Reimagining Safe Zone

Alyssa Montminy leads a powerful presentation on queer identity

selfie, with people on chairs looking at camera behind them. — _{Alyssa Montminy, Director of Employee Equity and Engagement, front right, gives a thumbs up at her presentation at the 2025 NCORE Conference.}

Alyssa Montminy, Director of Employee Equity and Engagement, proudly represented the Penguin Nation at the 2025 NCORE Conference in New York on May 29. Her three-hour session, “Reimagining Safe Zone: Providing Queer Identity Trainings with an Intersectional Lens,” was well attended and kept participants engaged with fresh ideas on how to implement or transform this type of training on their own campuses.

Alyssa’s presentation drew from her work and experience leading the “Power, Privilege, and Inequity – Safe Zone” training at Clark. With captivating storytelling and well-timed comedic relief, Alyssa traced the evolution of Safe Zone curriculum at Clark—from a two-hour workshop into a four-part, eight-hour series embedded into the college’s broader PPI (Power, Privilege, and Inequity) training initiative.

The expanded training series explores the complexities of queer identity through a variety of lenses: community, gender identity development, queer history, and intersectionality. By intentionally designing the content through an intersectional framework, the series also creates space for deeper conversations about race, sexuality, disability, and systemic inequities.

“Bringing an intersectional approach allows for updated and expanded elements,” Alyssa shared. “Including the ever-evolving language surrounding the queer community,” The curriculum also explores the whitewashing of queer history, the significance of the Black Trans Lives Matter movement, and the broader cultural forces that continue to shape the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals.

In her session, Alyssa encouraged participants to create and reimagine Safe Zone trainings for their own institutions, offering clarity, authenticity, and actionable takeaways—an example of how institutions can reimagine identity training to be more inclusive, relevant, and impactful.