Sunstone California

Saturday, January 19th 2019

 Schedule:

About the speakers:  

Bob Ahlander earned a BA from Brigham Young University in Spanish and anthropology. He is co-founder of BYU’s premiere a cappella group Vocal Point. Bob has spent most of his career in entertainment, including five years as head of Deseret Book Company’s music division. He also served for four years as bishop of an LDS family ward. He is currently Director of Events for a fashion company in Southern California.

Carrie Stoddard Salisbury is a Los Angeles-based musician, teacher, and small-business owner. She blogs as Violadiva at the Exponent blog and currently serves on the board of Exponent II as the blog coordinator and social media manager. She co-founded the action “Let Babies Eat” in response to her viral post about the Stake President who denied a temple recommend to a nursing mother.

Cristina Gonzalez Cole is a lead organizer of Detainee Allies, an organization that stands in solidarity with detained migrants and refugees in the U.S. Each week she manages letters and donations to ensure that ICE detainees have human connections and a chance to tell their stories. A self-described “newbie feminist,” Cristina is a single mother who strives daily as a woman of color to “raise a white man child to not grow up to be an asshole.”

Cristina Rosetti is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, with an emphasis on Mormonism and spiritualism, and alternative forms of Mormon religious practice. In 2017 she was awarded the Mormon Studies Fellowship at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

Elizabeth Hammond blogs at Feminist Mormon Housewives and has written for Exponent II. She is best known for her Mormon Priestess essay, a close literary reading of the Mormon temple liturgy.  She holds a degree in Near Eastern Studies from Cornell University. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA with her family and 2 Hungarian sheep dogs.

Jennifer Gonzalez is a legal communicator, information designer, and immigrant and refugee rights advocate. She is the founder of Torchlight Legal and co-founder of San Diego-based DetaineeAllies.org.  Prior to her legal career, she was an award-winning teacher, trainer, and consultant in Washington, DC. In addition to her JD from Stanford Law School, Jennifer has an MA in Rhetoric and Composition and a BA in English from Brigham Young University.

Kalani Tonga is an author and current board member for the Feminist Mormon Housewives nonprofit organization. She and her five children recently moved to Utah and Kalani is working as a substitute teacher. She also works as a women’s empowerment group facilitator and literary sector coordinator for PIK2AR, a nonprofit organization for Polynesians in Utah.

Lindsay Hansen Park is host of the Year of Polygamy podcast and executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation.

Ryan Hammond holds a PhD in Economic Sociology from MIT with expertise in organization theory and labor markets.  He co-founded Aspiring Mormon Women, a non-profit dedicated to supporting Mormon women in their career and educational pursuits. He has founded two start-ups and currently works in Silicon Valley so he can live in Santa Cruz and surf poorly. 

Tim Coray joins Sunstone with a particular interest in the LGBTQ+ Mormon experience. He graduated from Southern Utah University with a degree in English and earned a teaching certificate from University of Alaska Fairbanks. Tim now works as a freelance videographer.

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