Below the Belt

Shannon Cohn

Panel Co-Moderator, Film director/producer, lawyer, and activist

Shannon Cohn is a filmmaker, lawyer and activist. Her films and TV series have aired on PBS, Nat Geo, Discovery Channel, Amazon and Netflix in over 190 countries. She produced and directed Endo What?, a feature documentary on endometriosis hailed as “the first step in a plan for change” by Newsweek and “film of the year” by The Guardian. Her film, Below the Belt, approaches endometriosis as a social justice issue. Before becoming a filmmaker, Shannon practiced international law and was an aid worker in Africa. Shannon is a Board Member of the Foundation of AAGL (American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists) and All Kings, a New York-based non-profit dedicated to empowering people affected by the criminal justice system. She has a law degree from Vanderbilt University and attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program.

Linda Griffith

Panel Co-Moderator, Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering; Director, Center for Gynepathology Research, MIT

Linda Griffith is Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and Director of the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research. She has pioneered approaches in tissue engineering and organs-on-chips and now integrates these platform technologies with systems biology to humanize drug development, especially for endometriosis, adenomyosis, and other gynecological disorders. She and her collaborators published the first paper describing a potential molecular classification of endometriosis patients. She is also the co-founder of the Boston-area SeXX and Immunity discussion group, spurred by the strong skew of chronic Lyme and other chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases toward women. Griffith is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and several awards from professional societies. She is a co-recipient of the 2021 NAE Gordon Prize, for leadership in creating the new discipline of Biological Engineering. Dr. Griffith currently serves on the advisory board of the Society for Women’s Health Research and has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. She received her BS from Georgia Tech and PhD from UC Berkeley, both in chemical engineering.

Chris Bobel

Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston

Chris Bobel is Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. As a scholar of social movements, she is curious about how feminist thinking becomes feminist doing at the most intimate and immediate levels. At the intersection of these interests lies menstrual activism —a research and advocacy focus that has sustained Chris’s interest for nearly two decades.

Chris is the author of the award-winning Managed Body: Developing Girls and Menstrual Health in the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan), New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation (Rutgers University Press), The Paradox of Natural Mothering (Temple University Press), and the co-edited collections (with Samantha Kwan) Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules, Challenging the Norms (Vanderbilt University Press) and Body Battlegrounds: Transgressions, Tensions and Transformations (Vanderbilt University Press). She is also lead editor of the open access Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies (Palgrave Macmillan), which has been downloaded 1.5 million times. Chris is past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research and is often consulted by the mainstream media about the rapidly growing global menstrual activist movement.

Currently, she is at work on a new ethnographic (and surprisingly non-menstrual) project exploring contemporary activism inspired by grief and trauma. Bobel earned a BA from Miami University, Ohio and an MA from the University of Maine, Orono, both in speech communication. She earned her PhD in urban studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a specialization in Race, Class and Gender.

Aleshia Carlsen-Bryan

Associate Director, Career Advising & Professional Development, MIT

Aleshia Carlsen-Bryan is the Associate Director of Pre-health and Career Advising and Professional Development Program Assessment and Evaluation at MIT. She is an endometriosis patient and offers special insights on social media influences and expertise in educating health professionals about endometriosis.

Carlsen-Bryan holds a PhD in Health Professions Education from Simmons University, an MA in school counseling from Assumption College and a BA in biology from Colby-Sawyer College. She earned a Certificate in College Teaching from the Colleges of Worcester Consortium and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Students in Health Professions Education from Simmons University. Her experience includes over 12 years in higher education, in both student advising and careers.

Keith Isaacson

Medical Director, Newton Wellesley Hospital Center for Minimally Invasive Gynecology Surgery, and Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Keith Isaacson is director of the residency and fellowship for minimally invasive gynecologic surgery and infertility at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and clinical director for MIT’s Center for Gynepathology Research. He is a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist with over 38 years of experience in the medical field and has focused his clinical career in advance hysteroscopic and laparoscopic procedures in women wishing to maintain their reproductive potential. Isaacson earned a BS in biology from Tulane University and MD from the Medical College of Georgia. He completed residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, La., and a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of Pennsylvania. He is board certified in Reproductive Endocrinology and General Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Isaacson was the Division Director of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1991 through 2001. In 2001, he opened the Center for Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery and Infertility at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
His awards include the Distinguished Surgeon Award from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in 2013 and the John F. Steege Mentorship Award from the American Association of Gynecologic Surgeons in 2020. He has over 100 peer reviewed publications, numerous textbook chapters, and has edited textbooks on laparoscopic and hysteroscopic surgery.

Stacey Missmer

Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Michigan State University; Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Lecturer in Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; President-Elect, World Endometriosis Society

Stacey Missmer is Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Michigan State University; Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health; and Lecturer in Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School. In 2012, she co-founded the Boston Center for Endometriosis and serves as the Scientific Director, where she designed and leads the Women’s Health Study: from Adolescence to Adulthood (A2A) cohort. As a member of the World Endometriosis Research Foundation (WERF) Board of Directors, she conceived and became co-principal investigator of the Endometriosis Phenome and Biobanking Harmonization Project (WERF EPHect), which established standardized tools and protocols to enhance multi-center clinically translational scientific discovery.

Author of 350 peer-reviewed scientific publications, much of Dr. Missmer’s seminal research has focused on identifying factors that affect the risk for and consequences of endometriosis. Missmer earned her BA in biology from Lehigh University and her Master and Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) degrees in epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. She is past Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Endometriosis Special Interest Group and is President-elect of the World Endometriosis Society.

Peter Movilla

Associate Medical Director, Newton Wellesley Hospital Center for Minimally Invasive Gynecology Surgery

Peter Movilla, MD, is associate medical director at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, where he serves as a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon, medical researcher, and educator of medical students, residents, and fellows. He is a Board-Certified Obstetrician Gynecologist and the associate clinical director for MIT’s Center for Gynepathology Research.

Movilla was previously an assistant professor for minimally invasive gynecologic surgery at the University of Kentucky in Lexington in 2020 and 2021. He trained as a resident of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco from 2014 through 2018 and then served as a surgical fellow at Newton-Wellesley Hospital from 201 – 2020. He previously earned a B.E in biomedical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and was a public health graduate student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Nyia Noel

Medical Director, Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery, Boston Medical Center; Assistant Professor of OBGYN at BU School of Medicine; founder, BMC Fibroid Center

Nyia Noel is assistant professor of medicine and medical director of minimally invasive gynecologic surgery in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine. She is founder and director of the Fibroid Center at Boston Medical Center. Her areas of interests include fibroids, endometriosis, minimally invasive gynecologic surgery, disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality, and health care access and systems delivery. Her research focuses on uterine fibroids and improvement of perioperative services for patients in safety net settings. Noel was an American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL) Fellow from 2014 through 2016. She earned her BA in neuroscience and behavior from Columbia University, her Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan, and her MD from the University of Michigan Medical School. She completed her residency as a physician of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and was a fellow of minimally invasive gynecologic surgery at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. She completed the Program for Clinical Effectiveness at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. For more on Noel’s perspectives, see this article in Shape magazine, Why Is It So Hard for Black Women to Get Diagnosed with Endometriosis?

Tavneet Suri

Professor of Applied Economics at MIT’s Sloan School

Tavneet Suri is associate professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an endometriosis patient. Her expertise is in development economics, specializing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Suri’s work cuts across sectors related to international development, such as mobile money and digital financial services for the poor, agriculture, and governance. Her recent work has focused on how mobile money reduces extreme poverty in Kenya. Her ongoing projects include studying the use and impacts of digital bank accounts and the role of digital bonds in the financial portfolio of the poor and whether holding such bonds may improve their financial literacy. Suri is Editor in Chief of VoxDev (voxdev.org), Scientific Director for Africa for The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an affiliate and board member at the Bureau of Research on the Economic Analysis of Development, and Lead Academic of the Kenya Program at the International Growth Center. She holds a BA in economics from Trinity College, Cambridge University UK, an MA in international and development economics and PhD in economics, both from Yale University.