Jacob Tobia
Jacob Tobia is a writer, producer, and author of the forthcoming memoir Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story with Putnam Books at Penguin Random House. As a gender nonconforming/trans performer, visionary, and internet personality, Jacob helps others embrace the full complexity of gender and own their truth, even when that truth is messy as hell.
Currently producing television projects in Los Angeles, Jacob was recently named to the Biden Foundation’s Advisory Council for Advancing LGBTQ Equality and announced as the new face of Fluide Beauty, a line of trans and queer-inclusive makeup. A member of both the Forbes 30 Under 30 and the OUT 100, Jacob made their debut on the national stage when they were interviewed by Laverne Cox as part of MTV’s The T Word and subsequently profiled by MTV in the one hour, GLAAD Award-nominated episode of True Life: I’m Genderqueer.
A Point Foundation Scholar, Harry S. Truman Scholar, and recipient of the Campus Pride National Voice and Action Award, Jacob has captivated audiences at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Yale Law School, IvyQ, Creating Change, South by Southwest, and conferences across the country with their message of personal fabulosity, gender self-determination, and social change. Their writing and advocacy have been featured on MSNBC, MTV, The Washington Post, The New York Times, TIME, New York Magazine, Teen Vogue, Playboy, The Guardian, and Jezebel, among others.
Click here to book this speaker!
Talks
Glitter. Power. Love. A (re)Introduction to Gender
In this powerful workshop, Jacob rebuilds gender from the ground up. Through the combination of brilliant storytelling and analytical prowess, audiences are compelled to reimagine the future of gender as we know it and imagine a world where the spectrum of gender shines free.
Beyond Representation: A (re)Introduction to Gender Diversity in the Workplace
Specially tailored for corporate and business audiences, this workshop addresses the specific shortcomings of how we currently talk about gender diversity in the workplace. Through focusing on gender diversity as a qualitative, experiential problem — rather than a representational, statistical one — Jacob pushes audiences to find a framework for gender diversity that calls everyone into a deeper, more personal conversation.
That Little Rainbow Wheel: A Processing Space for Gender Rebels
You know how sometimes, when your computer just needs a minute to process what the fuck is going on, it'll flash you that spinning rainbow wheel? Well that's what this is. From cisgender men to transgender women to nonbinary folks, everyone has gender woes, moments when they were told that their gender somehow wasn’t good enough. While we’re all walking around with this baggage, too few of us are unpacking it. As gender nonconforming, agender, genderfluid, trans, and queer people, we got a lotta shit that we don't take the time to properly process. So for this hour-long session, we're going to throw up a rainbow wheel to the world and take some time to let our systems go through it.
Beyond the Binary, Behind the Trauma: Musings on Trans Storytelling
So here's the thing. Visibility for a community is great and all, but it can also be sneaky as fuck. Because along with visibility comes some pretty serious pressure to tell your story "the right way." In this keynote presentation, Jacob will share some never-before-seen passages from their forthcoming manuscript and explore the way that contemporary visibility and The Trans Tipping Point (tm) have influenced trans storytelling. What limits has cisgender curiosity placed on how we talk about our experiences? Whose voices have been silenced in the interest of "the best spokespeople" being put forward? How can we heal from our trauma in a cultural landscape that constantly seeks to commodify it? And what would it mean if we let our messy, ethically inconsistent, gloriously imperfect trans selves shine free?
Click here to book this speaker!
Past Talks
- South by Southwest, Austin, TX
- Harvard University, Boston, MA
- Harvard Law School, Boston, MA
- Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
- Columbia University, New York, NY
- Queer Women in Business Summit, New York, NY
- Out for Undergraduate Marketing Conference, Dallas, TX
- Reaching OUT MBA Conference, Chicago, IL
- Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ
- University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago, IL
- University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, Chicago, IL
- Yale Law School, New Haven, CT
- IvyQ 2017 Keynote: The Ivy League Queer Summit, New Haven, CT
- Creating Change: The National LGBTQ Conferences, Various Cities
- Duke University, Durham, NC
- William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA
- QTalks, Salt Lake City, UT
- The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
- Washington University, St. Louis, MO
- Parsons School of Design, New York City, NY
- Culinary Institute of America, Poughkeepsie, NY
- Lafayette College, Easton, PA
- Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
- Columbia College, Chicago, IL
- Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY
- University of Wisconsin Stout
- California State University, Bakersfield, CA
- Bradley University, Peoria, IL
Request for Speaker