Refreshments will be provided, courtesy of Wow Bao.

Speaker Bios:

Roshni Shikari is a staff attorney with the Reproductive Rights Project of the ACLU of Illinois. The ACLU’s Reproductive Rights Project seeks, through litigation, public education, and legislative advocacy, to make certain that all in our society have access to safe and effective contraception, sexuality education, reproductive technologies, prenatal care, childbearing assistance and safe, legal, and accessible abortion. Prior to joining the ACLU, Ms. Shikari worked for a civil rights litigation firm focusing on disability rights and special education in St. Louis, Missouri. She has also represented children and parents in abuse and neglect proceedings as a student attorney and has worked with indigent persons on housing and benefits issues as a paralegal caseworker. She is a graduate of Middlebury College and Washington University School of Law.

Paige Ford is a clinic escort for Illinois Choice Action Team which works within the Chicago area to provide safe access without coercion to clinics that provide family planning options. Ms. Ford volunteers with ICAT on Wednesdays and Saturdays and works as part of a team. Clinic Escorts like Ms. Ford help patients, doctors, and nurses avoid protestors so that they can safely enter clinics. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago and currently works in the film industry.

Ashlee Bergin is currently the second-year Family Planning fellow at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed her OB/GYN residency at the University of Chicago in 2010 and while in residency, she presented her research on barriers to obtaining long acting reversible contraception (LARC) at the Society of Family Planning national meeting in 2009. Following residency, she worked as an OB/GYN for three years in private practice at a Catholic hospital, and published a research paper in the national medical journal, Contraception. She was the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Junior Fellow in Practice for District VI. She also attended the ACOG Congressional Leadership Conference in 2011 and has lobbied for women’s health and reproductive rights issues in Springfield, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. After her time in private practice, she began the Family Planning Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013, where she is receiving additional training in abortion and complex contraception provision, working towards a Masters in Public Health degree, and conducting research in the area of birth spacing. She is also a spokesperson for Physicians for Reproductive Health (“PRH”), an organization that unites the medical community and concerned supporters to improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care especially to meet the needs of economically disadvantaged patients, and was selected to participate in PRH’s 2015 Leadership Training Academy.