The 8th

A comedy star in her native Ireland, Maeve Higgins has performed all over the world, including in Edinburgh, Melbourne and, most recently, Erbil. Now based in New York, she’s made a name for herself there too. In a good way! She has co-hosted Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk on National Geographic and has appeared in Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer. Maeve hosts Butterboy, a live weekly show with Aparna Nancherla and Jo Firestone. Her podcast, Maeve in America, launched in 2016 and quickly became a critical and commercial success. She writes regularly for The New York Times.

Aideen Kane's most recent film as producer, The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales was directed by Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She co-produced Women in Blue with Beth Levison, and it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and on PBS. Aideen also produced and co-directed The 8th, the story of how Ireland overturned one of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. Previous credits include The Armor of Light (dir. Abigail Disney & Kathleen Hughes), The Trials of Spring (dir. Gini Reticker), The Awful Truth (dir. Michael Moore), Face to Face: The Schappell Twins (dir. Ellen Weissbrod), and Voices of the Children (dir. Zuzana Justman). In Ireland, Aideen produced several award-winning documentaries and short films, as well as the international theatrical hit Alone it Stands. Aideen is the VP of Production at Little Monster Films.

Kavita N. Ramdas is a globally recognized advocate for gender equity and justice. She was recently named activist in residence at the Global Fund for Women and is a visiting professor at the Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Kavita is a speaker and thought commentator on the challenges facing philanthropy and civil society as we strive for equitable and sustainable development and gender and racial equity. She provides high-level consulting advice and guidance on initiatives to defend democracy and protect human rights both within the US and across the globe. 

She recently completed an independent assessment of the United Nations ability to deliver on Gender Equality as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. As director of the Women’s Rights program at the Open Society Foundations, the foundation made its largest ever investment in gender justice with a $100 million commitment to the Generation Equality Forum in July 2021. She is the founder of KNR Sisters, a consulting venture for social justice movements and philanthropy; has served as strategy advisor for MADRE, an international women’s rights organization; at the Ford Foundation as both senior advisor on Global Strategy and Representative for South Asia; and as President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women.

Ailbhe Smyth is a long-time activist and campaigner on feminist, LGBTI+ and socialist issues. She was the founding head of Women’s Studies at UCD (University College Dublin) and has written about feminism, politics, and culture in Ireland. Ailbhe left academia in the mid-2000s to work with women’s community organizations and in social movement politics. She has been involved in many campaigns and was on the Strategic Executive of the victorious same-sex marriage campaign in 2015. She has been fighting for women’s right to choose for over 35 years and was co-director of the Together for Yes national referendum campaign which removed the near-total ban on abortion from the Irish constitution with a majority of 66% in 2018. Ailbhe is a regular contributor to media and national debate. In 2019 she was included in Time Magazine's '100 most influential people' list.

Louise Melling is a Deputy Legal Director at the ACLU and the Director of its Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty, which encompasses the ACLU’s work on reproductive freedom, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, freedom of religion and belief, and disability rights. In this role, she leads the work of the ACLU to address the intersection of religious freedom and equal treatment, among other issues. 

Before becoming Deputy Legal Director, Melling was in the Reproductive Freedom Project for nearly two decades, including serving as its director for seven years.