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Featured speaker Jael Silliman now resides in Calcutta, India. She is an independent Consultant, serves on the Board of Breakthrough for Human Rights, and the Indian Holdeen Fund. She is writing a book of short stories. Prior to returning to India, Jael served as the Program Officer for Women's Rights & Gender Equity in the Human Rights Unit, Peace and Social Justice Program of the Ford Foundation. Immediately before that, she was the Program Officer for Reproductive Rights. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation she had been a tenured Associate Professor in the Women's Studies Department at the University of Iowa. Jael served as a Program Officer at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation where she developed that foundation's Population and Reproductive Rights program in the U.S. and abroad. Jael has spoken widely in the US and internationally on issues of transnational feminist movements, population and reproductive rights, women of color organizing, and environmental justice concerns. Jael is the recipient of the Iowa City Human Rights Commission International Human Rights Award and an Open Society Fellow. She is the author of numerous books and articles. Her most recent co-authored book, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, received a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award in the area of bigotry and human rights. She is also the author of Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from A Diaspora of Hope, and co-editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment and Policing the National Body: Race, Gender and Criminalization. The Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) is a non-profit community organization that seeks to promote understanding of international issues by hosting community forums with informed speakers from around the world. ICFRC is housed within and supported in part by International Programs at the University of Iowa. International Programs, your global intersection, connects students, faculty, staff, and the Iowa community to the world. Visit the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council onlinefor more information.