Candidate Responses:

Describe your participation in the Partnership’s regional networks, policy committees, peer learning circles and other components of our Membership community.

While working at two domestic violence organizations in Northern California, I attended regional meetings, retreats, the Partnership’s conference and other trainings. The Partnership offered great support communities and trainings for direct service advocates as well as systemic change policy.

Describe how your values are aligned with the values of the Partnership.

I have a steadfast commitment to interrupt and dismantle gender-based
violence and largely systemic barriers impacting marginalized communities particularly refugee and immigrant women and children. As a proud
daughter of immigrants, I always leads with my heart to address gender, racial, health, and educational equity.

Describe your skills, experience or interests that can benefit, strengthen or increase capacity of the Board.

I am a first-generation college graduate. I earned my Master’s degree with distinction in Human Trafficking, Migration, and Organised Crime, a BS in Women’s Studies and a BA in Liberal Studies with honors. While obtaining my degrees, I was a translator and advocate for vulnerable unaccompanied women and children detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Along the way, I became a hospital crisis counselor for survivors of gender-based violence. I have worn many hats while spending the last six years in the domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, housing, immigration, and youth services fields Most recently, I held leadership positions with the International Rescue Committee and WEAVE Inc. managing complex and collaborative projects to drive improvement and systems change in economic justice, housing inequality and racial justice.

What does leadership mean to you? How do you demonstrate leadership?

“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
– Toni Morrison

This is what leadership means to me. I best demonstrate my leadership through my commitment to economic, racial, health, gender, and social justice.

Describe how your relationships can enhance the work of the Partnership and the Board (for example, with policy-makers, media outlets, culturally specific communities, and the broader community). Tell us how you intend to cultivate those relationships on behalf of the Partnership.

Being in this field for the last seven years, I know we cannot do this work alone. We need comrades and allies at each intersection and all avenues of social justice. This is critical and this is how I best do my systems change work. To collaborate with social justice leaders to build and create strong power together not in silos.

Like other nonprofits, Partnership Board members are expected to raise funds on behalf of the organization. Describe how you can leverage relationships to enhance the image or capacity of the Partnership (for example, potential donors, business leaders, philanthropists) and how you will help us meet our annual fundraising goal.

I have several years of leading and organizing gender-based violence and feminist campaigns and projects like Take Back the Night and producing and directing the Vagina Monologues, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. Campaigns and fundraising often overlap in so many ways and I would leverage my experience in campaign development to create meaningful relationships for fundraising to meet the annual goal.

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