Pamela Merritt, Honorary Chair (Collinsville, IL)

Pamela Merritt is executive director of Medical Students for Choice. She is a longtime writer, progressive activist, blogger, and co-founder of Reproaction, having served as co-director from 2015-2020. Pamela has been a featured contributor to National Public Radio (NPR), and her writing has also been published in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Guardian UK, Rolling Stone and Salon. Her blog site AngryBlackBitch.com was named one of the world’s 50 most powerful blogs by The Guardian in 2008. Pamela is a founding member of the Trust Black Women Partnership, and was a 2017 Reproductive Health, Rights, & Justice Fellow at the Rockwood Leadership Institute.

Aimee Arrambide (Austin, TX)

Aimee was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She was inspired to go into reproductive health, rights, and justice by her father who was an abortion provider in central and south Texas. She studied Philosophy at the University of Texas and received her Juris Doctor from New York Law School. She co-wrote the Public Leadership Institute’s Playbook for Abortion Rights, serves on the advisory council of Reproaction and is a We Testify Storyteller. She was an intern at Avow in 2006 and 2007, the political affairs director in 2013 and 2014, and joined as the executive director in 2018. In 2023, Aimee joined the Hewlett Foundation as the United States Reproductive Equity Program Officer

Sapphire Garcia-Lies (Wichita, Kansas)

Sapphire Garcia-Lies is an activist and nonprofit leader focused on fighting for reproductive rights and racial equity in perinatal health. Her work is focused on unabashed truth-telling, calling for accountability within systems, and kindling community change from the grassroots level. In 2020, she founded Kansas Birth Justice, a nonprofit focused on policy change and direct community support to catalyze reproductive justice and perinatal health equity in Kansas. Sapphire takes pride in her strong community ties and in the hundreds of thriving babies she has helped welcome into the world as a community-based birth worker.

Laura Craig Mason (Suburbs of Maryland)

After spending time in the tech and government realms, Laura Craig Mason has found her home in the non-profit sphere, where she helps people keep their organizational and personal information secure. She was motivated to join the Reproaction Advisory Council after witnessing how vibrant and energetic the organizers are. Laura has vowed to help the reproductive justice movement grow by advocating for all bodies and being intentional about taking space. Apart from her reproductive rights and justice activism, she enjoys short runs, ballet, cooking, knitting, and generally trying to live creatively in the Maryland suburbs she calls home.

Oriaku Njoku (Atlanta, GA)

Oriaku Njoku is a first-generation, Black, Igbo, Nigerian-American, Kentucky raised, queer, fat, Southern femme, healing centered coach living and loving in Atlanta, Georgia. Oriaku is deeply committed to finding joy and pleasure in everything she does including the work they do as the Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds. She believes radical love is a core value that can be embodied and operationalized in movement spaces and truly believes that we can and will create a cultural shift around how we address abortion  and invites you to join her in making reproductive justice a reality. They joined the Reproaction Advisory board because she believes that opposition research is needed to know what and who we are up against in our movements. She also knows that doing this work will strengthen our ability to be strategic as we embark on this journey to the next iteration of Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice.

Libby Skarin (Sioux Falls, SD)

Libby Skarin is a former layer, avid reader, and civil rights enthusiast. After practicing law for several years in her home state of Iowa, her frustration with her inability to change systemic problems on a case-by-case basis pushed her headfirst into a career in policy advocacy. Since 2014, her professional efforts have focused on advancing civil rights and civil liberties – including reproductive rights and abortion access – for all South Dakotans. She is inspired by people who do hard work in hard spaces and is deeply committed to doing her part to enshrine a reproductive justice framework in both the legal and social norms of rural Midwestern states, including in carceral settings. Reproaction’s direct action philosophy and refusal to play by the rules favored in traditional power structures motivated Libby to join the Advisory Council. When she’s not working, Libby can often be found with a book in hand surrounded by her pack of scruffy rescue pets and her husband, volunteering with a local non-profit that provides support to transgender youth, or taking a nap.