Jessica Yee

When most twelve-year-olds were engaged in pop culture, Jessica was volunteering at a shelter for women fleeing abuse, an experience that fuelled her desire to help other women. A multiracial young woman of Chinese and Mohawk ancestry, her work focuses on sexual and reproductive health initiatives.

Jessica Yee is a self-described "multiracial Indigenous hip-hop feminist reproductive justice freedom fighter!" A proud Two Spirit youth, she is the founder and Executive Director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, the first and only organization of its kind in North America by and for Indigenous youth working within the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health throughout the continent. She has spent more than half her life mobilizing individuals, families, and communities alike to reclaim their ancestral rights to self-determine decisions over their own bodies and spaces.

Jessica is an advocate for the voice of youth, and uses the arts as a valuable means to meet youth where they are, on their terms. She is a regular contributor to online blogs and magazines including Feministing, Racialicious, rabble, section 15 and Shameless Magazine. Jessica Yee is the editor of Sex Ed and Youth: Colonization, Communities of Colour, and Sexuality and the author of Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism: Feminist Education Now - Youth, Activism, and Intersectionality which will be released Winter 2011.