Join JWI’s DC Young Women’s Leadership Network in supporting survivors of domestic violence.
We will hear from violence against women professionals about how they are creating change around the response to domestic and sexual violence. Following the conversation with these powerful women, we will engage in small group discussions to think about how we can take action to prevent and address domestic violence in our friend groups, communities, and nation.
During the talk, we will make care kits for homeless women. Research shows that between 30-75% of homeless women have experienced domestic violence which is often the primary cause of their homelessness. A struggle many homeless women face is access to hygiene and feminine products, so we will be putting together packages with these necessities.
The price of admission will be one brand new children’s book to be donated to JWI’s National Library Initiative, which builds libraries in domestic violence shelters nationwide.
From 2009 to 2013, Cynthia Hogan served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Counsel to the Vice President of the United States of America. In that capacity, she advised on a broad range of domestic and foreign policy issues before the Obama Administration. She also led the Administration’s effort to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court.
Cynthia previously served as the Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary where she worked with then Senator Biden to enact the landmark Violence Against Women Act. Before that, she practiced law at the Washington, D.C. firm Williams & Connolly. She graduated from Oberlin College and received a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she served as an editor of The Virginia Law Review.
Aviva Kurash is a Senior Program Manager at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). Ms. Kurash has been working on criminal justice reform and improving police response to violence against women, creating educational trainings, model policies, instructive guidebooks and roll-call training videos at the IACP since 2001.
Ms. Kurash moved to Israel from the U.S. after graduating college and began her career working in child protective services and then spent many years counseling survivors of domestic violence and facilitating support groups in a community-based family violence counseling center in Jerusalem, Israel. She then moved to Northern Virginia where she managed a transitional housing program for women and children fleeing abuse and provided training for local law enforcement and social service providers. Ms. Kurash was a member of the Fairfax County Network Against Family Abuse and has taught in the Master of Social Work Program at George Mason University (VA). She received a B.A. in psychology from Indiana University and a Master of Social Work from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.
