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Join the Sexual and Reproductive Justice Hub at CUNY SPH in April for our next SRJ Voices session — a conversation between Terry McGovern, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at CUNY SPH, and New York State Assembly Member and SRJ Hub Champion Jessica González-Rojas. Assembly Member González-Rojas has dedicated her life to fighting for immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, health care access, labor power, and gender equity while forging connections between various progressive movements.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Jessica González-Rojas
Assemblymember González-Rojas has dedicated her life to fighting for immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, health care access, labor power, and gender equity while forging connections between various progressive movements. Since she assumed office in 2021, Assemblymember González-Rojas has introduced and passed several pieces of legislation on maternal health, transgender rights, transit access, election reform, worker protections, gun violence prevention, healthcare transparency, and more.
Assemblymember González-Rojas secured $25 million to codify her legislation to establish the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Fund, which provides critical funding to abortion providers and the New York Abortion Access Fund to expand access to reproductive health care for all New Yorkers. She has also passed legislation and secured $8 million for continual health care coverage for children from birth to age 6 enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Assemblymember González-Rojas is the Chair of the Task Force on Women’s Issues, Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Trafficking and the Chair of the Subcommittee on Health of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of several organizations including the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL) and If/When/How, a national nonprofit network of law students and lawyers committed to reproductive justice.
Before running for office, Assemblymember González-Rojas served in leadership for 13 years at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice (formerly the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health), including as Executive Director. The nonprofit is the only national reproductive justice organization dedicated to building power among Latinas to advance the health, dignity, and justice of over 30 million Latinas across the country.
Assemblymember González-Rojas is currently adjunct faculty at New York University (NYU) School of Law and has served as adjunct faculty at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the City University of New York’s (CUNY) City College. She has taught courses on Latinidad, reproductive rights, and gender and sexuality. She has authored essays in multiple publications on those topics as well.
Assemblymember González-Rojas holds a master’s degree from the NYU Wagner School, with a concentration in Public and Nonprofit Management and Public Policy, a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the Executive Leadership Program at the Columbia University Business School, and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Boston University, where she graduated cum laude.
Terry McGovern
Terry M. McGovern, JD is the Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs at CUNY SPH.
Dean McGovern is an expert human rights lawyer, advocate, and academic who is internationally recognized for her work in health and human rights, sexual and reproductive rights and health, gender justice, and environmental justice. She previously served as the Harriet and Robert H. Heilbrunn Professor and Chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health and the Director of the Program on Global Health Justice and Governance at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Dean McGovern founded the HIV Law Project in 1989 and served as its executive director for a decade. She successfully litigated numerous cases against the federal, state and local governments including S.P. v. Sullivan, which forced the Social Security Administration to expand HIV-related disability criteria for women and other excluded individuals.
As a member of the National Task Force on the Development of HIV/AIDS Drugs, she authored the 2001 federal regulation authorizing the FDA to halt any clinical trial for a life-threatening disease that excludes women.
Dean McGovern’s research focuses on health and human rights, sexual and reproductive rights and health, gender justice and environmental justice, with publications appearing in journals including Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, Health and Human Rights, and the Journal of Adolescent Health. She has served on the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, the UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health, and the UNAIDS Human Rights Reference Group. She currently serves on the UNFPA Global Advisory Council, the Council of Foreign Relations and the Board of the NYCLU.
