About Open Policy Forum
Open Policy Forum, the first public-facing project from our Gulf South queer and transfemme activist collective, is a collaborative platform to empower communities to engage meaningfully with state policy. With years of experience doing legislative work at the local, state, and national levels, we have deep insight into and strong opinions about the limitations of existing services. Open Policy Forum is designed to be the tool we wish we'd always had, connecting advocates within and across movements, streamlining tracking and analysis efforts, democratizing the legislative process, and putting the "public" back into public policy.
Who We Are
Corinne Green (she/they), is an ace, queer, transfemme activist from New Orleans, LA, who focuses on queer, trans, and harm reduction organizing and policy. Former President of Louisiana Trans Advocates, she's also done policy for Gov. Jon Bel Edwards, Transgender Law Center and Equality Federation. She has bachelor's degrees in French and International Studies from LSU and currently serves on the board of National Harm Reduction Coalition. State legislation she's passed includes the California Gender Recognition Act, Narcan decriminalization, syringe exchange authorization, and overdose Good Samaritan reform.
Sara Elizabeth Allan (she/her) received an undergraduate education in computer science, mathematics, and economics and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Informatics at Indiana University’s Luddy School of Informatics and Computing with a focus on complex systems and a Ph.D. minor in cognitive science. She has done research on machine learning, large-scale social network analysis (including disinformation and misinformation systems), human-computer interaction, swarm and collective intelligence, and natural language processing systems. She’s proudly a transfemme neurodivergent punk anarchist. She also dresses up as a 10th century Irish lady and does Medieval woodworking for fun.
Persephone Karnstein (she/her) is a queer and trans penetration tester from San Francisco, CA. Active in the Bay Area organizing scene, she's previously worked for a trans healthcare clinic and the SF LGBT Center. A reformed astrophysicist with three unused degrees from Berkeley, she and her cat do their ethical hacking from the Transgender District in the Tenderloin.
Elizabeth Gelvin (she/her) is a sixth-ish generation child of south Louisiana, with all the baggage and gratitude that carries. She received a BA in anthropology and film & media arts at LSU, but in all honesty spent most of her time slinging midnight waffles at Louie’s Cafe. She has responded to climate crises with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief since the 2016 Baton Rouge floods, both as a regional organizer and a steering committee member. She architected and implemented the first practical support organization for people seeking abortion care in and from Louisiana during her time with the organization formerly known as NOAF (New Orleans Abortion Fund). She designed destigmatizing drug use trainings for students, care providers, and community members through Trystereo New Orleans Harm Reduction and joyously slung syringes for four years. She co-founded Gulf South Plan B (GSPB) – a collective that provides free emergency contraception clandestinely to people across the Gulf South by mail. Her writing appears in Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, Antigravity Magazine, and the forthcoming Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe V. Wade, and her thoughts can be picked apart in interviews in Vox, The Nation, Business Insider, and more. She keeps a KN95 strapped onto her schnozz and pie-hole, and she believes to her core that another world is not only necessary, but truly on her way – it’s up to us, dweebs. Her proudest achievements are being a big angry sister to a perfect sibling and winning three (3) spelling bees
Anonymous Collective Member #1 is an economic data scientist from New Orleans, LA.
Anonymous Collective Member #2 is a transfemme activist from New Orleans, LA.