Meet Aurora Higgs
Social Justice & Gender Facilitator
Aurora Higgs (she/they) is a Black queer visionary from Richmond, Va. Aurora transitioned in 2018 and uses her platform to promote justice and equity. She runs Borealis Consulting, LLC where she works as a speaker, performer, and producer of media that elevate queer BIPOC voices. As a member of the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood, Aurora helps shape medical practice guidelines and protocols to better ensure the transgender policies are appropriate, progressive, and compassionate. Aurora specializes as a speaker and facilitator on equity, DEI/disruption work, social justice, and gender/sexuality studies.
Aurora is currently obtaining a PhD at Virginia Commonwealth University, studying the relationship trans people of color have with media and the archive. She believes that art and digital media are the catalysts that most successfully open the public’s consciousness; to speculate about worlds beyond our own. Aurora unapologetically integrates her art with her area of study. As a burlesque performer, Aurora employs the classically effeminate art form to expand the viewers’ scope of femininity. As a Black transgender woman, taboo has always surrounded her identity, so she leverages and reconceptualizes the nature of “the taboo” to foster generative discourse about identity, sexuality, gender, performance, and new epistemologies.
