About Me
Work and Volunteer Experience
I was a service provider working on sexual and domestic violence for more than ten years. While in college I began volunteering at Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) in Philadelphia, providing crisis intervention services on the hotline and emergency room. Two years later I joined the staff at WOAR managing the volunteer training program and providing crisis services to victims. I left WOAR in 1995 to attend graduate school in New Jersey; while there I volunteered at Somerset Rape Crisis Services on the crisis hotline and also led their forty-hour advocate training.
When I moved back to Philadelphia in 1997 I worked for several years as a part-time shelter staffperson at the Domestic Abuse Project in Media, PA. During this time I also volunteered at the Philadelphia Women’s Medical Fund, a local agency which provides financial assistance to women who are unable to afford the cost of a safe, legal abortion. I joined the staff of the Fund as administrative coordinator in 1998, and worked there until 2001, serving as interim executive director for several months before my departure to teach full-time. I continue to work with the Fund on issues related to improving client access, and look forward to returning as an access counselor once the book is finished!
Academic positions
In 1995 I left full-time DV/SA work to pursue a Ph.D. in political science at Rutger’s University-New Brunswick. My work focused on public law and women & politics; I completed my degree in 2004. My dissertation focused on implementation of “Megan’s Law” (the state’s sex offender registration and notification statute) in New Jersey, and drew heavily on my own experiences working in the field. Because of my belief that rape care programs had important and interesting things to say about law and policy on sexual violence, my dissertation relied heavily on interviews with local sexual assault advocates. That project was the seed of this larger examination.
I began my first full-time faculty position at John Jay College of Criminal Justicee in August 2003. I taught at John Jay for two years before I was awarded an American Association of University Women post-doctoral fellowship to begin research for this project in Fall 2005. (Please note that the AAUW’s generous support for my work should not be taken as an endorsement of its analysis or conclusions.) I took a year off from teaching to travel and conduct interview with advocates in several states. In 2006, while on leave, I accepted a new position at Drexel University in my hometown of Philadelphia. In 2008 I completed interviews on the project.
I have been at Drexel since Fall 2006; in 2007 I was named Director of Women’s Studies, and in 2009 received a joint appointment to Drexel’s Earle Mack School of Law. I teach undergraduate courses on constitutional law and courts; at the Law School I teach Law & Social Movements and Courts & Public Policy.
It is my hope that some of this research will be of interest and assistance to the violence against women community, which has played such an important role in my own life.
