Consultants

headshot portrait of Emily Galpern

Emily Galpern, MPH, is a consultant with more than 20 years’ experience coordinating policy coalitions and campaigns; facilitating groups of adults and young people; planning and leading trainings and conferences; and developing materials for educational and advocacy purposes. She has worked extensively with women, young people, immigrants, people of color, workers, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. Areas of expertise include the intersection of bioethics with reproductive health rights and justice; building bridges between social justice movements; as well as health disparities and inequities in public health and youth development. Clients and partners have included community-based organizations, movement-building organizations, universities, government agencies, policymakers, health systems, and unions. She received her BA in Women’s Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her MPH from San Francisco State University.

headshot portrait of Emma McDonald Kennedy

Emma McDonald Kennedy received her PhD in Theological Ethics from Boston College. Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, her academic interests center around the convergence of bioethics and social ethics, with a particular focus on the role of sociological research in informing Catholic reproductive ethics. Her dissertation project involves qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with Catholic women dealing with infertility and physicians who treat it to better understand how the Catholic tradition shapes how women make moral decisions regarding fertility treatment. Emma received her Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School and her Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Middlebury College, where she also studied French, German, and Spanish. After graduating, she spent a year as an AmeriCorps VISTA working at Middlebury coordinating the Privilege & Poverty Academic Cluster, a program connecting coursework in ethics and inequality with community engagement. She now works at Villanova University. 

headshot portrait of Pete Shanks

Pete Shanks, MA, attended Oxford University, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and moved to California in the mid-1970s. He has been active in a range of local and international political movements, while mostly making his living in the publishing industry, especially on the production side; he enjoys the craft of bookmaking. Appalled by the eugenic possibilities of biotechnology, he has consulted with the Center for Genetics and Society since its earliest days. He is the author of Human Genetic Engineering: A Guide for Activists, Skeptics, and the Very Perplexed (Nation Books) and a regular contributor to Biopolitical Times.