For nearly three decades, I've dedicated my career to a singular mission: ensuring that survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault not only receive the support they deserve, but lead the solutions that transform their communities and the systems built to help them.

My journey began as an advocate in a rural community, ensuring survivors were helped and heard in the criminal justice system. But it quickly became clear that survivors wanted and needed community services coordination that truly centered their safety. This local advocacy work launched me into a role as a statewide services coordinator, where I witnessed programs struggling to support the very people working directly to help survivors.

I'm eternally grateful that my statewide coalition experience served as a springboard for national leadership. Traveling across the country, I met with domestic violence shelters and programs whose staff were chronically underfunded and underpaid, leaving thousands of dedicated advocates struggling to make ends meet. These state programs were constantly searching for additional funding to serve thousands of survivors and children annually—a reality documented year after year in the Domestic Violence Counts reports.

My national experience led me to join public service within the federal government, where I helped build coalitions of public-private partnerships that improved coordination of health and social services centered on survivor needs, voices, and solutions. I saw and shaped opportunities for expert partnerships, innovative services, and expanded support nationwide for all survivors.

Yet even amid meaningful opportunities for change and growth, I observed persistent limitations and an urgent need for ingenuity and innovation to get things right for both survivors and advocates. I'm driven to dig deeper, especially as shifting grant priorities and funding cuts force survivor services to do more with less—at the exact moment when rising demand means survivors need 24/7 community-based support they can trust. For these essential services, shuttering is simply not an option.

Over 28 years, I've worked across local, state, tribal, and national levels not just to strengthen services for millions of survivors, but to strategize sustainable solutions that support the advocates who serve them.