2025 Ware Lecture: Imara Jones

Each year, the UUA President extends an invitation to a prestigious guest to captivate the General Assembly as the esteemed Ware Lecturer. The 2025 Ware Lecture is Saturday, June 21at 7:00 pm ET / 6:00 pm CT / 5:00 pm MT / 4:00 pm PT. To be part of this extraordinary moment, you must register for General Assembly. With your registration, you’ll have the privilege of live-streaming the event or accessing the video on-demand when it’s made available. Don’t miss this opportunity to be inspired!

Visionary. Journalist. Changemaker. Imara Jones Is Our 2025 Ware Lecturer

Imara Jones, whose work has won Emmy and Peabody Awards, is the creator of TransLash Media, a cross-platform journalism, personal storytelling and narrative project, which produces content to shift the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the US. As part of her work at TransLash, Imara hosts the WEBBY-nominated,TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones as well as the investigative, limited series,The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality. In 2020 Imara was featured on the cover of Time Magazine as part of its New American Revolution special edition. In 2019 she chaired the first-ever UN High Level Meeting on Gender Diversity with over 600 participants. Imara’s work as a host, on-air news analyst, and writer focuses on the full-range of social justice and equity issues. Imara was also the first Journalist-in-Residence at WNYC’s The Greene Space where she hosted the monthly program Lives At Stake. Imara has been featured regularly in The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, Mic, and Colorlines. Imara has held economic policy posts in the Clinton White House and communications positions at Viacom. Imara holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Columbia. Imara is a 2021 Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow and a 2019 Soros Equality Fellow. She was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to serve on the New York City Commission on Gender Equity. She also serves on the boards of the Transgender Law Center,Anti-violence Project,GLSEN, the LGBTQ+ Museum, and the New Pride Agenda. Imara is also part of the Move to End Violence. She goes by the pronouns she/her.