October 9, 2024

Salon Topic:
Intersectional Mentoring: What Mentors and Mentees Need to Know for Success

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Salon Guests:
Dr. Jae Sevelius and Dr. Orlando Harris

Guest Bio:
Dr. Jae Sevelius (they/them) is a clinical psychologist, behavioral health researcher, and intervention scientist leading an extensive portfolio of NIH-funded studies engaging transgender and gender expansive individuals and communities. Dr. Sevelius developed the Model of Gender Affirmation, the first trans-specific conceptual model that aims to elucidate the role of gender affirmation on health-related behaviors and outcomes.

To date, Dr. Sevelius' research has focused on developing, testing, and disseminating peer-led interventions to promote sexual health and resilience among transgender people. These community-based HIV prevention and treatment programs focus primarily on serving transgender women of color in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and in São Paulo, Brazil. Most recently, Dr. Sevelius’ research and clinical work has expanded to include psychedelic-assisted therapies for identity-based trauma.

Dr. Sevelius is also a dedicated mentor of early-stage investigators, with a focus on those with backgrounds and identities that are under-represented in academic medicine. They are a passionate advocate for transforming academic institutions to create environments where diversity is truly celebrated, equity is non-negotiable, and inclusion follows naturally from a culture of belonging.


Dr. Orlando Harris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Systems, School of Nursing, at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a researcher that uses community-based participatory research methods both in the United States and the Caribbean where he leverages multi-methods data to inform culturally relevant interventions that improves the lives of vulnerable sexual and gender minorities. He has also spent the past several years researching factors that contribute to poor health among Caribbean sexual and gender minorities. Through his research, he has provided a qualitative understanding of the complexities that have shaped Jamaican men and transgender women's sexual decision making as well as other factors that may place them at risk for acquiring HIV. Additionally, he has a unique focus on researching the contexts of violence that have shaped the lives of marginalized people in the United States and the Caribbean. He has published one of the first papers in the Caribbean that addressed the issue of sexual violence (childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence) among Jamaican men and transgender women. This paper was also the first to address this issue among marginalized sexual minority groups in the Caribbean. His research aims to give voice to sexual and gender minorities in Jamaica and the wider Anglophone Caribbean in order to reduce disparities in health among a community that is marginalized.