Alicia Coulter

Executive Director, AHN Foundation

Mrs. Alicia Coulter, MPH, MSW has over 15 years of experience in advocating for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Her academic experience includes a master's degree of Social Work from California State University, Dominguez Hills centered in Critical Race Theory with a thesis centered in reducing Teen IPV in the Black Community via the Black Church. She also has a Master's in Public Health from UCLA.

Workshop: Aligning with the Black Church to reduce Teen IPV in the Black Community

Ann King

Executive Diretor, Tri Valley Haven

Ann has more than 30 years of experience in human services both as a service provider and as a manager, specializing in working with family violence, sexual assault, ex-offenders, homeless populations, and poverty situations. Ann has her Masters of Social Work in Administration. She joined the Haven as Executive Director in 1997.

Workshop: Healing from and preventing racial injustice and inequities in our DV field

Armando Ruiz

Prevention Education Coordinator, Lumina Alliance

Armando Miguel Ruiz is a prevention education coordinator at Lumina Alliance in San Luis Obispo county. He specializes in engaging men and boys in conversations about healthy relationships and preventing violence. He is currently working with high schools and community organizations to implement Teen Minecraft Club (TMC). This program is designed to educate and empower young men to be role models of healthy relationships in their peer groups.

Workshop: Violence Prevention Through Gaming: Lessons from Teen Minecraft Club

Ayana Wallace

Training Specialist, Ujima, Inc: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community

Ms. Wallace has worked for over a decade in the domestic violence field providing both direct service to survivors and technical assistance to advocates, law enforcement, community-based partners, and faith communities. Ms. Wallace has extensively studied the theory and implications of privilege, oppression, and intersectionality and strives to highlight the experiences of the marginalized and/or underrepresented.

Workshop: Closer to Freedom

Chalina Morgan-Lopez

Youth Outreach Manager, SafeBAE

Chalina is a 17-year-old student in North Carolina. She has been involved in Equity Affairs in her County since Freshman year and is currently her school's Equity Team President as well as a representative for the county cohort. She has worked on issues such as the school to prison pipeline, ensuring that class courses are representative of all students and that students have equal access to higher-level courses.

Workshop: Prevention Education and Culture Change through Youth Leadership

Devon Gaster

Executive Director, Men Creating Peace

Devon Gaster is the co-founder and executive director of Men Creating Peace. Over the last 23 years he has educated men about the devastating impacts of intimate partner violence in jails, prisons and in several bay area communities. Devon is a former convicted batterer who has been strongly committed to restorative justice and healing. He is a graduate and certified facilitator of the Manalive™ program. He continues community presentations throughout the bay area on prevention strategies.

Workshop: Restorative Work With Men Who Cause Harm Through Intimate Partner Violence

Gregory Hodge

Chief Network Officer, Brotherhood of Elders Network

Gregory Hodge is a social change activist and organizational development consultant with Khepera Consulting. Working as a strategist, meeting designer, facilitator and coach, Gregory works with a range of groups from small nonprofits and foundations to public agencies, particularly school districts. As a leader in his community, Gregory served two four-year terms as a member of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education beginning in January 2000, including a year as president of the

Workshop: Engaging Men through Cultural and Intergenerational Strategies to End Harm

Jerry Tello

Founder/Director of Training & Capacity Bldg, National Compadres Network

Jerry Tello comes from a family of Mexican, Texan roots and was raised in south central Los Angeles. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of men and boys of color, fatherhood, family strengthening, racial justice, racial healing, community peace and mobilization and culturally based violence prevention/intervention issues.

Workshop: Engaging Men through Cultural and Intergenerational Strategies to End Harm

Jill Zawisza

Co-Director, W.O.M.A.N., Inc.

Jill Zawisza (she/her/hers) currently serves as Co-Director at WOMAN Inc. She has been in the anti-DV movement since 1996, and has been with W.O.M.A.N., Inc. since 2006.

Workshop: Shifting to a Co-Directorship Leadership Model

Kandee Lewis

Chief Executive Officer, Positive Results Center

CEO of PRC and founder of Black Women Leaders of LA, Kandee is a masterful trainer, Certified DV & SA Prevention Advocate, specializing in Trauma Awareness, TDV, Healthy Relationships, developing Peer Advocates & Safety Partners.
May 2021, Kandee was appointed to the City of L.A. as a Commissioner for the City & Human Rights Department. She previously served on Compton's Education Task Force, L.A. City Attorney's D.V. Round Table, and L.A. Mayor's Human Trafficking Portal.

Workshop: African American Youth Ambassadors; Addressing Mental Health & Violence

Kathryn Hamel, PhD

Chief Executive Officer, Hecht Trauma Institute

Kathryn Hamel, Ph.D., is the Chief Executive Officer of the Hecht Trauma Institute. Dr. Hamel served our communities for 25 years as a law-enforcement professional for two mid-size Police Departments. During her career in Law Enforcement, ultimately earning the rank of Lieutenant. During her time spent as a detective, Dr. Hamel investigated hundreds of cases involving rape, domestic assault, IPV, child sexual abuse and other forms of violence.

Workshop: IPV: A Law Enforcement and Clinical Approach in Working with Survivors

Kevin Connors

Senior Vice - President, Program Development , Hecht Trauma Institute

Kevin Connors, MS, MFT, is the Senior VP of Program Development at the Hecht Trauma Institute. He is responsible for creating trainings for clinicians, first responders, and others treating IPV. Mr. Connors is also a licensed MFT in private practice in Long Beach, California and a frequent national and international presenter on complex trauma and dissociative disorders. He is co-author of Treating Complex Trauma and Dissociation: A practical guide to navigating therapeutic challenges.

Workshop: IPV: A Law Enforcement and Clinical Approach in Working with Survivors

Liat Wexler

Prevention Manager, Faculty & Staff, PATH to Care Center, UC Berkeley

Liat Wexler has worked to end domestic violence and sexual assault since 2001 including roles in direct service, fundraising, and board of directors. They specialize in violence in LGBTQIA+, polyamorous, and BDSM communities. As the Prevention Manager for Faculty & Staff at UC Berkeley's PATH to Care Center, they focus on primary prevention in the workplace. Liat's identities include queer, genderqueer, femme, white, hard-of-hearing, raised with enough material wealth, bi-national, and survivor.

Workshop: Strategizing LGBTQIA+ Centered Work

Liyah Birru

Organizer, Survived & Punished

My name is Aylaliya (Liyah) Birru. I am an immigrant and a domestic violence survivor. I was formerly incarcerated for defending myself against an abusive man. I am very familiar with the faulty justice system we have in place that criminalizes victims and allows abusers to walk free. As a member of Survived and Punished, I have been able to voice my concerns to lift up those who sit in darkness but need to be freed. I believe that survivors need all the care and support they need.

Workshop: Understanding the Criminalization of Immigrant Survivors

Mary Martinez

Co-Director , W.O.M.A.N., Inc.

Mary Martinez (she/her) is a queer, Mexican-American who is not fluent in Spanish :), and who comes from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the Co-Director of WOMAN, Inc., who started at the organization as a support line volunteer back in February 2008.

Workshop: Shifting to a Co-Directorship Leadership Model

Melissa Guajardo

Administrative Director, CPEDV

Melissa is the Administrative Director at the Partnership. She has a 25 year history working in small non-profits. Her experience as a health educator, and public health program manager has given her an important understanding of non-profit employment from an employee lens. She uses that experience to develop and implement human resources, finance and operating policies and procedures that are fair and compassionate.

Workshop: Bringing Margins to Center in HR and Finance Policies

Neda Said

Organizer, Survived & Punished

Neda is a nonbinary queer person of color of the Afghan diaspora and first generation graduate from the Bay Area whose work is led by a passion to alleviate injustices towards marginalized communities at the intersections of identity. They are an organizer working with Survived & Punished, a national project to end the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Neda loves mango, sunshine, and their black cat Jadu.

Workshop: Understanding the Criminalization of Immigrant Survivors

Nicholas Kumar

Student Ambassador , One Love Foundation

Nicholas (he/him) is a senior at Van Nuys High School. He first got involved with One Love in the spring of 2019, wanting to facilitate workshops for his classmates. Since then, Nicholas has become a Teen Ambassador and serves on One Love's national Youth Advisory Board. In 2019, he founded Empower TogetHER, an organization that is devoted to making information about global injustices more accessible and is invested in celebrating the accomplishments of women and girls.

Workshop: One Love: A Film-Based, Youth-Centered Approach to Prevention

Nilda Valmores

Executive Director, My Sister's House

Nilda also has more than 30 years of experience working on state and local organizations helping at-risk populations in education, foster care, and domestic violence. She joined My Sister's House as its Executive Director in 2004. My Sister's House is a culturally responsive domestic violence shelter that focuses upon serving the needs of Asian/Pacific Islander and other underserved communities. My Sister's House currently operates two social enterprises to help change the lives of its sur v

Workshop: Healing from and preventing racial injustice and inequities in our DV field

Nishara Gunasekara

Housing and Gender Justice Advocate, Family Violence Law Center

Workshop: Values & Cross-Movement Advocacy: A Case Study on Reimagining Public Safety

Raquelle Myers

Executive Director, National Indian Justice Center

Raquelle Myers is a member of the Pinoleville Band of Pomo Indians. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Utah. She serves as the Executive Director and Staff Attorney for the National Indian Justice Center (NIJC). She serves as a trainer for NIJC regional and on-site training sessions developed for tribal government personnel.

Workshop: Increasing Survivor's Options with Culturally Specific Trainings

Ruth Kahssai

Ruth Kahssai is a first-generation, Ethiopian-American woman, as well as a recent graduate of the University of Iowa. During her time at the university, she advocated around racial justice, reproductive justice, police violence, and more. Ruth's passion is to support and uplift the well-being of non-white peoples against systems of white supremacy.

Workshop: Rewriting the Narrative: Centering the Legacy of Black Women

Shael Norris

Founding Executive Director, SafeBAE

Shael is the Founding ED of SafeBAE and has dedicated her career to ending sexual violence & empowering youth activism. She helped to found V-Day, overseeing all benefit productions of "The Vagina Monologues," for 18 years during which time she created the "Campus Accountability Project" calling for improved prevention and response to sexual violence at universities. It was this work, that led her to start SafeBAE and bring youth-led prevention programming to teens.

Workshop: Prevention Education and Culture Change through Youth Leadership

Shalisa Gladney

Coordinator, African American Cultural Center, University of Iowa

Shalisa is an educator, doula and advocate passionate about community activism, education, grassroots organizing, social justice work, addressing and ending violence, especially with/in communities of color. Shalisa's work is rooted in supporting Black bodies. In addition to her full-time work, she provides postpartum care for survivors of various forms of trauma and offers education and resources to other birth workers about the importance of incorporating everyday consent into their practices.

Workshop: Rewriting the Narrative: Centering the Legacy of Black Women

Sheridan Riolo

Engagement Manager , One Love Foundation

Sheridan Riolo is responsible for engaging youth, teens, and adults in One Love's work throughout the Bay Area and greater California regions. She works with schools and community-based organizations to cultivate leaders and maximize One Love's educational reach through our train-the-trainer model. Before coming to One Love, Sheridan worked as a preventionist at a San Luis Obispo-based domestic violence services agency.She holds a B.A. from Loyola Marymount University.

Workshop: One Love: A Film-Based, Youth-Centered Approach to Prevention

Taylor Campion

Senior Managing Attorney, Family Violence Appellate Project

Taylor Campion is a Senior Managing Attorney at Family Violence Appellate Project (FVAP) and has advocated for marginalized communities' housing and economic rights since 2012. She received her B.A. from Haverford College and J.D. from the University of Utah. Before coming to FVAP, she represented clients with housing and economic rights issues at Law Foundation of Silicon Valley and Bay Area Legal Aid. Taylor currently manages FVAP's Housing and Employment Justice Program.

Workshop: Increasing Survivor's Options with Culturally Specific Trainings

Tonjie Reese

Founder/Executive Director, ELEVEN24 INC

Tonjie is a Detroit native, creative, preventionist, and founder of eleven24, a program dedicated to reimagining prevention through a lens of liberation and community. In her many years of youth-serving and gender-based violence work, she has held roles as a prevention program director, national community initiatives coordinator, and senior program officer. Tonjie holds a BS in Behavioral Science and a MA in Education, Leadership, and Change.

Workshop: Walls Turned Sideways: The Bridge Between Prevention and Juvenile Justice

Tunisia Owens

Policy and Advocacy Manager , Family Violence Law Center

Workshop: Values & Cross-Movement Advocacy: A Case Study on Reimagining Public Safety

Veronica Pollutro

Facilitator/Trainer, Men Creating Peace

Veronica Pollutro began working with trauma survivors 20 years ago as a Victim Advocate at a Bay Area Rape Crisis Center. In 2005, Veronica was one of the first service providers at the Alameda County Family Justice Center She has worked with domestic violence survivors providing family law services. Veronica has done Anti-Human Trafficking work and supported former foster care youth in Oakland. Veronica holds a Master's of Science in Counseling Psychology and is studying for her licensing exam.

Workshop: Restorative Work With Men Who Cause Harm Through Intimate Partner Violence

Yasi Safinya, Psy.D.

Project Director, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services

Yasi has bee a Project Director at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services since early 2020. She designs and co-leads cohort leadership programs, consulting engagements, HR and Finance network offerings, and public workshops. Additionally, she plays key program design, project management, and facilitation roles. Yasi's career background is primarily in the areas of psychology, education, non-violence, and anti-oppression. Mostly importantly, Yasi commits her work to stand for peace and liberation.

Workshop: Bringing Margins to Center in HR and Finance Policies