Available for speaking engagements, panels and interviews on any gradient of issues, ranging between art, design, pole dance and sensual movement, sex positivity or pro sex worker issues, activism and creativity, and storytelling through stigma. 

• Heal or Die Trying: A Conversation about Creativity, Contradiction and Capitalism in a Crisis State

  The inevitability of our existence is that it holds many contradictions. This is particularly true for creatives and those who have a stake in equitable social change. Personal contradictions between identities we do or would like to hold that are seemingly at odds. Industry contradictions between the values we hold and the systems that have been established for us to hold them in. And existential contradictions between our beliefs about the world before and after living through multiple major global crisises, between our current state and the future we’d like to see. This process has manifested differently for those in varying circumstances of life, but it has been universally challenging for all, with a unifying theme that we can no longer foster the extremities of our dissonance. We can’t separate our work and home lives, our economic needs and wellness, our identities from how we are in relationship to each other and the world around us. We must integrate or die trying. For some, quite literally. And the only way to accomplish this is together. As a community of humans, centered on truth and oneness.

  This talk shares the way contradiction has been entwined in Jillian’s life from a young age as an angsty kid in suburban parking lots, through her career working for clients such as Netflix, Showtime and The New York Times as well as a pole dancer, sex positive and pro sex work advocate, and an artist centering themes of identity, relationship, and community as entry points into collective transformation. She shares personal stories for the first time publicly about her mental health crisis and near death experience that changed everything for her. And how she’s learned to integrate some of her most glaring contradictions to rebuild personally, professionally and contributing to the work of rebuilding as a community collective.

  
  

• Don’t Fuck People with Bad Politics: Design, Activism and Anti-Capitalism in a Capitalist Industry

  Activism and politics within or alongside of design isn’t a new topic; however, there are many either waking up to a new level of awareness and/or feeling called to step into their activism in new and bigger ways. This can be a confusing and difficult process, as dismantling toxic systems involves holding an anti-capitalistic mindset while functioning in a capitalistic industry. The only guarantee is that the journey is a personal and imperfect one.

  In this talk, Jillian Adel shares her story of becoming politically-charged within and outside of design. From feminism to sex positivity to pro sex work issues, Jillian shares her experience of what it has looked like to function as a radical within a conservative industry. The discussion focuses on questions including, but not limited to:

  • What does it mean to hold anti-capitalist beliefs in a capitalistic industry?

  • How do you balance capitalism with anti-capitalism and not die?

  • Do one's creative and activist identities have to mix?

• Sex Ed for Creatives: How Sexual Stigma Impacts the Daily Lives of All Creators

  Whether you see it or not, sexual stigma is something that affects every one of us, everyday, as creatives. It’s there when queer + trans bodies are censored more heavily than the rest. It’s there when your art is deleted for involving sexual content. It’s there when hundreds of conversations that involve positive messages about sexuality and useful information about sexual health or relationships are being systematically erased from your view. And it’s there when you hear my story or all of those who have stories similar to mine but can’t speak them for fear of safety or isolation or loss.

• A Bloodied Kind of Hope Workshop

  Take an impactful memory out of your head and heart and onto the page and explore darkness as a form of radical dissent, connection and healing with this storytelling/art hybrid workshop. This workshop will ask you to work with a memory of a situation (around the topics of love, lust, family and friendship) that sticks with you emotionally. You’ll learn how to verbalize the experience and then use the words to make a piece of art that is unique you and your experience. Through this process, you’ll foster a sense of ownership over and honoring of your experience by taking the memory out of your head and heart and turning it into a piece of tangible art.

Articles

• Team Diversity Isn’t A Mystery
  If you build it, they will come…work for you.

  “I am an art director and graphic designer by trade. In my industry, I often witness hiring managers at companies expressing a strong desire to diversify their teams. They want to hire more women, more people of color, more queer, trans and non-binary candidates…”

  
  

• I Don’t Care What Marie Kondo Thinks of My Space
  How I came to love being a maximalist in a minimalist world.

  “Staring out from behind my laptop perched atop a small table in the middle of my studio apartment, I can see most of my belongings. There are bookshelves containing stacks of books on pornography, feminism, and art…”

  → for Forge on Medium

  
  

• Why We Wait

  “They wonder why we wait. Why we don’t talk about sexual violations we may have experienced until one or three or thirty-six years after the fact. I can only speak to why I have…”

  
  

• Showing Up Is Enough: Pole Dance, Sensual Movement + Trauma

  “I never thought I’d be a dance, or fitness, instructor or any kind. As a kid, I always had my head in arts & crafts…”

  
  

• How To Flirt With A Sexual Feminist

  “ So, you’re a man. A man who likes women. A man who likes women who knows a thing or two about how many of society’s structures are rigged to not allow women as many privileges as a men…”

  → for Divine / Bust Magazine

• On Vulnerability

  “A few years ago, I fell in love for the first time. I was living in Brooklyn, NY and he lived in Austin, TX. As is the case with many long distance, star-crossed loves…”

  → for Working Not Working

Previous Engagements

• The Opposite of Death: Creativity, Capitalism, and Contradiction

  • Queer Design Club | Digital

  • Funk N Waffles | Syracuse, NY

• Don’t Fuck People with Bad Politics: Design, Activism and Anti-Capitalism in a Capitalist Industry, Speaker

  • Digital

• The Good Rule Workshop, Host

  • Philadelphia, PA

  • Pittsburgh, PA

• Hi-Res Podcast, Guest

• VoyageLA, Guest

• Creative South Podcast, Guest

• RGD Creative Directions Conference, Speaker

  • Toronto, ON

• Weapons of Mass Creation Fest, Speaker

  • Cleveland, OH

• GoMedia Podcast, Guest

• Letter Like You Mean It Workshop, Host

  • Announcement | Los Angeles, CA