Rachel Epstein

Wellness Coach | Program Facilitator

Rachel Epstein (PhD-Education) is a long-time popular educator, workshop facilitator, mediator, researcher, writer, and activist. She grew up in a secular Jewish household filled with politics, social justice, and music. Her work and activist life have included working with migrant domestic workers, as a 2SLGBTQ+ parenting educator and activist, and as Executive Director of a community-based secular Jewish organization working towards racial, economic, gender, and environmental justice.

Rachel is a skilled, compassionate, and approachable facilitator and has facilitated hundreds of workshops on topics ranging from 2SLGBTQ+ parenting and families to conflict and communication to antisemitism (what it is and what it isn’t).

She was the founding coordinator of the Toronto-based LGBTQ Parenting Network where she initiated a myriad of education, research, and advocacy projects. She is the author of the Best Start Resource Centre’s manual, Welcoming and Celebrating Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in Families (lgbtqpn.ca/BestStart), and editor of the anthology, Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting (http://threeoclockpress.com) and wrote a doctoral dissertation on 2SLGBTQ+ people’s experiences in fertility clinics. Rachel has been the Honoured Dyke in the Toronto Dyke March and was awarded the Community One Foundation’s Steinert & Ferreiro Award, recognizing her leadership and pivotal contributions on behalf of 2SLGBTQ+ families in Canada, as well as the Barbara Gittings Award from the Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists. She was also the recipient of a two-year Banting postdoctoral fellowship at Brock University, researching 2SLGBTQ+ family conflict and reconfiguration.