Ericka Hart has taught sexuality education for elementary aged youth to adults across New York City for over 10 years, including serving as a Peace Corps HIV/AIDs volunteer in Ethiopia from 2008-2010.

Diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer in May 2014 at the age of 28, she realized that neither her identity as a queer black femme, nor her sex life as a survivor, was featured prominently in her treatment. She decided to do something about it: going topless (and viral) in public, bearing her double mastectomy scars to end the lack of black, brown LGBTQIA+ representations and visibility in breast cancer awareness. 

Dismantling the ways that systemic patriarchy and anti-black standards of beauty affect our everyday lives, Ericka is shifting ingrained cultural modes and attitudes on chronic illness and posits visibility as vital to any radically inclusive movement toward equity.

But it is her work on the medical industrial complex that forces us to see our institutions and systems of care as complicit in the perpetuation of illness in marginalized communities; unabashedly centering and sentient such that queer, trans black, brown and femme voices aren’t lost among the drone of scholarly research less skilled than Hart in bringing academia to the places it refuses to go.

Audiences around the world admire Ericka for her ability to challenge anti-blackness everywhere it rears its head–from the front pages of magazines, fashion week runways to the lectern. She is committed to empowering students to make a difference in the world and with each other, opening up robust discourse that connects sexual health and wellness to the systemic issues at the root of social injustice, helping students at over 20 colleges and universities across the country this past year alone discover actionable steps to confront those issues powerfully.

A kinky, poly, cancer-warrior, activist and sexuality educator with a Master’s of Education in Human Sexuality from Widener University