A Chicago-based iOS software engineer and graphic designer and committed feminist, Javier joined Our Voices and Faces Project team as Technology Partner in early 2015. He is an award-winning developer devoted to the creation of functional, intuitive, and meaningful products. As a digital technology expert, he’s constantly helping to improve and enhance our use of technology and social media in ways that reach diverse populations of all ages and cultures. Javier is a graduate of Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. He has published over 20 applications to the App Store, including Morsel, a social network for culinary professionals. His projects have received accolades from FastCompany, Gizmodo, Mashable, CNBC, and USA Today. His WWF Together app, which focuses on the stories of 16 endangered animals from around the globe, received a prestigious Apple Design Award in 2013.

An artist, art therapist, spoken-word poet, and activist, Marline grounds her work in the goal of making the invisible visible.

In her art therapy Marline creates spaces that foster community dialogue on racial and gender inequality. “Art allows people to share as much or as little as we want with the world,” she says. “It gives you a voice, and it gives you choice again, because oftentimes your choices are taken from you.” Marline is an alumna of Connecticut College and earned a Master of Arts degree in Art Therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She interned for several years with A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit devoted to using the performing arts to end violence against girls and women; and she now works as a Trainer at POSSE, the most renowned college access and youth leadership program in the country. As a 2017 Art Institute artist-in-residence in Homan Square, she guided citizens of North Lawndale in creating a communal mosaic mural exploring their experiences of race and class on Chicago’s West Side. Marline draws on insights from art therapy in the work she does with young people in our programs for at-risk youth. “I learn so much about myself from working with young people,” Marline says. “The process of making art collaboratively is pivotal for teens who are victims of violence. Everyone needs to know that they are not alone.”

A playwright, actress, and longtime advocate for those struggling with mental illnesses, Caity-Shea is passionate about creating new work about women for the stage. “Taking part in The Stories We Tell workshop,” she says, “validated my pain and resilience and connected me to a community of survivors and allies, many of whom have become my chosen family. It created the possibility for me to never feel alone in my story again.” An advocate for accessibility and equality in the theatrical community and society at large, Caity-Shea worked several years at a nonprofit devoted to the healthcare and housing needs of Illinois residents struggling with mental illnesses and substance use disorders. Her award-winning drama, which has been staged in Washington D.C., New York, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Toronto, and Chicago, often explores trauma, invisible disabilities, and gender-based violence. A graduate of the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, she is a current MFA candidate at Boston University. For Caity-Shea, art is a lens inviting us to see the world through the eyes of others. As she says, “Art that explores what is felt but not seen — such as invisible disabilities or mental illnesses, such as gender-based violence —helps build empathy in those who don’t have first-hand experiences of such things.”

Janet Goldblatt Holmes was first introduced to The Voices and Faces Project in 2006.

“Something 'triggered,' in a good way, when I found this organization and this community," Janet says today. A sexual violence survivor who had been silent about the abuse she lived through over 40 years earlier, Janet soon began to write about having survived rape, first in "The Burden of Silence," a moving 2008 essay published in The Toronto Globe and Mail, and then in a piece called "Memory Transformed,” which was featured in Jewish Women International. Janet has also contributed writing on rape and holistic healing modalities to The Art of Healing Magazine. A keynote speaker for the Canadian Jewish Community's "Journey of Light and Hope," which is a public discussion about sexual violence during the Holocaust, Janet believes that our voices are our most effective tools for creating change. In 2014, Tikkun On Line Magazine published The Power of Testimony, One Woman's Voice" the essay she wrote, based on the talk. Janet has been a driving force behind the Canadian expansion of The Stories We Tell, our Voices and Faces Project writing workshop, and she supports our US-based workshop leadership team on program development and outreach. "Creative programs are so important to a survivor's healing," says Janet. "After taking part in the two-day Voices and Faces Project writing workshop myself, and being completely changed by it, I knew I wanted to help other survivors discover it. I was silent for too long. Now I am using my voice and face wherever I can."

A yoga teacher, writer, digital strategist, and activist.

Growing up in a Mexican-Arab immigrant household in Metro-Detroit, Kali has always been passionate about social justice issues. At sixteen she discovered her love for writing and mindfulness and used these tools to peel away at her unresolved trauma. She went on to receive a Health and Wellness degree from The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, alongside a minor in Minority and Inequality Studies, in hopes to share mindfulness with those most marginalized. While pursuing her degree, she built a social media following sharing the journey of her healing, and eventually went on to teach Yoga at different safe houses and nonprofit organizations in the Midwest.

Kali joined the The Voices and Faces Project team at the height of the pandemic in 2020. Based in Chicago, she spends her time outside The Voices and Faces Project organizing in the community as a youth activist and exploring the intersection of social justice and creativity.

Patricia is a documentary photographer based in Chicago.

Since 1998, she has been photographing the "transformation of public housing" on South State Street in Chicago, including portraits of residents, their apartments, and the ongoing demolition. Since 1999, she has also documented the construction of Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. Patricia's work includes a photo series on Gypsy families in France; a series of portraits of mothers and daughters; and a study of storefront churches on the South Side of Chicago. Her series on sexual assault, an installation of twenty-five photographs, is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography. As a rape survivor herself, Patricia brings a unique sensitivity to her work on the subject. "When I was looking for guidance through books and poetry in the aftermath of sexual assault, I found few stories and fewer faces on the bookshelves," says Patricia. "My hope for The Voices and Faces Project is that it will create a broad reach to survivors who are looking for stories to help them and give them strength." Patricia's photographs have appeared in a variety of publications, including Harper's Magazine, Triquarterly, Chicago Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Slate. Her work appears regularly on The View from the Ground (www.viewfromtheground.com). Her photos also have been used in several television documentaries, including "Rebuilding the Community" by Marco Williams and "After the Fall," a 2002 report on the "transformation" of public housing by Jay Shefsky.

One of the first survivors of sexual violence to share her story with The Voices and Faces Project, Nobuko’s art direction has helped to shape much of our media aesthetic. “The experience of first sharing my story for Anne’s book Lived Through This was intense and powerful, and at times, painful,” says Nobuko. “Somewhere inside I felt that going back and remembering the rape I had survived was important. Staying silent, leaving things under the rug is never good.” An accomplished creative director and designer, Nobuko brought her unique skills as a former Vice-President and Creative Director at Foote, Cone, & Belding to her work at The Voices and Faces Project. She manages our e-newsletter (subscribe) and has offered her strategic design skills for many of our initiatives. “I think great design has more power than most people realize,” says Nobuko. “Talking about social justice issues is the ultimate communications challenge. If the design works, people will take a second look; they will take the time to encounter in full the survivor stories we are here to share.”

Fostering an organizational culture that is creative, effective, inclusive, and kind is critical for Aimee Bravo. She is the co-founder of Kids HeArt Yoga, which provides programming at schools, community centers, summer camps, and fitness studios for kids of all ages, helping them thrive through yoga, mindfulness, and the arts. “At The Voices and Faces Project,” she says, “we bring together people with a passion for social justice and people with world-class communications experience. Getting these players together in one room can be magical. The ideas that emerge through that type of collaboration inspire me.” Aimee played a key role in the development of “The Ugly Truth,” our multi-media anti-trafficking campaign, which calls for a compassionate and activist response to sex trafficking.  “Media plays a key role in creating change,” Aimee believes, “but only if it is used in the right way and targets the right audiences.”

A writer, music critic, longtime activist on gender issues, and a lover of dogs nonpareil, Anne has spent the past twenty years creating social spaces where survivors’ voices can be heard and honored. Anne’s groundbreaking book Lived Through This is a memoir of her multi-year, multi-country journey spent listening to the stories of survivors of gender-based violence. As Anne traveled the United States and other countries interviewing survivors, she met so many people hungering to give voice to their experiences. “Time and again,” she says, “people told me, ‘I want to find a space where I know my story is going to be honored.’” The Voices and Faces Project was conceived to be that kind of space, where witness is empowered and advocacy finds new inspirations. A passionate believer in media as a tool to create social change, Anne is founding board member at Art Works for Change and an advisory board member of RAINN. She is also founding Co-Chair of World Without Exploitation, the national coalition to end human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Her awards for work on behalf of woman and girls include the EVAW Visionary Award, Soroptimist International’s “Women Making a Difference” Award, and the National Sexual Violence Resource Council’s Visionary Voice Award. A former Senior Vice President and Group Creative Director at Leo Burnett Company, Anne has been named one of People Magazine’s “Heroes Among Us” and one of “Chicago’s Top 40” by the Chicago Tribune. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and the Washington Post. In everything she does, Anne is guided by a belief in the power of story to alter understanding. As she often says, “An injustice that goes unseen is an injustice that goes unchallenged.”

A longtime activist on sexual assault issues and accomplished researcher in the private and public sectors, Katie is a leading voice in national conversations about the coverage of sexual violence in our media. Katie has better than four decades of experience as a researcher. A former Vice President at Leo Burnett Company, she works as an independent consultant on qualitative consumer research, facilitation, and strategic planning for a long list of Fortune 500 companies. She balances her private sector work with public service. For her work since 2003 as a Sexual Assault Response Team advocate, she has been recognized with an award from San Diego County SART. Katie oversees all research initiatives at The Voices and Faces Project. She developed and supervises the ongoing Voices and Faces Project Survivor Survey for the project’s testimonial archive — the largest collection of detailed sexual violence survivor testimony in the world. Katie uses the archive to generate presentations that educate and inspire audiences ranging from advocates to high school students. Katie also leads our CounterQuo initiative, which challenges legal and media responses to violence against women. “I immediately saw the potential of The Voices and Faces Project to change how our society addresses the issue of rape,” says Katie. “And I wanted to use my voice as a survivor to educate people about the impact sexual violence has on so many lives.”

A feminist, author, former rape victim advocate, lover of coffee and chocolate, and Sunday school teacher, Christa is a founding member of The Voices and Faces Project. Her debut young adult novel Fault Line was conceived during our very first “The Stories We Tell” writing workshop. “During that first workshop I learned so much about myself as a writer,” Christa says, “and I interacted with other survivors in a way I’d never done before. It allowed me to find my voice and tell a story I didn’t think I ever could.” With its provocative storyline about a rape at a high school party and the aftermath for the survivor and her loved ones, Fault Line challenges young people to rethink their relation to gender-based violence. “Doing this work, I felt for the first time that I was part of a community. Other sexual assault survivors are like family — a different kind of family, but a family all the same,” says Christa. Christa has published several other well-received young adult novels since Fault Line. To this day she donates a percentage of profits from sales on that first novel to fund future workshops. “I want other writers,” she explains, “to experience The Stories We Tell writing program and its power.”

A novelist, short story writer, cultural critic, and rock ’n’ roll enthusiast, Clifton is an expert in testimony and ethics and a dedicated teacher of creative writing. He is the author of the novel Beautiful Fools, which Pulitzer Prize-winner Andrew Sean Greer describes as a “marvel of a book” that reminds us of “what we fight for, what we fail to win, and the beauty that abides between.” Clifton became involved in the fight to end gender-based violence because of the hurt it caused to several people who are dear to him. He co-created our writing program to empower new voices of witness. “Testimony,” he explains, “brings to light what our political and social systems push aside, ignore, even actively suppress.” An Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum, Clifton’s award-winning stories have appeared in The Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, The Kenyon Review; and his essays on culture and music, in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Chicago Tribune. He holds a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School and a doctorate from Yale University. He is a former fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the author of two books on literature and philosophy, The Ethics of Mourning and Vigilant Memory: Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the Unjust Death. He currently teaches creative writing at Yale University. “Storytelling, as that fundamental activity through which we work out our humanity,” says Clifton, “is essential to human rights advocacy. It tells us not just who we are but who we should be, and it lays the imaginative ground for getting there.”

As a writer, activist and community organizer, Jimmie Briggs challenges us to look more closely at the connections between racial, social and gender injustice.

Jimmie Briggs is a documentary storyteller, writer and advocate for racial and gender equity. He co-leads, alongside R. Clifton Spargo, the Voices and Faces Project’s “Testimony and Transformation” writing program for citizens impacted by the criminal justice system. Jimmie is an adjunct professor in social change journalism at the International Center of Photography in New York and the founder and executive director emeritus of Man Up Campaign, a globally-focused organization to activate youth to stop violence against women and girls. This led to his selection as the winner of the 2010 GQ Magazine “Better Men Better World” search, and as one of the Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century. Jimmie has served as an adjunct professor of investigative journalism at the New School for Social Research, and was a George A. Miller Visiting Professor in the Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. A frequent contributor to Vanity Fair and a Principal at Skoll Foundation, Jimmie centers his work on explorations of racial, social and gender injustices, challenging us to look more closely at the lines of connection between these forms of oppression.