Asha LeraeCo-Director
Asha Lerae has been a part of the Consent Academy since 2018, teaching established curriculum, creating new workshops, facilitating discussion groups, and acting as a consent advocate and consultant. She is passionate about consent education as a way to reduce trauma, promote pleasure and eroticism, support accountability, and foster cultural change that balances autonomy with responsibility. Asha is also an adjunct faculty member at Antioch University Seattle, an AnteUp! certified sexuality, gender, and justice educator, a certified abortion doula, and somatic sex educator.
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Ariana CoveneyCo-Director
Ariana has been part of the Consent Academy since 2018. She is an ordained Shingon Buddhist Monk, with a background in psychology, linguistics, and education focusing on violence prevention. She has lived and worked all over the world doing grassroots activism for LGBTQ+ rights and domestic violence prevention. Her perspectives on harm reduction and accountability are based in her Buddhism and her Choctaw cultural heritage.
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Sar SurmickConsent Educator, Author, & Director EmeritusSar is an educator at heart: whether at the front of a class, speaking to a group or org, in the therapy room, working on a new book, or just walking down the street. With over 25 years of education experience and a strong belief that consent creates a backbone for safe and productive interactions, Sar teaches, consults, writes, and works on theory around Consent, Accountability, and Identity. When not teaching with the Academy, Sar works as a MFTherapist, writes, and does their best to understand people and the way we move through a difficult and complex world.
Sar helped bring the Consent Academy together in 2016 as a way to advance consent education in Seattle and across the world and was Director from 2016-2021. |
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Leah HirschConsent Educator & Outreach CoordinatorLeah is a transplant to Seattle from the midwest. She excitedly joined the Consent Academy in 2016 as their Outreach Coordinator and as a Consent Educator. Leah began her work in consent and sexuality education at Iowa State University, and continued this work as a clinic assistant for Planned Parenthood. Since moving to Seattle, Leah has become very involved with the Pan Eros Foundation (formally the FSPC) education program. She currently works there as Assistant to the Director.
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Lara-Ashley MonroeConsent Educator & Volunteer CoordinatorLara-Ashley has been teaching consent with the Academy since 2017, and has worked for many years to further conversations on consent in the Seattle area and during her travels abroad.
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Mia FineConsent AdvocateMia (they/she) is an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in both private practice (Mia Fine Therapy, PLLC) and group practice (PNW Sex Therapy Collective). Operating from the lenses of Queer Theory, Intersectionality, and Social Justice, Mia works with clients navigating eroticism, intimacy, sexual health concerns, kink, LGBTQIA+ genders and sexualities, and non-monogamous relationships. They are on the Board of Directors for Pan Eros and are a Consent Advocate passionately encouraging both consent and education from the individual level to the systemic. Mia is also an adjunct professor at Antioch University and Institute for Sexuality, Education, and Enlightenment (ISEE). Mia presents at national and local conferences and facilitates continuing education for upcoming sex therapists, educators, and counselors. When they’re not working, you can find Mia practicing self-care by climbing mountains, spending quality time with people and pets, and finding new ways to adventure.
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Sarah BurgartContent DeveloperSarah is a communications coach and trainer. She believes clearer and more compassionate communication with ourselves and others is essential to any movement towards more safety and happiness and away from violence and painful emotions. Consent culture has been a natural part of her journey; an area ripe with opportunities to improve communication and connect with each other. Sarah is excited about this collaborative effort, and about creating effective curriculum which is engaging and educational to all people.
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Draven AlexanderConsent EducatorDraven Alexander is at their most energetic when providing education surrounding Trauma and Systemic Trauma, Consent, Sexuality Studies, Pleasure Activism, Polyamory, BDSM, and social justice. Draven is a trauma processing educator, coach, and researcher who finds passion in supporting people to learn and explore their responses to behaviors from an eclectic mixture of intersectionality, decolonizing trauma-work, and embodied experiences. Draven is a life-long learner with a BA in Psychology and a M.Ed. in Counseling from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Draven is also currently working on their Ph.D. in Human Sexuality through the California Institute of Integral Studies, while simultaneously pursuing an AASECT Sexuality Educator Certification.
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