Our Staff
Sheerine Alemzadeh
she/her
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/they
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.
Mac Grambauer
they/she
Operations Director
Mac's experience as a nonprofit consultant
unearthed their passions in cultivating healthy work cultures, collaborative exploration, and collective liberation. Knitting together their interest in efficient system design, experience as life-long, year-round Chicago biker, and passion for social justice, Mac brings holistic and innovative approaches to teambuilding and sustainability.
Ashley Hart
she/her
Development Manager
Ashley’s own experience of domestic, workplace,
and gender-based violence fuels her personal
and professional work towards collective healing and liberation. In earning her Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and BA degrees in Psychology and Women’s & Gender Studies at DePaul University, Ashley found her passion for the decolonization and redistribution of wealth through trust-based and transformative philanthropy. Ashley bridges her development and social work experience to bring forth emergent strategy and sustainability
to the nonprofit sector.
Romina Vargas Bezzubikoff
she/her
Impact Manager
A first-generation immigrant born in Peru and
raised in Kansas, Romina has been passionate
about working with the people most impacted by community violence since volunteering at a grassroots organization in her hometown. After graduating from the University of Chicago, she explored the legal field by assisting survivors as a paralegal at the Domestic Violence Courthouse. She then shifted to organizing at Healing to Action to focus on addressing the root causes of gender-based violence alongside survivor-leaders.
Patricia Islas
she/her
Organizing Manager
Patricia is a social justice leader with nearly 20
years of experience dedicated to driving meaningful change. She is a passionate advocate for social transformation, empowering communities to lead and sustain positive shifts through community-driven solutions. Her expertise includes relationship building, leadership development, team building, stakeholder engagement, goal-setting, and strategic action planning. Patricia excels in uniting people behind critical issues. Outside of her professional life, Patricia enjoys spending time with her toddler daughter and loving husband. She also has a passion for traveling.
Bianca Gonzalez Orta
she/her
Basebuilding & Leadership Development Organizer
Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Bianca became an immigrant in 2014 when she fled her home country and moved to the U.S. with the dream of building a life in a place where she could express her ideas without fear. Throughout her teenage years, Bianca developed a passion for creating a more fair and equitable world, which led her to engage in volunteer work and has guided her professional career. For her, working with marginalized communities is both a valuable source of learning and a privilege, as well as a great opportunity to contribute to building more equitable societies.
Clay Cofre
they/them
Campaign Organizer
Clay is a Queer Ecuadorian American Organizer
from Chicago passionate about immigrant rights, abolition, and liberation through creative practice. Fueled by their family’s generational experience with various forms of violence, Clay looks to break cycles through their community organizing work on the Northwest side and of course as a member of the Healing to Action team. In their free time, Clay moves through the world as a bilingual poet, an eldest sibling, and a proud Executive Committee member of Vecinos Unidos del Barrio 26.
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