Ellen Kate Friedrichs, MA

Ellen Friedrichs is a health educator and writer. Originally from Canada, Ellen did her BA in Women Studies at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University and her Masters Degree in Health and Human Sexuality Education at NYU. She obtained training in HIV counseling, sexual violence prevention, and racial affinity group leadership.

Currently, Ellen lives in New York, where following the unexpected death of her older kids' dad, she is raising three kids with her current partner,

Ellen runs a middle and high school health education program and teaches college level health education and human sexuality. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, HuffPost, Rewire News and Kveller. Ellen also answers questions on the "okayso" app, and she has been a contributing writer for Everyday Feminism, edited About.com's LGBT teens site, wrote for Planned Parenthood's teen site, and for gURL.com.

Ellen's book, "Good Sexual Citizenship: How to Create a (Sexually) Safer World" was published fall 2019 by Cleis Press.

Ellen has appeared on CNN, and has been quoted in Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Bustle, She Knows, and The American Prospect. She has been interviewed on the CBC and was a guest on podcasts including The Gender Knot and the Conversationalist. Ellen has presented to students and parents at Columbia University, NYU, Pace University, and to numerous public and private school groups. She has also presented at conferences, including the National Sex Education Conference and YTH Live: Youth, Tech, and Health. In her presentations, Ellen covers talking to kids about sex & puberty, meeting boys' needs, consent & sexual violence, sexual health, developing positive sexual environments at colleges, high schools and non-academic settings, gender & feminism, gender identities & sexual orientations, sex education, and porn culture.

A career teacher and college lecturer, Ellen is comfortable with groups of varied different demographics, sizes, and make-ups.

Sub-specialities:

I have worked extensively with school communities on issues of sexual violence prevention and on creating programs on addressing healthy sexuality that begin in elementary school.

I also explore the role of "benevolent sexism" in stalling women's advances and look at how people of all genders are hurt by the gender binary. In this conversation I also dismantle the tenants of rape culture and toxic masculinity without ever using those terms since they are so off putting to the general public.

I have created an effective inclusive and comprehensive sexuality education and health education program and share my best practices.

I challenge conventional thinking on children teens and sexuality as a strategy to help young people stay sexually safer and challenge adults to be brave in their approach to an issue many are uncomfortable with.

I do a lot of work with social norms theory to help attack sexual violence and I use the framework of intimate justice to ask if everyone is analyzing their sexual experiences through the same lens (hint: they are not and women and gender and sexual minorities often are uniquely disadvantaged by mainstream assumptions on this issue).