Robert Miller

Desert Hot Springs, CA, USA

Founder and Executive Director

Gayle Rubin

San Francisco, CA, USA

Lead Academic Advisor

Gayle is a noted scholar of San Francisco leather history and social life, and of the politics and economics of South of Market. She was a founding member of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society, and was involved in the establishment of the Leather Archives & Museum, on whose Board of Directors she currently serves. She is also a member of the Board of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District in San Francisco.  Rubin has been active in many leather organizations and events, including Samois, Janus, the Outcasts, LDG, CLAW, and the Leather Hall of Fame. She has taught at the University of California Santa Cruz, the University of California Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Harvard University, where she was the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. 

Vince Andrews

Glen Burnie, MD, USA

Vince is dedicated to providing education and support to the community as well as continuously volunteering his services and his time to a broad range of projects. His success in art and activism compliments his talents as an author. His activism previously allowed him to lead NLA International, allowing him to help various leather clubs throughout North America over the years with their diverse formation and structuring needs in creating or revising by-laws. As an artist, Vince has helped with tasks like designing club logos, websites, and auction works, along with creating and distributing published media to publicize organizations and their events. As an author, Vince is most known for his successful work, The leatherboy Handbook, now in its third edition, along with other works. He is an author, artist, activist, and educator.

Guy Baldwin

Los Angeles, CA

Guy has been an active participant, commentator on, and observer of the American Leather scene since the late 1960s. He is a California licensed psychotherapist and in his 4 decades of practice has helped countless clients and taught audiences of erotic adventurers across the continent how to have less trouble and more fun being kinky. He has authored three books and countless essays in a wide array of lifestyle publications. His monthly columns in Drummer Magazine were published with a few more articles of his in Ties that Bind. Now in it's fourth printing, and recently made available as an ebook, SlaveCraft has long been required reading for those who feel turbocharged by the voluntary inclusion of Authority in their erotic and romantic relationships.

 Robert Bienvenu

Olney, MD, USA

Nancy Irwin

Toronto, ON, Canada

Viola Johnson

Evansville, IN, USA

Viola is a leatherwoman, activist, motivational speaker and author who has been active in the leather BDSM scene for well over four decades. She has served as a mentor to countless individuals, and was dubbed "Mom" by several generations of Leathermen and women, and is delighted to now be “Grandmom” and Great Grandmom to a whole new generation of “kinklings”. Mama Vi is a firm believer in preserving leather history, and is the Director and Senior Griot of the Carter/Johnson Library and Collection, a compilation of over 15,000 books (both fiction and non-fiction), periodicals, posters and other art, newsletters, and ephemera documenting the history of SM/Leather/Kink from early drawings documenting human sexuality to the present day.  One of the original Pearls of Onyx and a proud member of the ONYX Pearls Mid-Atlantic chapter, she is also the wife of the first Black IMsL, Jill Carter, International Ms. Leather 1996. They have been together 48 years. 

Leonora Anne Weston

Melbourne, Australia

Jeff Willoughby

Atlanta, GA, USA