SPJ's panel of trans and gender non-binary experts will discuss how journalists can responsibly cover transgender people and the issues they face during an election season when politicians, lawmakers, activists and media have targeted trans people with harmful legislation and false rhetoric aimed at generating fear and anger against the trans community and energize voters.

(Moderator) Danielle McLean is an award-winning freelance reporter and editor. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, USA Today, The Conversation, The Washington Post, and CNN. Previously, she was a senior editor at Smart Cities Dive and a staff reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education where she covered federal and state higher education policies. She is also a former award-winning investigative reporter at the Bangor Daily News and later, ThinkProgress. McLean served on the Society of Professional Journalists' national board. She is a former chair of the SPJ Ethics and Freedom of Information committees and a past president of the SPJ New England Chapter.

Tat Bellamy-Walker is a communities reporter at the Seattle Times. Their work focuses on social justice, race, economics, and LGBTQIA+ issues in the Pacific Northwest. Tat also serves on the National Association of Hispanic Journalists LGBTQIA+ Task Force, as a member of the Seattle Times Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

TJ Billard, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and, by courtesy, the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University. They are also the Executive Director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies in Chicago, Illinois. Dr Billard is the author of Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere (Oxford University Press, 2024) and is currently working on a book on anti-transgender misinformation in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Kate Sosin is an LGBTQ+ reporter at The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom covering the intersection of gender, race, politics, and policy. They focus on transgender rights, national policy and incarceration. Kate has conducted deep-dive investigations into transgender prison abuse and homicides for NBC News. They previously worked at Logo TV, INTO and Windy City Times. They live in Los Angeles, CA.

Christina Kahrl is the Sports Editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, taking the job in 2021 and becoming one of the few women named to lead a sports section for a major daily newspaper, and the first transgender woman. She was previously a senior editor for MLB and later national sports coverage at ESPN.com, working for the worldwide leader in sports for 10 years before her move to the Chronicle.