Saturday, September 14
1:30pm-2:30pm
In a society where monogamy is the norm, this panel explores the lived experiences of ethical non-monogamists who have embraced polyamory as a conscious and intentional choice. Our panelists, seasoned activists, authors, and advocates for non-monogamy, bring decades of experience in building loving, honest, and equitable relationships. This session will seek to destigmatize polyamory, help people question mononormativity, and make alternative relationship structures more accessible to all.
Mim Chapman is an educator, a learner, and a change agent. Her work experience includes commercial fishing, civil rights activism, marine salvage, political lobbying and fundraising, and education. She has led three school restructuring projects, a lobbying effort which changed a major federal fisheries law, and created a series of women’s seminars that led to the formation of the Cordova Family Resource Center. She has taught elementary to graduate school levels; been an administrator in a community college, a K-12 school, and a middle school; worked in large east coast urban schools and tiny Eskimo villages, from the Caribbean to Nova Scotia to Alaska. During the time she was Principal of Clark Middle School in Anchorage, Alaska, Clark was named one of four mid-level schools in the nation with the most innovative, successful programs to address diversity. She now focuses on relationship coaching, training seminars, and writing.
Mim is a certified Myers-Briggs trainer and has led workshops in various aspects of learning styles, multiple intelligences, collaboration, diversity, and the change process for conferences, schools and businesses. She was chosen the Alaska “Curriculum Leader of the Year” in 1991, Toastmaster’s “Communicator of the Year” in 1994, and the YWCA/British Petroleum “Woman of Achievement” in 1996. She has a Bachelors Degree from St. Louis Institute of Music; a Masters from Washington University, St. Louis; a Ph.D. from Mississippi State University; and a second Masters in Counseling and Guidance from University of Alaska Anchorage.
Mim spent many years as a professor at University of Alaska. Her publications include workbooks, articles, a textbook on school reform, and her newest book, “What Does Polyamory Look Like?” She created and performed in ”THE VP (vagina-penis) DIALOGUES”, a performance piece based on her research into the status of sex education in our culture. A current focus is providing workshops on Sex and Aging. She does relationship coaching in person and via phone, and travels extensively providing training, program development, future search retreats, executive mentoring, and other consulting services for business and education through her private consulting firm, MIMCO, whose letters indicate some of her work focuses: Motivational Keynotes, Individuation and Team-Building using Myers-Briggs and Multiple Intelligences, Multi-Cultural Awareness, Gender Issues, and Anti-Harassment Training, Communication Skills, Organizational Change and Mentoring Leaders of Change
Michelle Hy is from Portland, Oregon and runs the page Polyamorous While Asian, which seeks to normalize non-monogamy and amplify the voices of other marginalized folks underrepresented in non-monogamous communities. She works to educate from an intersectional lens, offers peer support sessions, and touches on topics related to body confidence, sex positivity, politics, and more. Follow her on Instagram @polyamorouswhileasian and learn more via her website at polyamorouswhileasian.com.
Alan MacRobert has been running his “Polyamory In The News” blog for 16 years, covering more than 4,000 articles, radio, and TV broadcasts, and new-media coverage.
Now he is the president and the treasurer of the new Polyamory Foundation. The Polyamory Foundation’s mission is to help fund projects that advance public awareness of ethical polyamory and its best practices, as well as projects that support the polyamory community. The Polyamory Foundation takes grant applications and issues grants to help with poly-awareness projects.
Kevin Patterson is an active member of the Philadelphia polyamory community. He’s been practicing ethical nonmonogamy since August of 2002 after opening up a relationship that eventually became his marriage.
In April of 2015, Kevin was inspired to start Poly Role Models, an interview series for people describing their experiences with polyamory. Poly Role Models was part of a drive and a desire to change the way our lives and communities are viewed. To continue that discussion of polyamorous representation, Kevin has extended the blog’s work into the writing of the book, Love’s Not Color Blind: Race and Representation in Polyamorous and Other Alternative Communities. Along with co-writer Alana Phelan, Kevin launched a sci-fi novel series, For Hire, that centers characters of color as well as other marginalized identities.
Born to atheist parents, Valerie White never had a belief in a deity to lose. She discovered the Unitarian Universalists in the early sixties. She was the plaintiff in a church-state separation case in 1987 and was accordingly named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethinker of the Year for 1988 and served on their board. Her mother introduced her to the American Humanist Association, and Valerie previously served on the AHA board under Edd Doerr in the nineties and was also president of the Humanist Society. The Vermont chapter of the ACLU made her their president for three terms. She wrote a regular column for the Secular Organizations for Sobriety newsletter. She has served on a number of boards for various UU organizations and is now in her fourth term as president of her local UU congregation. She practiced law in Vermont before her retirement.
Valerie has been polyamorous since the early sixties. She’s the executive director of the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, president of Unitarian Universalist Polyamory Alliance, and has spoken at many poly conferences and at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.
