Learning to Listen: Conversations for Change

Samuel Pang, MD is a board-certified OB/GYN and Reproductive Endocrinologist, and, beginning in 1998, one of the first physicians to provide reproductive care to members of the LGBTQ+ community. His pioneering work has led to numerous advances along the way and earned him the prestigious Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Award in 2022.  In 1998, he was among the earliest physicians to apply assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to gay men who sought parenthood via donor eggs and gestational surrogacy. In 2007, he began providing IVF services to lesbian couples without infertility, coining the term “reciprocal IVF” for one person providing oocytes and the other gestating. In 2012, he began treating transgender men for fertility preservation, reciprocal IVF, and transgender men who choose to gestate themselves. He was a charter member and second chairperson of ASRM’s LGBTQSIG. In 2022, Dr. Pang received the “Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award” for practicing physicians from ASRM.

After earning his BSc (Biochemistry) and MD from the University of British Columbia, Samuel C. Pang, MD completed a rotating internship followed by a residency in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Toronto. He completed his fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at UCLA. He is board-certified in Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility. In 1993, he joined IVF America Boston (later, Reproductive Science Center of New England) and was appointed Medical Director of RSCNE in 2007. In October 2014, he joined Boston IVF following a merger with RSCNE. Dr. Pang has a reputation for commitment to excellence and meticulous attention to detail in patient care, and he is respectful, empathic, sensitive, and compassionate in communicating with patients, engendering their trust and confidence. While his career focused on patient care, he has also mentored junior physician colleagues and advocated for patients. Working with RESOLVE New England, he played an instrumental role in the 2011 revision to the Massachusetts Infertility Insurance Mandate.

Julia Olson, JD is the Co-Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel of Our Children’s Trust, a non-profit public interest law firm she founded in 2010 on the idea that courts are vital to democracy and are empowered to protect our children and the planet. Without a stable climate system, every natural resource we rely upon to exercise our basic human rights—life, liberty, home, happiness—is under threat. 

Julia and Our Children’s Trust are recipients of the Rose-Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism. She received the Kerry Rydberg Award for Environmental Activism in 2017 and the Katharine & George Alexander Law Prize in 2022. Julia is a member of Rachel’s Network Circle of Advisors and was named one of Bloomberg’s “Green 30 for 2020” and “Time100 Climate 2023”. Julia has been an invited speaker before the Conference of Chief Justices, the National Association of Women Judges, and numerous universities and law schools.

Julia graduated from UC Law San Francisco, formerly Hastings, in 1997, and founded Our Children’s Trust in 2010, initiating a global movement of rights-based climate litigation. She and her team at Our Children’s Trust have since pioneered a globally replicated model for youth-led legal action that draws from and integrates children’s rights, constitutional rights, climate science, and the public trust doctrine to protect the planet’s most vulnerable citizens: children. 

Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist, and author, is the dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature and is a regular contributor to a range of public media, about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. He has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences.

He is the current Chair of the Boston Public Health Commission Board of Health, past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow.