Caitlin V

I mean, I think it affects all of us, whether we're interested in it or not.

We live in a culture that has a lot of sexual messaging and advertising and all that.

So I did not discover that I wanted to work directly with people right away.

I decided to do sex ed, and so I was working with groups and young people in the evening, but then I went and got a degree in conflict studies, actually, and in art history, and I have a minor in Japanese, and I got to do this very nice liberal arts school, and my thesis then was on sexual health as a human right in international law.

All of the things that had been codified to that point that were designed to protect

uh, sexual sovereignty and autonomy and, uh, just like the, the like lovely international, um,

things that lacked any teeth and any sort of like actual, I don't know, I don't wanna say they lacked impact, but that's what I was interested in studying at that time.

Yeah, they did, I think across the board, but that was a while ago.

So anyways, I left that and I decided to go get a master's in public health because I knew that I could go and study sexuality at that level, at a population level.

And I was living in Indiana at the time.

So Indiana University was the home of the Kinsey Institute.

It's a fantastic institution for studying sexuality.

So I went there.

I got a master's in public health.

I got invited to follow my advisor there to the University of Texas School of Public Health to work on my doctorate.

And I was in my doctoral program and so miserable.

I did not like being in the ivory tower.

I did not like the feeling of like, we're going to just continue to publish and publish and publish and other academics and researchers are going to read it.

I had this feeling of like, what about the people who need this?

What about the folks who are suffering right now today?