Our Staff
Sheerine Alemzadeh
she/her(s)
Co-founder, Co-director
The proud daughter of Iranian immigrants, Sheerine works to transform responses to gender-based violence in marginalized communities as an activist, litigator, thought leader, and organizer.
Her career has focused on building bridges between social movements, applying intersectional approaches to human rights activism, and promoting shared leadership as a path to sustained social progress.
Karla Altmayer
she/her(s) or they/them/their(s)
Co-founder, Co-director
Raised on Chicago’s Southside by a single-mother from Mexico, Karla is driven by her family’s experience with poverty, sexual violence, racism, and incarceration to dismantle the cultural conditions enabling gender-based violence. As an attorney, she developed an innovative and nationally recognized promotora model so survivors could organize and build solidarity. As co-director of Healing to Action, Karla continues to collaborate with survivors, building their individual and collective power.
Jocelyn Moreno
she/her(s)
Campaign Organizer
Born and raised on Chicago's Southside in a mixed-status home, Jocelyn experienced and witnessed the poverty, racism, gender-based violence and police brutality her community had to endure every day. Originally a graphic designer, Jocelyn made a swift career change to activism and organizing in response to our political society's increasingly poor conditions and aggregate moods and opinions. With her personal and professional experience as a Community Health Worker, she is now taking the lead at Healing to Action to help end gender-based violence.
Maddie Smith
they/them
Operations Assistant
Maddie graduated recently from the University of Illinois at Chicago and studied Anthropology and Disability Studies. They are passionate about mental health, Queer and Disability justice, gender-based violence, research, and ethnography. Maddie is also a current fellow in the Coelho Center Law Fellowship program.
Romina Vargas Bezzubikoff
she/her(s)
Community Organizer
A first-generation immigrant born in Peru and raised in Kansas, Romina has been passionate about working with immigrant, Latinx, and other marginalized communities for several years. She became interested in how marginalized communities create their own systems of mutual support in college when studying integration policies and the sociology of immigration. After exploring the legal field by assisting survivors as a paralegal at the Cook County Domestic Violence Courthouse, she shifted to organizing at Healing to Action to focus on addressing the root causes of gender-based violence and emphasize healing alongside survivor-leaders.
Our Board
Jasmine Benjamin, Secretary
Amanda DePalma Gable
Anne Gottschalk
Michael Kiser
Saul Brand Padilla
Samantha Lee,
Board Chair
Michelle Roseborough, Vice Chair
Gillian Shapiro, Treasurer
