Meet the TWOV Workshop Facilitators

The HUB Cultural Center is pleased to announce that we have collaborated with SSU students, staff, and community members to offer two workshops in honor of Trans Week of Visibility: Healthy Masculinity and Transphobia. Read more about the faciltators below!

Dylan Marie Alter

Dylan Marie Alter (they/them) is a nonbinary attorney, teacher, and consultant, of Jewish and Choctaw dissent. They graduated from Sonoma State's Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, and then studied International Human Rights Law at American University in Washington D.C. They facilitate & teach restorative justice practices, as a nontoxic, harm-reduction strategy for community conflict. They've also lead workshops and panels on gender and sexuality in Sonoma County & the SF Bay Area for more than two decades. They've done extensive research on the ways in which laws & society, rather than nature, define many of our identities, and the ways in which intersectionality can be used to untangle those confusions. A few of their influential mentors on masculinity include: Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Ram Das, and Michel Foucault. Dylan will be co-faciliting the Healthy Masculinity workshop.

Melle Browning

Melle Browning (Mel; he/him) is a Staff Psychotherapist at CAPS. Mel is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT#115804) and earned his Master’s in Counseling Psychology from Dominican University of California and his BA in Psychology with a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Sonoma State University. Mel is a queer, gender non-conforming trans man working from an intersectional, trauma informed, anti-oppression lens and a focus on equity in care.

Ariel Erskine

Ariel Erskine (she/her or they/them) is a filmmaker and illustrator, and drummer for folk-punk band, Gender Trash. Ariel is a pansexual woman with a trans experience and mother of 5 children. She currently lives in Northern California with her girlfriend and their blended family. She seeks to bring attention to the rights of the LGBTQIA community and other social and civil liberties issues through her art and community activism. She will be co-facliitating the Transphobia workshop.

Orlando Kai O'Shea

Orlando Kai O’Shea (he/him) is a transmasculine Seawolf studying psychology. He has two teenagers on the autism spectrum, and has a history of activism in the homeless community as well as with individuals with autism and mental health issues. He is a long time volunteer at Trans Lifeline crisis hotline and a founding committee member for TransLife, which holds a yearly conference in Sonoma County for the transgender community. He is on the board of directors of Positive Images LGBTQ Center, and co-facilitates the SSU transgender support group.