Sylvia Cabus will be our Keynote Speaker at the 2025 Exponent II Retreat!
We are thrilled to announce our Keynote Speaker for this year’s Exponent II Retreat on September 19-21, 2025 at the Barbara C. Harris Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire! This year’s retreat will open for registration on May 3, 2025. Spots are limited, and some years the retreat sold out in less than 24 hours. For more information visit exponentii.org/retreat.
About Sylvia CabusSylvia credits her involvement in Exponent II as one of the most formative experiences she’s had as a Mormon feminist of color. Ten of Sylvia’s essays have been published either in the Exponent II magazine or on the Exponent II Blog. One of these was featured in the 50th anniversary anthology. She has attended every retreat since 2008 and from 2009-2012 Sylvia volunteered on the Exponent II Magazine Editorial Board. In March 2025, Sylvia spoke on the panel “The Enduring Sisterhood of Exponent II” at the Festschrift for the 50th Anniversary of Mormon Sisters & Claudia Bushman.
Her first essay as a Mormon feminist was published in 1998 in the Washington Post’s “Faith Stories” series, which featured essays from converts in different denominations. In addition to Exponent II, Sylvia has also published essays in Sunstone, and on the Ordain Women and Mormon Feminist Women of Color (FEMWOC) blogs. She presented a Dialogue Sunday School session in 2021. Sylvia has been interviewed by Patheos, the Mormon Women Project, Mormon Matters, Mormon Women’s Voices, the Mormon Women oral history project, Aspiring Mormon Women, Voices of Global Mormon Women, and Faith Matters’ “Peacemakers Needed” newsletter. Sylvia and her family have been featured in the Church’s public affairs campaigns on marriage equality and the re-opening of the Washington D.C. temple. Sylvia also spoke as one of several active Mormon women supporting reproductive rights in a video during the 2020 election season.
Sylvia joined the Church as a single woman at the age of 27 between returning from the Peace Corps and starting graduate school. Sylvia was born in the Philippines, grew up in southern California, lived in Francophone Africa for 9 years, and now calls Washington D.C. home with her husband and 11-year-old son. She is a member of the Capitol Hill Ward in Washington D.C. She has worked on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues for over thirty years – most recently as a technical advisor on gender and dvelopment at the Peace Corps. Sylvia received a B.A. in History from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University.
