JENNA TOSH

Jenna Tosh, CEO of Planned Parenthood California Central Coast, speaks to her dedication to her work and to her other role as conscious parent to three. Tosh oversees 5 Planned Parenthood locations and is part of the team advocating for health care access for over 800,000 individuals annually in California. In the wake of the ongoing attempts to reform Obamacare, she opens up about why she chose this career, what she is passionate about and how she takes care of herself, and encourages her staff to do the same, to stay focused and energized. Tosh also beautifully shares about her hopes for her children and how she is teaching them to be the change through kindness and tolerance in action and words. For more information on Jenna Tosh’s work with Planned Parenthood, please visit www.ppcentralcoast.org or Planned Parenthood California Central Coast on Facebook.

ANNIE HAWKINS

Samantha Paige dialogues with her dear friend, professional soccer player Annie Hawkins, in this touching episode about living life from the heart. Hawkins opens up about losing her father to pancreatic cancer six years ago and how his passing, and possibly more profoundly, how he lived the last months of his life, inspired her to deepen her own dedication to a meaningful, service-filled, and connected existence. She shares what soccer has taught her over the years, her unique relationship to time and how she has opened her heart and schedule to traveling the world to connect, explore and inspire others to live their fullest lives, while remaining radically true to herself. Paige and Hawkins also address the importance of community and friendship when one is living a life outside of the box.

To stay connected with Annie Hawkins, please visit her website, www.the10influence.com, and follow her on Instagram and Twitter @anniehawkins.

ARTHUR GROSS-SCHAEFER

“For me, it’s [freedom] about taking it as a gift that I have been given privilege, I’ve been given certain assets, certain abilities. How I am going to use those to affect others and to make my life, honestly, a life of meaning? That’s how I define freedom.” Arthur Gross-Schaefer

Arthur Gross-Schaefer is a man who literally wears many hats. He is a husband, father, rabbi, lawyer, CPA, professor, mediator and murder mystery author, amongst other roles. What comes through most beautifully in his conversation with Samantha Paige is how he threads his commitment to honoring tolerance, kindness, thoughtfulness, vision and intelligence through all he does. Gross-Schaefer shares in detail how he works with his students and community members to establish conversation and connection with controversial and polarizing issues, such as DACA, racism, climate change, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and party politics. He speaks to the importance of creating a personal mission statement, knowing your core values and remembering to find humor and humanity in all we do. Gross-Schaefer opens up about losing one of his sons. Avi Schaefer, to a drunk driver, and how that painful loss inspired the Avi Schaefer Fund, which actively works to promote peaceful dialogue and empower young people to bridge intolerance.  For more information on the Avi Schaefer Fund, please visit avischaeferfund.org.  

SOFIA LINDVALL

Sofia Lindvall was born and raised in Harads, Sweden (population: ~600), just 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. She is a trained stunt person and daughter to Kent Lindvall and Britta Jonsson-Lindvall, the founders of the TreeHotel. The TreeHotel is a collection of 7 unique tree houses, designed by Scandanavia’s leading architects, where guests can sleep 4 to 6 meters up in the trees and commune with nature in a modern, comfortable manner. In the middle of untouched Swedish forest, Samantha Paige gathered with Sofia to hear the story behind the TreeHotel and about the love of nature that inspired her family to create this magical place. Honoring and embracing nature is the key to the whole TreeHotel experience; incredibly, no trees were cut during its construction. Sofia shares about growing up in a small town in a time of globalization and urbanization, why she left for a bigger city and what motivated her to return to Harads after one year. This conversation highlights the beauty of strong inter-human connections, the importance of living in harmony with our natural environment and the power of slowing down our pace in life. For more information on the Lindvall family and the TreeHotel, please visit treehotel.se.

LILY PARROTT & LAURA STAHNKE OF MIGRATION COLLECTIVE

Samantha Paige recently sat down in London with Lily Parrott and Laura Stahnkhe, two of the founders of Migration Collective. Migration Collective is a group of dynamic and creative women who aim to challenge the current, narrow rhetoric on migration. Through events, film festivals and soon cooking programs, they seek to focus on inclusion, what is shared rather than what separates people. This episode highlights the simultaneously increasing number of humans voluntarily and involuntarily leaving their homelands and the rapid rise of nationalist rhetoric around refugees, migrants and foreigners. Using the power of art and expression to examine the experiences and reality within migration, displacement and diaspora, Migration Collective’s founders are broadening the conversation around these issues and facilitating connection by highlighting the humanity behind every story. Parrott, an American, and Stahnke, a Dutch-Italian, share their own personal stories of living in the UK, the potential impact of Brexit and why they have dedicated their lives to changing the dialogue around migration. 

For more information on Migration Collective and their upcoming London Migration Film Festival, please visit migrationcollective.com.

MIA SABEL

Samantha Paige sat down with bespoke leather designer and qualified saddler, Mia Sabel of Sabel Saddlery, in her East London studio. The two talked about how one creates a life that feels like one’s own and the freedom found on the other side of our biggest last cuts. Sabel shares her journey from an existence ruled by an overpowering corporate job with no time or space for loved ones, nature or connection to a more balanced life filled with creativity, horse riding, travel and solid relationships. Speaking to the power of the significant decisions, or the last cuts, we make in life, Sabel illuminates the idea that change is most powerful when we elect it, rather than when we react to the things happening to or around us. She honestly and vulnerably speaks to the darkness that can occur when we are disconnected from ourselves and the bravery required to leap from a known state of being to a new one.  

For more information on Mia Sabel’s beautiful custom leather work and workshops, please visit sabelsaddlery.com.

CHARLIE LINVILLE

“You are what you can mentally achieve, not what you perceive your body capable of.”         Charlie Linville

Samantha Paige sits down with her friend and inspiration, Charlie Linville, to talk about life-changing last cuts, overcoming trauma, perseverance, adventure and inspiration on the other side of pain. In 2011, while in Afghanistan, Charlie, an ex-Marine Sergeant, was injured on a mission to dismantle improvised explosive devices (IED’s) as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Technician. After 14 surgeries over 18 months, his injured foot was not healing. Charlie made the ultimate last cut by proactively deciding to amputate his right leg below the knee. Soon after that decision, he committed to training with The Heroes Project and became the first combat wounded amputee to climb Mt. Everest in 2016. Their first attempt was canceled after an avalanche killed 16 Sherpas in 2014. In 2015, the second effort was abandoned when Nepal was devastated by a huge earthquake. Charlie’s combined strength and humility have inspired Paige since before they first met on an Equinox video shoot in 2016. This conversation speaks to the universal importance of sharing our stories and trusting in the power of connection to heal ourselves and others.

MELINDA ALEXANDER

“I am always refining my truths, and my truths are always changing.” Melinda Alexander

Melinda Alexander, aka Mumu Mansion, sat down with Samantha Paige to speak about love, self-healing, parenting and the gift of learning from life’s most challenging moments. Melinda is an all-around lover, mother, healer and social activist who does women’s work in many forms to heal herself and others. She is dedicated to learning from the internal and external conversation about life, while vulnerably and boldly welcoming thousands on her own personal journey. Following the birth of her son and a painful divorce, she revolutionized her life and created a broad platform to show the possibilities born with the willingness to learn from what is not working. Melinda proved to herself that she had the power within to work through anything if she stayed open to extracting the information, and thereby evolution, found in even the most difficult moments. This candid conversation touches upon love, healing, parenthood, race, divorce, trauma, the beauty in the discomfort and the power of transforming pain.   

For more information on Melinda Alexander’s powerful work, please visit melinda-alexander.com and @mumumansion on Instagram.

STYLE LIKE U'S LILY MANDELBAUM & ELISA GOODKIND

Samantha Paige met Lily Mandelbaum and Elisa Goodkind, the creators of Style Like U, at their “True Style is What’s Underneath: The Self-Acceptance Revolution” book signing in Los Angeles. Just weeks later, Lily and Elisa interviewed Paige for their Dispelling Beauty Myths video series with Allure magazine in New York. In this interview, Paige was excited to switch roles and ask the mother-daughter duo powerful questions about their lives. They touch upon life before Style Like U, the last cuts they made to step into this creative endeavor, where they find inspiration for and connection to their work and how they stay open and vulnerable to and during this transformative process. These two women share eloquently about the importance of redefining individuality, the value of staying true to oneself in spite of society’s homogenizing messages and the deep connection all beings share. In the same vulnerable spirit of the intimate docu-style video portraits of Style Like U, Mandelbaum and Goodkind open up with Paige about the importance of always going deeper within oneself in order to make a bolder contribution in the world.

To connect with Lily Mandelbaum and Elisa Goodkind and discover more about Style Like U, please visit stylelikeu.com, Style Like U on YouTube and @stylelikeu on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

KYLE KNIGHT

Kyle Knight is a researcher in the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch in New York City. A former media journalist who chose to do reporting work with more policy follow through and impact, Kyle is a brilliant motivator for change. Samantha Paige sat down with Knight to discuss the details of his most recent Human Rights Watch report entitled, “I Want to be Like Nature Made Me: Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US.” Written in partnership with interACT, an organization that advocates for the human rights of children born with intersex traits, this detailed report documents the medically unnecessary surgeries done on many intersex children, who make up close to 2% of the US population. Intersex people are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics, including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals. Knight eloquently outlines the unethical treatment of many intersex patients, the lasting psychological and physical effects of these unnecessary surgeries and the proposed policy change to create a kinder, safer environment for intersex patients in the medical system and beyond. This episode touches upon important issues related to gender, nonbinary identity, parenting, health advocacy and societal biases and norms.

Prior to joining the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch, Knight was a fellow at the Williams Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles and a Fulbright scholar in Nepal. As a journalist he has worked for Agence France-Presse in Nepal and for IRIN, the UN’s humanitarian news service, reporting from Burma, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

For more information on the Human Rights Watch and interACT Intersex report, please visit https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/07/25/i-want-be-nature-made-me/medically-unnecessary-surgeries-intersex-children-us. For more information on interACT, please visit https://interactadvocates.org.

PIDGEON PAGONIS

Samantha Paige first heard of Pidgeon Pagonis’ powerful story of growing up Intersex through a video clip produced by Human Rights Watch. Paige wanted to learn more about Pagonis’ experience of discovering they were Intersex at age 19 and the subsequent deconstruction of a believed identity, gender and (false) cancer diagnosis. In this raw, vulnerable episode, Pagonis discusses a childhood defined by a struggle to conform to a familial and societal definition of “normal.” They had been told a believed, yet constructed story of a childhood cancer diagnosis, built around the notable differences in their body and development as well as the scars on their body. It was not until Pagonis attended an advanced psychology class in college where Intersex was outlined that they discovered they had actually been born with the very condition being taught. Pagonis underwent three medically unnecessary surgeries at age 1, 4 and 11, as well as years of traumatizing interactions with the medical world.  They share here about their rediscovery of self as a nonbinary, queer activist and filmmaker in the context of reality over protective lies. Pagonis speaks beautifully to the universal experience of living with trauma and creating a life that feels like one’s own.

To connect with Pidgeon and learn more about their work, please visit their website or their Instagram. To view Pidgeon’s powerful documentary film, “The Son I Never Had: Growing Up Intersex,” please contact them directly through their website.

Zoe Buckman

Zoe Buckman is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, activist and mother. Originally from East London, she now lives and works in New York. Buckman powerfully weaves together art and activism into pieces that draw viewers in with aesthetically pleasing beauty, while offering an undercurrent that inspires deeper contemplation on political issues. Buckman speaks to the process of transforming what she sees happening in the world around her into thought-provoking works of art. With creations such as “Let Her Rave,” “Mostly It’s Just Uncomfortable” and “Every Curve,” her work beautifully weaves together the feminine with the fierce, sparking conversation around feminism, mortality and equality. Buckman shares how her activism informs her art and how both inform her parenting of her young daughter. After admiring Zoe Buckman’s work for years, Samantha Paige was excited to sit down with her to talk about art, activism, the shared experience of mothering daughters in this moment in time and the power of last cuts to wake us up and foster change.

To learn more about Zoe Buckman’s visual art and upcoming projects, including her 2018 LA installation with Art Production Fund, please visit zoebuckman.com or @zoebuckman on Instagram and Twitter.