Our Story

Speak About it was founded by students, for students.

“In 2009, it felt like nobody was talking about consent in a way that even mentioned healthy sexuality or pleasure. We wanted to change that.”

-Shane Diamond, Founder

It was 2009. Across the Bowdoin College campus, and across campuses throughout the United States, students were starting to speak about it: Sex, consent, and sexual assault. Survivors began coming forward with their stories about sexual violence. They were vocal about the ways in which rape culture and hook-up culture intersected at their school, and they had questions and concerns about what consent really looked like. On Bowdoin’s campus, a group of students felt that a drastic culture shift needed to happen. They realized that nobody had ever spoken to them about ways to have healthy relationships, nobody showed them what good sex should look and feel like, and nobody taught them how to have agency over their own bodies and choices. 

Students Linzee Troubh and Jeremy Brenfeld wanted to change that. They both worked with sexual assault prevention groups and were active in student theatre and comedy on campus. They agreed that humor and performance could be a great way to connect with their peers and address the dearth of consent and healthy relationship education on campus. An idea was born: they’d write a show and call it “Speak About It,” an homage to a student-run zine about sex that had broken open this conversation at Bowdoin a few years prior.

Under the guidance of staff members, Meadow Davis and Emily Skinner, the team wrote a script and pulled together eight students to perform the first show. These students were not actors or drama majors; they were campus leaders with different identities and experiences on campus: athletes, student leaders, Greek Life members, comics, musicians, and more. The team collected true stories from their peers about dating and hook-ups, sex, and sexual assault. The first performance of Speak About It debuted in the fall of 2009 for Bowdoin’s first year students. That first cast know didn’t what would happen: would people like the show? Would they be uncomfortable? Would they walk out?

The show was a hit. First-year students, as well as faculty, staff, and student leaders loved Speak About It. They were moved, they learned something, they laughed. They wanted to speak about it and were inspired to make change. (We’re happy to say, 10 years later, we still get this kind of reception on campuses!)

One of the original cast members was a government major and hockey player from Taos, New Mexico: Shane Diamond. He’d never considered himself an actor, but performing in Speak About It was the highlight of his time at Bowdoin. He loved talking about sex, especially in this way: enthusiastic, honest, a little crass, 100% real, and super queer-friendly. During that first performance he thought, “How great would it be to bring this show to every school in the country?” A junior at the time, he stowed the idea away not knowing where it might lead.

After graduating in 2010, Shane moved to Portland, Maine. He was working at a coffee shop, trying to get his bearings as a 22-year-old in a new city. At an interview for an internship, Shane was asked, “If you could do one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?” Shane thought for a second and then confidently said, “Talk about sex.”

“Wait, really?” the interviewer asked. Shane told the interviewer all about this show he did in college, Speak About It. He talked about how, if he could, he’d do that for students across the country. He felt like that’s how he could really make a difference. The interviewer, Dave Surkin, was struck and inspired by Shane’s candor. A theater professional and entrepreneur himself, Dave replied, “Okay, so let’s make it happen.” Dave would become the show’s first director.

After securing the rights and permissions from Bowdoin, Dave and Shane started to re-work the script for five actors to perform at different schools across the country. Shane started building a network of connections in Portland to help inform and strengthen the script, from local actors to sexual assault prevention professionals.

Less than a year after Shane graduated, the new Speak About It show debuted in winter 2011 at The University of Southern Maine. The following summer, Shane and four other actors traveled to perform at five colleges on the East Coast. Since that first summer in 2011, Speak About It hasn’t looked back, adding more schools to the summer orientation tour each and every year. Word spread about this little show amongst students and administrators at colleges throughout the country. They loved that Speak About It educators were other young people who talked about sex and consent with humor, honesty, confidence, and chill.

As Speak About It began returning to campuses year-after-year, students would approach the actors after the show saying, “I saw Speak About It during Orientation, and now I’m an RA because I wanted to make a difference.” or “I started a group on my campus after seeing Speak About It.” To this day, our educators hear these kinds of stories from students whose college experiences were shaped by our programs.

As our reach grew, Speak About It began offering student leader trainings and discussions alongside the show, knowing that an hour-long show could only make so much of a difference. Empowering students to take matters into their own hands would have much deeper results.

In Speak About It’s formative years there were radical changes in sexual assault prevention ideologies and policies, and big cultural shifts in the dialogue about sex and consent on campus and in broader society. From the Obama administration’s Dear Colleague Letters in 2011 and 2014, to campus activism and media attention, schools began seeking out the kind of approachable, applicable consent education Speak About It offered. Shane ensured that Speak About It was at the forefront of the movement for healthier relationships and healthy sexuality, while maintaining the organization’s fun, tongue-in-cheek, and sex-positive brand. 

In 2012, with the help of a founding board, Shane incorporated Speak About It as non-profit. In doing so, he cemented the organization’s mission to bring dynamic, interactive, consent education to students across the country and ensured our longterm sustainability and success. By summer 2013, so many schools were asking for Speak About It’s Flagship Show, we added a second touring cast. The same year, Speak About It performed our first high school show at National Cathedral School in Washington, DC, where we still return to perform for graduating seniors every spring.

Between 2014 and 2018, Speak About It seemed to grow exponentially: adding a third cast of actor-educators in 2014, a fourth in 2016, and a fifth in 2017. As the organization grew, so did the diversity of each team, with intentional mind to increasing the racial, geographic, and gender diversity of each cast to better meet the needs of students across the country. 

In 2015, Shane welcomed former SAI intern and Bowdoin graduate, Kaylee Wolfe, as Speak About It’s second full-time staff member. Kaylee’s impact on the organization was huge: she drew on her extensive work as a peer sex educator to strengthen post-show facilitations and student trainings, and introduced new programs, including our parent program. During the same year, following a number of high profile cases at private high schools, demand for Speak About It’s programming at high schools increased tenfold, and we started offering more and more programs throughout the academic year for both high schools and colleges. 

Program Manager Oronde Cruger joined the full-time staff in 2016, after working with SAI as a actor educator since 2013. With him he brought a penchant for interactive, in-classroom programming and began to expand Speak About It’s repertoire of programs beyond just our Flagship Show. He jumpstarted Speak About It’s partnerships with local violence prevention organizations and spearheaded our Safer Space dance parties with Oxbow Brewing and Planned Parenthood. He advocated for expanding training for our educators. The three-week rehearsal process now includes training in facilitation techniques, sexual assault response, comprehensive sex ed, and intersectionality.

Founder Shane Diamond worked tirelessly to bring the kind of life-changing experience he had with Speak About It to more and more students nationwide. By 2018, over 400,000 students in 25 states and 3 countries had seen the show. We performed at private high schools, state universities, liberal arts colleges, and military institutions. With the emergence of #MeToo in 2017, demand for Speak About It only grew, and the organization began working not only with schools, but bars and restaurants, through our founding role in Heart of Hospitality. News outlets like USA Today and the Huffington Post began reaching out to us as experts in the field. Clearly, what was once a seed of an idea for a graduating senior had grown into a vital prevention and education resource for numerous schools and communities across the country. 

In 2018, Diamond made a difficult decision: He had accomplished what he’d wanted to do with his idea and seen it grow beyond even what he’d imagined. He was ready to try something new. While he has moved on to new adventures, Shane’s vision, signature dad jokes, and founding ethos are an indelible part of the Speak About It model and mission.

Through a year-long nationwide search, we found Speak About It’s current Executive Director, Olivia Harris. Based in Philadelphia, Olivia is an applied theatre artist and educator with a background in developing theatre-based interventions for social problems across the globe. In fact, she helped develop a similar on-campus sexual violence prevention program as a lecturer at Drew University. Olivia is funny, punny, clever, and creative, and the board unanimously agreed she was the perfect fit for the job. Speak About It now has home offices in Portland and Philadelphia, helping to increase our local and national reach.

Since 2018, Olivia has led the organization to numerous new milestones of success. In the fall of 2018, we won our first grant and have since begun offering free programming for high schools in Maine. Supported by the Bob Crewe Foundation, the Maine Women’s Fund, and Shared Nation, Speak About It has performed at almost a dozen Maine high schools over the past two years, at little to no cost to the schools. Olivia has helped expand our program offerings to include not only the Flagship Show, but a number of interactive or theatre-based workshops for students, campus leaders, faculty, and parents. 

Today Speak About It has three full-time staff members across two states, 25 educators hailing from all over the country, and a board of directors located in numerous different cities. We have grown and are growing every year. In 2020, Speak About It will celebrate our 10th anniversary, marking an incredible and powerful decade of making a real difference in students’ lives. We are looking forward to continuing the conversation in years to come.