A full-day event for those who live n’between worlds — done shrinking, ready to take up space without apology.
May 2nd 2026
Home Studios, Union Square
New York City
Seats are limited.
You’ve been told you’re too much — or not enough.
You’ve learned to move between worlds.
Reading the room. Code-switching.
You were asked to fit into spaces.
Never fully belonging here nor there.
So you learned to shape-shift.
RISE is the homecoming for n’betweeners®
Watch what happens when n’betweeners stop shrinking ↓
RISE is for you if…
✔ You've spent years translating yourself just to fit in.
✔ You move between cultures, identities, or worlds — rarely fully seen.
✔ You're tired of code-switching just to be understood.
✔ You want to be in a room where no one needs you to explain yourself.
If you’ve ever felt split between cultures, identities, or worlds.
RISE is for you.
Maybe you’re biracial. An immigrant. First-gen.
Queer. Trans. Non-binary. Multifaith.
RISE is the first large-scale event created for people whose lives don’t fit into one category.
Thought Leaders. Creatives. Entrepreneurs. Global thinkers.
You’ve learned to carry complexity alone.
To adapt. To translate. To make yourself “understood”.
At RISE, the n’betweener® experience is finally centered and celebrated.
No more fitting in. No more shrinking.
This is home.
Don't wait on this one.
A full-day of inspiring speakers, heartfelt stories, and bold ideas — created to honor who you are and expand what’s possible.
↓ Check out the program ↓
Program Schedule
The RISE n’betweener® Experience
SATURDAY, MAY 2 2026
A full day of deep connections, talks, panels, and experiential sessions designed for n’betweeners®.
Schedule subject to change.
8:30 AM – 9:15 AM - Arrival, Coffee & Registration
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM - Opening Circle: Welcome Home to the n’betweener® Experience
Led by: André and Kjessie Essue
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM - The n’betweener® Journey: What It Costs, What It Creates, Why We RISE
Speaker: Nora Alwah
10:30 AM – 10:50 AM - Power Stories
Speakers: Jasmine Schimmel • Angela Schmer
10.50 AM – 11.05 AM - Morning Break
11:05 AM – 11:40 AM - Panel: Redefining Belonging — The Challenges & Gifts of n’betweeners®
Moderated by: Amber Koonce
The Founding Circle: Incarnación Rodríguez, Heatherlyn Hoffman & Héctor Ramirez
11:40 AM – 11:50 AM - Embodiment Practice
Led by: Kimberly Lucht
11.50 AM – 12:30 PM - Designing between worlds - Conversation with The Øther
Moderated by: Nora Alwah
Speakers: Aziz Hasan & Nyla Hasan
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM - Lunch
2:00 PM – 2:20PM - Power Stories
Speakers: Héctor Ramirez • Raven Dorantes
2:20 PM – 3:00 PM - From Pain to Power: The Healing Journey of n’betweeners®
Moderated by: Nora Alwah
Speakers: Atash Yaghmaian & Raul Espinoza
3.00PM – 3.15 PM - Afternoon Break
3:15 PM – 3:45 PM - RISE Circles: Connection & Reflection
3:45 PM – 4:30 PM - Closing Circle: Time to RISE
Led by: Nora Alwah, André Essue and Kjessie Essue
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM — Hugs & Goodbyes
Designing between worlds:
Join us for an intimate conversation with the founders of the øther as we explore how living between worlds becomes a source of creativity, perspective, and entrepreneurial power.
Nyla Hasan
CO- FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR | the øther
Curiosity, nostalgia, and craft drive how she creates — across disciplines, in and outside of fashion.
Rooted in her mixed South Asian heritage, she presents old world crafts in untraditional ways, investigating where we find belonging and how connection transcends borders. Having spent much of her life feeling like an "other," —the tension between these two polarizing identities she learned to find beauty in the between and seeks to connect with others who find themselves in this same space.
With over 15 years of designing in contemporary womenswear, Nyla studied fashion design at FIT and held design leadership roles at Tanya Taylor and specialized in embroidery at Tory Burch before launching øther.
Aziz Hasan
CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE | the øther
Aziz Hasan is the Co-Founder of the øther and a multidimensional executive, entrepreneur, and creative who has spent his career at the intersection of product, brand, and human experience.
He is the former CEO of Kickstarter and former VP of Product Experience at Refinery29.
Today he runs a fractional executive practice helping early-stage technology companies own their product strategy and brand identity — and alongside co-founder and fashion designer Nyla Hasan, he is building the øther, a contemporary fashion brand exploring identity and belonging through personal style and storytelling.
Aziz believes that living dimensionally — holding multiple creative and personal identities at once — isn't a liability. It's a way of seeing.
“Being an n’betweener® is a superpower.”
- Fabiola (she, her)
From Pain to Power:
The Healing Journey of n’betweeners®
Join us for a rich conversation with mental health experts exploring the healing journey of n’betweeners® — how living between cultures, identities, and worlds shapes our inner lives. Together, we will examine the impact of constant adaptation and not fully belonging, while uncovering the strength, self-awareness, and leadership that can emerge from it.
Atash Yaghmaian
Psychotherapist and Author of “My Name Means Fire”
Atash Yaghmaian is an Iranian-American author, psychotherapist, and educator whose work explores trauma, multiplicity, and parts-work. She is the author of My Name Means Fire (Beacon Press, 2025), a memoir weaving her personal history with Dissociative Identity Disorder with the story of Iran’s shifting political landscape.
The founder of Atash Healing and Founding Member of Harvest Collegiate High School’s counseling program in New York City, Yaghmaian has been featured in The Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ruminate Magazine, and Medium.
She is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW-R) and EMDR-certified therapist who speaks and writes widely on healing, trauma, and the power of storytelling.
Learn more about Atash’s work here .
Raul Espinoza
Executive Director at All Kings & Founder of LiveLOUD
Raul Espinoza is an emotional intelligence and personal development consultant with nearly 20 years of experience supporting communities worldwide. His work spans from social incubators in favelas of Brazil, psychosocial programs in Iraq, youth initiatives in India, and many other projects, all centered on healing and transformation for underserved populations.
He is skilled in psychosocial development, neurolinguistic programming, leadership training, and mindset coaching to support individuals and communities in building resilience, self-awareness, and leadership capacity.
He is currently the Executive Director of All Kings, where he leads programs focused on mental health, emotional wellness, and leadership development for men, especially those impacted by the criminal legal system and young men at risk. Helping them heal, grow, and lead
You’ve spent a lifetime caught n’between worlds.
TIME TO
Meet the n’betweener® Founding Circle
These are the n’betweeners®. The ones who did the work.
They’ve lived the complexity of being n’between — and turned it into power and leadership. At RISE, you will hear their lived stories — not as theory, but as embodied experience.
Jasmine | she.her
Jasmine Schimmel is a proud mixed woman of color.As a child, she dreamed of being an astronaut—charting the unknown, discovering new worlds, and creating new paths where none existed.
While she may not have made it to space (yet), her love of travel, her career in STEM, and her journey of building a business are all rooted in that original astronaut dream.
After two decades of career that started in academic research and moved to supporting developments in biotechnology, Jasmine is now charting her own course.
Jasmine wants to change the world. If that change reaches even one person who dares to dream a little bigger. After all, she was once just a little girl who dreamed.
Angela (she/they)
Angela Schmer-Han is a Korean American illustrator and author.
She is passionate about history, comics, swords, and using sequential storytelling to untangle complex emotions around representation and identity; the grief of losing a language, the quiet acceptance of rejection, the debate of whether it is better to be invisible or an example, while wishing there were more options.
A restless translator of immigrant and third culture kid experiences, she works to redefine what protagonists look like.
Heatherlyn | she.her
Dr. Heatherlyn Cleare‑Hoffman is a Bahamian‑born psychologist whose journey to the United States during the aftermath of 9/11 shaped her understanding of identity, immigration, and belonging. Her lived experiences include navigating the economic and emotional ripple effects of global events on her family and education, confronting the constant insecurity faced by international students, and learning racism and microaggressions both intellectually and experientially.
As a descendant of enslaved people, she speaks to the enduring legacy of slavery and its role in identity formation. Dr. Cleare‑Hoffman brings cultural humility, psychological insight, and personal narrative to her work, emphasizing ongoing self‑evolution in multicultural contexts.
Raven (she.her)
Raven Dorantes (she,her) is a pageant-winning (Miss Discovery Cruises 1998) diehard Hall & Oates stan who freelances as a civil public defender in New York City. With over 15 years of experience eating her way through 6 continents, wishfully drinking amongst the underpaid refugees of overpriced educations in downtown bars and outer borough legal aid offices, and dabbling in the arts to the point of being regarded as semi-pro for her ability to correctly identify the name of that actor that was in that movie that time, she has garnered a well-respected and highly valued reputation for being her generation’s Stefon™.
Raven enjoys being a people and resource connector in every room she’s in, roving loose on the streets of New York soaking up all the things, and amassing an encyclopedic knowledge of all popular culture from the last 100 years. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Héctor | he.him
Héctor Ramírez is an experienced writer, editor, educator, facilitator, and leadership coach based in Southern California. He has co-edited two anthologies of poetry, and his prose, poetry, and criticism has appeared in American Book Review, Apogee, LIT, Muzzle Magazine, The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext, The Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere.
With a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction from CU Boulder, Héctor draws from his deep storytelling roots to design experiences that advance equity, inclusion, and belonging. He is passionate about helping people tap into their innate storytelling power, and is eager to partner with anyone who is interested in designing for inspiring & liberatory encounters with the imagination.
Incarnación (they.elle)
Incarnación Kluding-Rodríguez is a tarot-ista, practitioner of healing through Reiki energy work, and land stewardship facilitator.
In 2016, they began studying in these areas and have since been providing 1:1 tarot readings, Reiki healing sessions, and teaching bioregional botany/herbalism, facilitating stewardship of land-based relationships on territories of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Ute Nations. They weave the impacts of colonization on communities' well-being and are inspired by restoring and reconciliation towards Indigenous sovereignty throughout Turtle Island.
Incarnación descends from Purepecha people near Guanajuato, Mexico, and from German and Irish settlers. Incarnación believes our lineages, blood and spirit, where we come from, where we’ve lived, and what lands we are shaped by, all carry medicine and impact our health today.
When belonging becomes real
“I’m getting choked up just thinking about it.”
- Héctor (he, him)
Choose your way
Limited availability. Where real kinship happens .
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The NYC RISER
Full-day, in-person access to RISE: The n’betweener® Homecoming in NYC — speakers, panels, workshops, and community.
Join the RISE: The n’betweener Homecoming in NYC
-
The Virtual RISER
Virtual Access to RISE: The n’betweener® Homecoming — full event replay and digital experience. Experience the ideas, stories, and moments that moved the room.
Join the RISE homecoming from anywhere in the world.
RISE: The n’betweener Homecoming is happening soon.
RISE is intentionally curated.
Once the room fills, tickets close.
May 2, 2026 | Home Studios, Union Square, NYC
Real change starts with us.
“We’re the healers of this world — now more than ever.”
- Amber (she, her)
Coucou | Hej | Edje | Hola| Ciao
Hey, I’m Nora — founder of n’betweener®.
I was born in the space n’between.
I’m Danish–Comorian, shaped by many tongues and homes.
I’m a mixed-race, queer, cis woman of color. The daughter of an immigrant Papa, and an immigrant myself. I grew up culturally Muslim in Copenhagen, learning early how to move between worlds, languages, and expectations.
Danish and French are my native languages; English and Spanish carry me through the world. Argentina is where my voice got louder and my body freer. The US is where I learned to name my inner world—and where I became a therapist and coach.
I am proud to call Brooklyn, New York my home.
I coined the term n’betweener® to capture the lived experience of people like you and me — those of us burdened by the need to constantly prove and authenticate our identities, explaining ourselves to others.
I know what it’s like to code-switch to survive. To feel too much in one room and not enough in another. To carry both privilege and oppression at the same time.
To belong everywhere — and nowhere.
This work exists thanks to my clients, who remind me every day that what we carry is not a flaw, but a superpower.
Healing happens when we are seen, reflected, and in community.
The magic of the n’betweener space
“Knowing oneself is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves ”
- Nora Alwah (she, her)
Founder of n’betweener®
IF TEDx + PRIDE
HAD A BABY
=
A high-impact, full-day NYC event celebrating complex intersecting identities — with TED-level ideas, Pride-level energy, and the global homecoming n’betweeners have never had until now.
Your Homecoming starts in the heart of NYC.
At Home Studios, Union Square — New York City
A light-filled, intimate space in the heart of Manhattan — where n'betweeners finally get to take up the space.
This is a space that holds you — designed for the kind of presence, connection, and belonging that doesn't require explanation.
Get directions → Home Studios, 873 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
A tailored event
Expect a powerful blend of TED-style talks, dynamic panels, and interactive workshops—woven together with somatic movement, celebration, and deep human connection.
You’ll experience:
Thought-provoking talks from n’betweener® voices
Panel conversations that expand shared language
Interactive workshops from n’betweener creatives
Somatic movement to ground, release, and integrate
Intentional spaces for connection and belonging
RISE is both reflective and electric— a homecoming of mind, body, and community.
Finally seen.
“I didn’t feel alone anymore.”
- Incarnación (they, them)
What you’ll experience
RISE is a full-day event for people who live at the intersection of multiple identities.
Through keynotes, panels, and interactive workshops, we explore how to live, lead, and belong—fully, as you are.
| Speakers and the full agenda will be announced Mid-March |
May 2, 2026 | 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM
Home Studios — 873 Broadway, Union Square, NYC
New York City
Voices that Carry us
Hear from leaders, creatives, and thinkers who live in complexity — sharing lived experience, hard-earned insight, and stories that reflect what it actually means to build a life between worlds.
Where Insight Becomes Language
Interactive workshops and panel conversations that help you name what you’ve lived, sharpen your thinking, and turn complexity into clarity you can use.
Belonging, Out Loud
Connect with fellow n’betweeners® who get it — through real conversations, shared moments, and a sense of belonging that doesn’t require explanation.
You were never meant to fit in.
Stand out with n’betweeners.
RISE is a curated experience — available in person and online — created to bring n’betweeners® together in the same space, at the same time
Don’t belong here nor there?
Is RISE right for you?
✔ You live n’between cultures, identities, languages, or worlds.
✔ You’ve spent years adapting, code-switching, and translating yourself just to be understood.
✔ You’ve been told you’re too much in one room — and not enough in another.
✔ You carry complexity that doesn’t fit into simple boxes.
✔ You want to be in a room where people get it — without you having to explain.
✔ You’re ready to stop shrinking and rise into the power of who you are.
RISE is NOT for you if:
✘ You’re looking for 1:1 coaching or therapy.
✘ You don’t relate to the n’betweener® experience.
✘ You’re not interested in reflection, participation, or being in community.
Why the n’betweener® language matters
“If belonging requires a box, you will always feel wrong”
- Nora Alwah (she, her)
Choose your way
Limited availability. Where real kinship happens .
-
The NYC RISER
Full-day, in-person access to RISE: The n’betweener® Homecoming in NYC — speakers, panels, workshops, and community.
Join the RISE: The n’betweener Homecoming in NYC
-
The Virtual RISER
Virtual Access to RISE: The n’betweener® Homecoming — full event replay and digital experience. Experience the ideas, stories, and moments that moved the room.
Join the RISE homecoming from anywhere in the world.
RISE: The n’betweener Homecoming is happening soon.
RISE is intentionally curated.
Once the room fills, tickets close.
May 2, 2026 | Home Studios, Union Square, NYC
Am I an n’betweener®?
An n’betweener lives at the intersection of multiple identities and often feels misunderstood and alone in their experience.
We show up in infinitely unique ways.
We’re women of color, mixed-race, multicultural immigrants, queer Muslims, Latinx youth, and a multitude of other intersecting identities.
N’betweeners® are complex, layered, and deeply nuanced. And while that richness is powerful, it can also be isolating.
Being repeatedly misunderstood can lead us to internalize the belief that we are not enough, or that something is wrong with us.
Healing and growth happen when n’betweeners® are seen, reflected, and in community.
Got a question?
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Absolutely. You don’t need to have the “right” label to belong here.
RISE is designed for people who live between identities, cultures, worlds — and for thoughtful allies who are deeply curious, respectful, and committed to listening and learning. If the language of n’betweener® resonates in your body, you’re welcome.
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RISE is a full-day experience on Saturday, May 2nd that blends story, reflection, conversation, and connection.
You can expect keynote talks, panels, guided experiences, and moments of integration — all intentionally curated to help you feel seen, grounded, and expanded. This is not a conference where you sit back all day; it’s a space where you participate, reflect, and leave changed.
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We’ve got you.
The venue has elevator access, and there will be light snacks and beverages available throughout the day. We’ve designed the flow with care so you can stay present, comfortable, and resourced.
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Tickets for RISE are non-refundable. Because this is a live, intentionally curated event with limited capacity, all ticket sales are final.
That said, if you’re unable to attend, you’re welcome to transfer your ticket to someone else who would benefit from the experience. Just reach out to us in advance so we can update the registration details.
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RISE is an intentionally sized homecoming, welcoming approximately 50–100 participants.
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100%. If you’ve been craving real connection — not surface-level networking or small talk — RISE was created for you.
If what you’re seeking is kinship — a felt sense of “these are my people” — RISE was created for you.
This is a space for those who live between worlds and are tired of explaining themselves. RISE brings people together through shared language, lived experience, and presence, allowing kinship to form naturally — without pressure, performance, or pretending.