why It’s OK to Be Fat (Routledge), she argues that conventional views of fatness in Western societies—as a pathology to be fixed or as a moral failing—are ill-conceived. Combining careful empirical investigation with rigorous moral argumentation, this book debunks popular narratives about weight, health, and lifestyle choices that underlie the dominant cultural aversion to fatness.

Shilo George, MS (she/they), a Southern Cheyenne-Arapaho and Irish/Scottish international speaker, is the owner of Łush Kumtux Tumtum Consulting, which means ''a great awakening of the heart and spirit'' in the Chinuk Wawa trade language. With over twenty years of experience as a social worker and community educator, Shilo’s work focuses on trauma-informed practices that align with and support anti-racist and anti-oppression efforts within organizations and communities. Their values are deeply rooted in Native cultural and spiritual practices, and she draws inspiration, perseverance, and drive from her communities. Shilo holds a Bachelor of Science in Art Practices and a Master of Science in Educational Leadership and Policy from Portland State University.

“You deserve to be seen”

Everyone has a story. And every story is, at its core, about people. It’s people I’m interested in—who they are, where they’ve been, what they do. How they express their love, both for themselves and one another.

In these, as in all things, are stories needing to be told. And I want to be the one to tell them.

My name is Jaime Patterson. I’m an inclusive, body-positive, LGBTQIA-affirming photographer based out of Richmond, VA*. I specialize in lifestyle/family, portrait, wedding, and boudoir photography. And I want to help bring your stories to life—to share who you are with the world, with your loved ones, and with the incredible human being you see every day when you look in the mirror.

From life-changing events to the smallest, infinitesimal details, like the way you touch your belly when your baby kicks, or the sly, excited grin shared just prior to saying “I do,” yours is a life worth sharing, a love worth celebrating, and a story just waiting to be told. Let me help you tell it.

Ragen Chastain is a speaker, writer, researcher, Board Certified Patient Advocate, multi-certified health and fitness professional, and thought leader in weight science, weight stigma, health, and healthcare. Utilizing her background in research methods and statistics, Ragen has brought her signature mix of humor and hard facts to healthcare, corporate, conference, and college audiences from Kaiser Permanente and Nationwide Children's Hospital, to Amazon and Google, to Dartmouth, CalTech and the Yale School of Medicine. Author of the Weight and Healthcare newsletter, the book Fat: The Owner's Manual, co-author of HAES Health Sheets, and editor of the anthology The Politics of Size, Ragen is frequently featured as an expert in print, radio, television, podcasts, and documentary film. In her free time, Ragen is a triathlete, and marathoner who holds the Guinness World Record for Heaviest Woman to Complete a Marathon. Ragen lives in Oregon with her fiancée Julianne and a rotating cast of foster dogs.

Rev. E-K Daufin, Ph.D, 2024 bell hooks Legacy award-winning author of the book On Fat And Faith: Ending Weight Stigma in Yourself, Your Sanctuary and Society is an intersectional Fat, Black, Feminist educator, speaker, author, activist, artist, priestess and poet. Born in working class Brooklyn (New York) and broadcasting now from the Deep South, Central Alabama, lower middle-class, she works on multiple platforms to end the patriarchy and manifest the Partnership Society Golden Era as soon as possible, with as much grace and ease as she can. You can find her on Facebook, YouTube, NextDoor and ekdaufin.com.

Patrilie Hernandez has over 15 years of experience working in the health and nutrition sector as an educator, advocate, and policy analyst, which has shaped their understanding of how the pursuit of ''health'' seamlessly intersects with the built environment, equity, and social justice. It wasn’t until they were diagnosed with an eating disorder in December 2017 that they realized how much of their own disordered behaviors and thoughts around food, health, and bodies infiltrated all aspects of both their personal life and career.

Since then, Patrilie's interest in nutrition has broadened to address other social determinants of health that influence individual and community well-being. They use their own lived experience as a higher-weight, multiracial, neuroatypical, queer femme of the Puerto Rican diaspora to disrupt the status quo of current health and wellness spaces, advocating for a weight-inclusive paradigm. Combining their academic background in culinary arts, social science, nonprofit management, public health, and nutrition, Patrilie partners with providers and organizations to integrate interdisciplinary, multi-dimensional, and weight-inclusive strategies that improve the health and wellbeing of historically marginalized communities.

In their spare time, they like to cook for others, tend to their garden and house plants, and look at the moon. Patrilie is spiritually eclectic and loves spending time with their husband and dog.

Sirius Bonner (she/her) is a passionate social justice leader and a noted presenter and facilitator. Her work focuses on the intersections between social justice issues such as racial oppression, reproductive justice, queer rights, health equity, anti-fat bias, educational equity, poverty, sexism, and liberation; recognizing that as we begin to untangle one issue, we can untangle them all. With a background in higher education nonprofits, Sirius is currently the executive director for INTERSECT, a gender justice organization in Oregon.

Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt is a world-leading expert on treating eating disorders. With more than 25 years of clinical experience, she has developed five distinctive treatment programs, all grounded on a strong bio-psycho-social foundation, and incorporating intensive psychotherapy, with behavioral foundations, and high medical standards. Wendy has developed a unique treatment approach that delves into the underlying issues that place a person at risk for mental health conditions and eating disorders and lead to healing, health and inner peace

Wendy received her specialty training at New York University-Bellevue Hospital in New York City, she has also held faculty positions at New York University, Albert Einstein School of Medicine and University of Nevada School of Medicine. Wendy is Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and in both Adult and Addiction Psychiatry. She is the author of two books, most recently Questions and Answers on Binge Eating Disorder, A Guide for Clinicians. She is a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders and the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She has received Senatorial Recognition for her commitment to the mental health treatment community.

Hilary Kinavey (she/her) is a licensed professional therapist, coach, educator, trainer and author. She has been practicing weight-inclusive care as a therapist for 24 years and is trained in EMDR, Narrative Exposure Therapy, mind-body coaching and shame resilience theories. She is a student of what it means to be a politized healer in the therapy world. Most recently she has attended workshops with James-Olivia Chu Hillman and Radical Relating (or The Four Skills) as well as coaching training. Hilary has advocated for weight-inclusive models of care within healthcare, specializing in the eating disorder treatment field for the last 17 years. She has co-authored two professional papers: The Broken Lens: How Anti-Fat Bias in Psychotherapy is Harming Our Clients and What to To About It with Carmen Cool and The Normal, Improving, and Productive Self: Unpacking Neoliberal Governmentality in Therapeutic Interactions with Andrea LaMarre, Olga Smoliak, Carmen Cool and Laura Hardt. She is a sought-after consultant and speaker and offers training, supervision and consultation for individuals and organizations.

With over 20 years of experience, Chevese Turner is an internationally recognized activist and advocate, speaker, policy influencer and movement-builder who dedicates her ability to make significant social change on issues concerning eating disorders, weight stigma and discrimination, and intersectional social justice. Turner founded the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA) in 2008 and successfully merged it with the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) in 2018, after 10 years that significantly changed the eating disorders community in both scope and focus.

Prior to BEDA and Turner’s work advocating for the inclusion of Binge Eating Disorder (BED) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s 5th Edition (DSM-5), published in 2013, those struggling with the most common and under diagnosed eating disorder had little hope of being recognized much less accessing treatment and insurance coverage. She continues to grow as a healthcare activist and believes integrating what is currently known and future research about social determinants of health is an important way forward for those at the intersection of oppressions and repeated denial of healthcare based on their body size, color, ethnicity, age, gender, socio-economic status, etc.

Turner is also the co-author of Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery & Beyond and contributes regularly to podcasts and the media. Turner attended Temple University in Philadelphia where she received a BA in Political Science. Her professional expertise includes public policy and government relations, non-profit management, strategy, programming and communications, and making change through social healthcare movements.

She is a past board member of the Academy of Eating Disorders and the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), and is currently an Advisor for Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment for Eating Disorders (F.E.A.S.T.).

Dana Sturtevant (she/her) is a registered dietitian and motivational interviewing trainer whose work has focused on humanizing health care, advancing health equity, and advocating for food and body sovereignty. Since 2002, Dana has traveled around the country training helping professionals in communication and engagement strategies that lead to collaborative conversations about change. As a sought after speaker and writer, Dana is a champion for compassionate, weight-inclusive models of care and offers supervision, training, and consultation for helping professionals and health care organizations. Dana considers herself a lifelong learner, and has recently participated in Michelle C. Johnson’s Anti-Racism Training for People Who Hold Healing Space, Rosie Mensah’s Culture, Equity, Diversity and Race in Dietetics (CEDAR) Training, Food as Resistance Training by G.R.I.T.S, Inc., and two series on Neurodiversity Affirming Approaches by RDs for Neurodiversity.