I have worked or volunteered in the movements against domestic and sexual violence as a prevention educator, domestic violence shelter advocate, rape crisis advocate, researcher, women’s self-defense instructor, and board member since 1999. I have worked for community domestic violence and rape crisis programs in California and Arizona, and campus prevention programs at the University of Arizona and the University of California, Davis.
I am currently a Senior Specialist for the National Network to End Domestic Violence’s (NNEDV) Safety Net program. Safety Net focuses on the intersection of technology and domestic and sexual violence and works to address how it impacts the safety, privacy, accessibility, and civil rights of survivors.
Prior to NNEDV, for over five years I worked for Respect Together’s (formerly the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape) two national programs: the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), and the RALIANCE partnership. For NSVRC, I was primarily responsible for managing online content and platforms, managing outreach activities to corporations and other non-profits, and participating in the production of Federally funded technical assistance products for rape crisis centers, survivor advocates, and rape prevention educators.
For RALIANCE, I was responsible for leading the development of the Sexual Misconduct and Violence Taxonomy (SMVT), an open-source system of categorization intended to assist corporations in characterizing such incidents in consistent, mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive ways to foster appropriate incident response, statistically useful data, and better policy development. Funded by Uber, the SMVT was deployed globally across Uber’s platform in all its markets, and was also adopted by Lyft, TripAdvisor, and InstaCart.
Prior to PCAR, for over eight years I worked for ValorUS (formerly the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault) as a state-based technical assistance provider to California rape crisis centers, and on their PreventConnect national program. In both capacities, I focused on developing training and knowledge products for rape prevention educators in California and across the United States. I also managed the MyStrength Campaign, which was a social marketing and statewide educational program focused on the emotional health and growth of high school boys.
I a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Arizona in 2007. During that time, as both a staff person and graduate student, I worked for Dr. Mary Koss’ RESTORE research-demonstration program applying restorative justice principles to survivors of sex offenses and the persons responsible for perpetrating those offenses. During that experience I developed a passion for both restorative justice principles and Dr. Koss’ model of trauma-informed, behaviorally specific survey work with survivors of violence.