Days of Dialogue
with Keynote Speakers
Gabrielle Union and Dr. Gail Wyatt
Sexual Assault Awareness and Racism
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
1:00 - 3:00 p.m. PDT | Zoom
YWCA Days of Dialogue & Racial Healing Circles provide opportunities for members from diverse communities to participate in conversations that deepen their understanding about the impacts of racism and engage in a process that will facilitate healing from racial trauma and support the development of anti-racism.
YWCA GLA has partnered with the Institute for Nonviolence to create spaces of healing, reconciliation, collaboration, and mutual progress to end racism. The communities we serve reflect the rich, diverse, and beautiful fabric of Los Angeles and we stand committed to working together to support a process through which healing begins and positive change is sustained. Our organizations were built upon the mission of strengthening communities and as history has demonstrated, it is during challenging times that those we serve need us the most.
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About Gabrielle Union: Actress, Author, Activist
Gabrielle Union is an actress, producer, best-selling author, and TIME100 cover honoree. Union stars in and executive produced the Netflix romantic comedy THE PERFECT FIND, released in June 2023, which earned her a NAACP Image Award nomination for her performance. She also produced Amazon MGM Studios’ THE IDEA OF YOU for, starring Anne Hathaway, which was selected to close the 2024 SXSW Film Festival in March 2024. In 2023, Union executive produced her BET+ docuseries “My Journey to 50” which chronicles her time in Africa celebrating her heritage and 50th birthday. She recently wrapped production on the crime comedy RIFF RAFF alongside Dustin Hoffman, Jennifer Coolidge and Brian Cox.
Union starred in the A24 drama THE INSPECTION, opposite Jeremy Pope, which premiered to acclaim at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival ahead of its theatrical release. For her supporting role as Inez French, she was nominated for a Gotham and Independent Spirit Award. Union is also featured alongside Octavia Spencer in Season 3 of Apple TV+’s “Truth Be Told”, as well as in the Walt Disney Pictures animated film STRANGE WORLD, released in 2022.
In 2021, Gabrielle released her children’s book, “Shady Baby”, with her husband Dwyane Wade. The follow up “Shady Baby Feels” will be released in August 2022. Union’s autobiographical books, “We’re Going To Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated and True,” and “You Got Anything Stronger?” both became New York Times best sellers.
In 2018, Union formed her production company I’ll Have Another, with the goal of telling authentic stories that feature the point of views of marginalized communities. I’ll Have Another develops broadcast, cable, and streaming series for television, as well as feature films.
Union pioneers businesses centered around inclusion, accessibility, and affordability. In 2020, she launched her haircare brand “Flawless by Gabrielle Union” and in 2021, Union and her husband co-founded PROUDLY, a baby care brand specially formulated to meet the unique needs of Black and brown babies and their extra-special skin. She is also a co-founder of the healthy children’s snack brand Bitsy’s.
Union’s film and TV highlights include CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, THINK LIKE A MAN, BAD BOYS II, DELIVER US FROM EVA, LOVE & BASKETBALL, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, SHE’S ALL THAT, BRING IT ON, along with “Being Mary Jane” and “LA’s Finest”.
About Dr Gail Wyatt: Clinical Psychologist, Sex Therapist, Professor
Gail Elizabeth Wyatt, PhD has been awarded the Dena Bat Yaacov Endowed Chair in Psychiatry. A Clinical Psychologist and licensed sex therapist, Dr. Wyatt is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and BioBehavioral Sciences at the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Behavior at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the first African American Psychologist at DGSOM to be so awarded.
Dr. Wyatt’s focus over 48 years has been on health disparities. Alliance and Pepperdine universities, respectively, have awarded her honorary doctorates for her community-based research that has generated over 250 publications and six books, thus far. She was the first person of color to receive the prestigious NIH Research Scientist Career Development Award for 17 years and developed methodologies to capture the cultural context of stress and oppression overlooked in clinical research that contribute to misdiagnoses among people of color.
She was the first African American to receive a license to practice Psychology in California. She founded and directed the Center for Culture, Trauma and Mental Health Disparities and the Sexual Health Programs for 16 years, served as one of the Associate directors of the UCLA AIDS Institute for over two decades and has received continuous funding from NIH, private foundations and state organizations since 1980. Her landmark research chronicled the prevalence of sexual abuse among African American men and women and with her findings, helped to extend the reporting limitations of abuse and violence that has facilitated survivors to disclose their past abuse.
Dr. Wyatt has provided Congressional testimony 10 times, and of those testimonies, two were before then senator Joseph Biden at the Violence Against Women hearings. Dr. Wyatt wrote “Stolen Women: Reclaiming our Sexuality, Taking Back our Lives” by Wiley and Sons, is a best-seller that details the effects of slavery and oppression on African American women today, based on 20 years of her research. Dr. Wyatt has had domestic and international training and research grants that have resulted in her mentoring hundreds of men and women in Jamaica, India, East Africa and South Africa where her team continues to train scholars in trauma and mental health effects. She has been instrumental in leading NIH funded research teams of color since the 1990’s. She is well known speaker: She has given community level and professional presentations in every medium, including on Oprah Winfrey’s Speak Sis series about Black women’s mental health.
Dr. Wyatt has received numerous awards for her work in diversity, inclusion and trauma risks for people of color at risk for or living with HIV. This overdue recognition could have not been possible without the creation of a close and supportive network of family, friends and resilience to match that of her ancestors She has been married to Dr. Lewis Wyatt for 56 years, has a son, a plastic surgeon and graduate of UCLA medical school, two granddaughters and a daughter who was also a UCLA medical school grad and is now an angel.