This program is not available for credit.
Think Tank 2025: Current State of Intimate Partner Violence and Interpersonal Violence in the USA: Prevention and Intervention Across the Lifespan
Hosts: Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma (IVAT), National Plan to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan (NPEIV), and The Coalition for Inclusion, Resilience, Change, and Lasting Equity (The CIRCLE).
Town and Country Resort: 500 Hotel Cir N, San Diego, CA 92108
Have you felt bombarded with changes in policy and support for human services? Frustrated with disinformation? Unsure of what to do next? Join us to coordinate an effective response!
Our invited speakers will start off our morning with their ideas about collaborative action steps that might help move our agenda forward given the increased social, political, and financial barriers we have all been facing. After the formal presentations have occurred, there will be the “town hall” nature of the discussion that will follow. We will have the opportunity to actively share what has stood in our way, and what might be working in 2025, and engage in a dialogue together about these ideas as well as those of the speakers.
The afternoon will consist of 4-5 focus groups where your active participation will be crucial. These focus groups will engage in in-depth qualitative research on what has been happening in all of our workplaces since the tidal wave of structural and financial changes began at state and national levels. The work of each focus group will result in a written report that can be used to educate the public, ourselves, and our political leaders about the direct impacts of these state and national changes right now on the populations we serve as well as the public at large. The reports will highlight the critical need for everyone to take detailed action steps at the individual, community, and national levels if the nation doesn’t want violence to dramatically increase in the USA with irrevocable harm to ourselves, our families, and our country.
Dr. Viola Vaughan-Eden is a Professor and the PhD Program Director at the Ethelyn R. Strong School of Social Work at Norfolk State University. She is also the President and CEO of UP For Champions, a non-profit in partnership with The UP Institute, a think tank for upstream child abuse solutions. As a clinical and forensic social worker, she serves as a consultant and expert witness in child maltreatment cases – principally sexual abuse. Dr. Vaughan-Eden lectures nationally and internationally on child and family welfare to multidisciplinary groups of professionals.
Sandi Capuano Morrison has worked with victims and offenders of interpersonal violence for 29 years in Colorado, Massachusetts and California. She has been with IVAT since 2008. Sandi received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Colorado-Boulder in Psychology with a focus in Women’s Studies in 1996. Her commitment to domestic violence survivors began after volunteering at a battered women’s shelter as part of a course on Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa, nonviolent resistance, and satyagrapha.
Sandi was a victim advocate at Boulder County Safehouse and then Children’s Counselor at Alternatives to Violence domestic violence shelter before moving to Boston in 1998 and graduating from Boston College with her Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology in 2000. It was at BC that Sandi became certified as a Batterer Intervention Program Facilitator and assisted with research on the process and efficacy of offender programs. She became the Program Director of the IMPACT Batterer Intervention Program and ran offender groups for 5 years in Boston suburbs.
After moving to San Diego in 2005, Sandi managed the county-wide domestic violence and sexual assault 24-hour hotline and volunteer program and then the city of San Diego’s Rape Crisis Center at the Center for Community Solutions. In that position she was a member of both the San Diego Sexual Assault Response Team and the Sex Offender Management Council and became certified by California’s Office of Emergency Services as a Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault counselor. She was also a Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) volunteer.
Sandi is committed to empowerment-based, survivor-informed programs & processes as well as offender accountability. She has interests in Restorative Justice, Holistic Healing, Cultural Competency, Human Rights and Social Justice.
Amalfi started working in the gender-based violence movement 14 years ago as a survivor and student attorney in Tulane Law School's Domestic Violence Law Clinic and continued to represent survivors in protection order and family law proceedings as a private practitioner. Amalfi has developed and supported Coordinated Community Responses (CCR) to intimate partner violence for over ten years. She first coordinated the implementation of the New Orleans Blueprint for Safety policies for seven criminal legal system agencies, while addressing the disproportionately high DV arrest rate of Black women. She has since provided national training and technical assistance to CCRs across the country. Amalfi directs BWJP's National Center on Reimagining CCR, establishing approaches and support for advocates and allied professionals on centering survivor and culturally specific realities in CCR interventions. Amalfi is a former President of the New Orleans Family Justice Alliance Board.
Lynn Rosenthal is the Co-Director of MOSAIC at Battered Women's Justice Project.
Check back soon for a full bio!
Pastor Armstrong is deeply committed to advocating for issues of justice, equity, inclusion, and access. Based on his early educational experiences of integrating Los Angeles public schools (in 1974) and his early childhood experiences of foster and kinship care through the Los Angeles County Child Welfare System, he has cultivated a deep conviction to embolden and empower marginalized and under-resourced communities. His policy training at Stanford University (BA in Public Policy), theological training at Princeton Theological Seminary (Masters in Divinity), and his clinical training at The College of NJ (postmasters Ed.S. in Marriage and Family Therapy) has made him a respected voice in the national and international child and family wellbeing communities. He is the former Director of NJ’s Division of Child Abuse Prevention and Community Partnerships (2006- 2009) and the former Chief Administrative Officer to the United Nations for the Baptist World Alliance (2016-2002). In June of 2024, he was elected Board President of APSAC, the first Black male, and the first religious professional to serve in the position. APSAC is the country’s largest multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral membership organization, serving child maltreatment professionals and advocating for optimum child and family well-being. He also serves in various other national and international positions of leadership.
Rita began working as a crisis line advocate in a shelter for battered women and their children in Colorado in 1981. She has held numerous positions in Colorado and Florida since then in several local domestic violence and sexual assault programs and state coalitions, including Program Supervisor and Director. She was the Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence for nearly 22 years. Rita has served on 2 local board of directors, as well as ex-officio board member as executive director of a national non-profit. She has been interviewed by hundreds of newspaper reporters, appeared on many local and national radio and television news shows, including the Washington Post, USA Today, People Magazine, NPR, The Today Show, Good Morning America and Oprah Winfrey Show. She has co-authored several articles and chapters for books including a manual for attorneys working with domestic violence victims in Colorado, and an article on child custody and domestic violence published in the fall of 1997 in The Judges Journal (an American Bar Association publication). She currently is a Senior Adviser for the National Football League on their efforts to end violence against women and is Executive Vice President of External Relations for domesticshelters.org. She believes that advocacy and social change are intricately connected and cannot be done separately.