Current Projects and Background

Mx. Manduley graduated with a Master’s of Social Work at Boston University, where they were awarded the Dean Wilma Peebles-Wilkins Human Relations Scholarship as well as the Frances G. Frank Award in Gerontology. Devoted to both clinical and macro practice, two big areas of formal specialization are older adults and trauma. They also hold a Bachelor of Arts in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Brown University. As an undergraduate, they were honored with awards for leadership and fostering understanding of diversity, particularly around sexuality. 

Mx. Manduley’s jam is to change the status quo through macro-level prevention and education (speaking engagements, written articles, consulting work) as well as through micro-level intervention (therapy with individuals, families, relationships). If you can’t already tell, Aida is someone who thrives when engaging with social issues through multiple avenues, and they believe a diversity of tactics is crucial to building the future we need.

Below is more information about Aida’s areas of work. If you have an idea for a service or collaboration that’s unlisted, feel free to reach out and inquire.

Photo by Erika Kapin.

Therapy and clinical work

Addressing mental health and wellness is critical for social justice! Based out of Boston, Mx. Manduley sees clients as part of The Meeting Point in Jamaica Plain with a grounding in liberation health and healing justice frameworks (more on the latter here and here). Their therapeutic practice is welcoming of all, though there is a focus on seeing clients who are part of under-resourced communities and minority groups. Thus, Mx. Manduley’s approach uplifts people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, neurodivergent folks, people engaged in sex work, non-monogamous folks, people who practice BDSM/kink, and those whose spiritual beliefs aren’t part of the Christian mainstream. They are able to provide individual as well as relationship counseling (in Spanish or English), educational consultations, and letters for gender-affirming procedures.

Aida especially loves helping people who’ve been wary of pursuing therapy and those who’ve had less-than-stellar experiences with prior clinical treatment. You can be sure they’re on the cutting edge of practice and engaging with colleagues, as a member of various clinical groups and projects, including WPATH: the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, TPATH: the Transgender Professional Association for Transgender Health, the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation (unfortunately dissolved as of mid-2022), and the Kink Clinical Guidelines Project founded in 2018. To see more about Aida’s approach and areas of specialization, please visit their page on The Meeting Point site.

Photo by Erika Kapin.

Education, Training, & Facilitation

Photo by Erin Kohnke.

Restorative & Transformative Justice And Accountability

Since 2012, Mx. Manduley has been tapped into the world of restorative and transformative justice (RJ/TJ)—frameworks for addressing harm that ask us to move beyond (and away) from state responses to violence. Instead RJ/TJ offer approaches that—among other things—center survivor needs, reject a politic of disposability, encourage community collaboration and reintegration versus isolation, focus on harms versus “broken rules,” aim to transform the conditions that caused the harm in the first place, and honor the humanity of all involved (rather than just the survivors’). Aida has centered Black and Indigenous-led trainings and materials in their learning, though they have also participated in trainings from other practitioners (some of which were great, some of which were…not!). 

Aida has been in and consulting with accountability pods, spearheaded survivor pods, advised organizations on leading accountability processes, presented at both national and local events about this topic, and given adjacent support as a therapist for people in the midst of these structures. NOTE: Given rampant cultural appropriation—particularly around indigenous circle practices and restorative justice work—and information Aida has recently learned about some of the people they’ve trained under (as well as paying attention to local conversations about restorative justice and broad calls from indigenous communities in the Northeast), they’ve entered a chrysalis phase in this work to gather information, assess, and reorient to make sure they’re moving forward in ways that are still values-aligned.

Community-Building And Space-Creation

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Aida eventually moved to New England, where they began nourishing vibrant communities wherever they found themselves. For example, Manduley co-founded a peer support/consultation group and referral database for therapists of color in the Boston Area with CarmenLeah Ascencio. On the national and international stage, Aida has been a leader in the award-winning Women of Color Sexual Health Network (WOCSHN) since 2014 (though they ended their Leadership Circle term in 2019) and is a proud member of The National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN), as well as the Latinx Therapists Action Network (LTAN).

Through WOCSHN, Aida has passionately challenged white supremacy in the sexuality field, fostered spaces where women of color (as well as some nonbinary folks) can build meaningful professional relationships, and secured material as well as emotional resources to uplift women of color. With LTAN, they have focused on creating bilingual educational materials, piloting emotional support sessions with people in ICE detention, holding grief spaces in the aftermath of crises such as school shootings, and more. With NQTTCN, they’ve been part of national and local convenings for healing practitioners—including the multi-month Healing Justice Lab—and made contributions to the org’s radical syllabus. They also currently serve on various committees and coalitions around diversity, anti-racism, school health, and social work.

Writing And The Arts

Fun fact: Aida has been journaling since they were 6 years old and show no signs of stopping!

For a taste of Aida’s range in the realm of writing, you can find some of their poetry published in “Queer Poets Write About Nature” (Cutlines Press), personal prose and photography in “SEXINESS: Rituals, Revisions, and Reconstructions” (Discipline Press), lesson plans in “Orientation: Teaching About Identity, Attraction, and Behavior” (The Center for Sex Education), blogposts on this very website, a scholarly debate piece in the 14th edition of “Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Human Sexuality” (McGraw-Hill), a chapter on clinical methods in “Pediatric Gender Identity: Gender-affirming Care for Transgender & Gender Diverse Youth” (Springer), and an academic article in a special edition of the Feminism & Psychology Journal (SAGE) on feminisms and social media. They also spent intense bursts of time writing, editing, and painting their face for the last three issues of #24MAG—a quarterly magazine/endurance publishing event that ran from 2012 to 2014.

Beyond writing, Aida loves to explore and create through a range of artistic media—with a focus on ceramics and painting, though they also dabble in things like printmaking, mixed media, etc. While this isn’t something they do “for work,” they include it here as an important aspect of how they show up in the world and the sensibilities they bring to other arenas of their life.

Photo by Erika Kapin.

 Other Past Projects & Experiences

Here’s a list of other things you may know Aida from:

• Innovating as the sexual health advocate for Sojourner House [a domestic violence agency] and managing various projects, primarily dealing with sexuality, HIV, and LGBTQ issues. Under their leadership, the organization was the first in Rhode Island to collect LGBTQ partner violence statistics and submit them for inclusion in the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs’ national report on intimate partner violence. Additionally, they developed the state’s first Sexual Health Education and Advocacy Program housed at a domestic violence agency, which included building the infrastructure and organization capacity to provide on-site rapid HIV testing.
• Serving two multi-annual terms on the Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity’s Advisory Council, where they pored over grant applications that prioritized the most marginalized voices, highlighting the need to funnel capital directly toward communities that need it.
• Learning from key nonprofit leaders during their 2013-2014 term in the Rhode Island Foundation Nonprofit Emerging Leaders Program and, in turn, mentoring college students of color at Brown University as well as their graduate program.
• Talking about pleasure on behalf of Good Vibrations’s Sexual Health Outreach Workshop program.
• Teaching digital literacy skills to the elderly and disabled at a senior center as well as to low-income and immigrant families at a neighborhood association.
• Chairing the board of directors at the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, an organization dedicated to “organizing low-income families, immigrants communities, and people of color to create a diverse, community-led movement that wins economic, social and political justice.”
• Providing bilingual advocacy, education, and crisis-response to victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, and hate crimes through Day One RI.
• Strategizing for a social media outreach plan that would engage people in the Do Tell Stories project, “a crowdsourced compilation of anonymous, true, personal stories about sex and sexuality.”
• Serving on a number of national and regional coalitions on HIV prevention, gay and bisexual men’s health, comprehensive sexuality education, and LGBTQ anti-violence.
• Teaching youth in Massachusetts and Rhode Island with Partners in Sex Education.
• Presiding as a guest judge or MC for events ranging from raunchy  Smut Slams to the more sober Metcalf Media Awards (previously called the Metcalf Diversity in the Media Awards).