Evidence to Action: Igniting Change to End Gender-Based Violence

Michele R. Decker is a Professor in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she holds a Bloomberg American Health Professorship. She is the founding director of the Center for Global Women’s Health and Gender Equity. 

Kamila A. Alexander is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of the PhD and Postdoctoral programs at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Her research examines the socio-structural determinants of trauma and violence on sexual, mental, and reproductive health outcomes among marginalized young people. As a trained advanced practice public health nurse, Dr. Alexander uses health equity and social justice lenses to examine the complex roles that intimate partner violence, HIV resilience, societal gender expectations, and economic opportunity play in the experience of intimate human relationships. She is recognized for her scientific and community-engaged leadership as a member of the inaugural cohort of Betty Irene Moore Fellowships for Nurse Leaders and Innovators.

Kalliopi Mingeirou is currently the Chief of the Ending Violence against Women Section at UN Women in New York. She has been leading global initiatives, including diverse interagency initiatives, on prevention of and responses to violence against women and girls in public and private spaces. She is a lawyer by training and holds an LL.M. on public international law. Prior to joining UN-Women, Kalliopi Ms. Mingeirou worked as a lawyer in Greece, and at international level, she worked for UN agencies, as well as INGOs, in the areas of human rights, women’s human rights and refugee protection in several countries both in development and humanitarian settings.

Catherine is a Senior Advisor at the White House Gender Policy Council, where she is the chief advisor on gender-based violence. She is on leave from her faculty appointment at Fordham Law School. Her prior experience includes stints in the Obama administration White House National Security Council and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Office. She was previously an National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund NAACP LDF litigator and on the Columbia Law faculty as founding director of the Human Rights Institute and Clinic. She received her JD from Yale Law School and her MPA from Princeton University.

Karma Cottman, pronouns she, her, hers, has worked in the Gender Based Violence field for over twenty years.  She has worked internationally and nationally in the United States at the local, state, and national level to ensure that programs, policies, and legislation are responsive to the needs of Gender Based Violence survivors; particularly from Communities of Color.  Through Ujima, Karma has established federal funding streams and national TA Centers focused on increasing access for culturally specific service providers to federal and state funding support.  In her downtime, Karma enjoys spending time with family and friends. 

Rosie Hidalgo joined the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) as its Director in July 2023, after serving as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor on Gender-Based Violence at the White House Gender Policy Council. She previously worked at OVW as Deputy Director for Policy in the Obama-Biden Administration, during which time Rosie was detailed to the Office of the Vice President, working with the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women.

Rosie has worked in the movement to end gender-based violence for over 30 years as a public interest attorney and as a national policy advocate. At the outset of her career, she provided direct civil legal services through non-profit organizations in New York and Virginia. Prior to her work at the White House, she was the Senior Director of Public Policy for Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities (now Esperanza United), a national resource center with a focus on providing training, research, and policy advocacy to prevent and end domestic violence and sexual assault. Rosie also served on the Biden Foundation’s Advisory Council for Ending Violence Against Women and on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence.

The daughter of immigrants from Cuba, Rosie spent a total of 10 years as an adult living in three different countries in Latin America, including the Dominican Republic, where she helped establish and coordinate a community-based domestic violence prevention and intervention network and worked as a consultant for the World Bank on social services reforms.

She received her Bachelor’s degree in Government and International Relations from Georgetown University and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar.

Cailin Crockett is dual-hatted as a Senior Advisor to the White House Gender Policy Council and a Director for Military Personnel Policy on the National Security Council. Prior to the Biden-Harris White House, Cailin was Senior Advisor to the 90-Day Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military. Cailin has worked to advance national and global policies for the prevention and response of gender-based violence in the White House, the U.S. Department of Defense,  U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the UN.  She holds a Masters of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was a Bloomberg American Health Fellow.

Greta Massetti is the principal deputy director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC). She oversees the center’s surveillance, epidemiology, data science, and public health programmatic efforts and provides leadership for National Center for Injury Prevention and Control’s (NCIPC) center priorities, including drug overdose, suicide prevention, and adverse childhood experiences. She is a recognized expert in global violence and injury prevention and has led Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to data-driven efforts to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), violence against children, gender-based violence, and related health consequences.

Rachel Vogelstein serves in the Biden Administration as Deputy Director and Special Assistant to the President at the Gender Policy Council and Special Advisor on Gender at the White House National Security Council.  She is the author of Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights (2021). She has served with Secretary Hillary Clinton, the Obama Administration’s Council on Women and Girls, and in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the State Department

Julie is passionate about redefining the narrative for women and girls. As the former Gender Advisor to the Kenya’s President H.E Uhuru Kenyatta, Julie acted as the lead interlocutor on gender responsive policy across interventions focused on, youth and adolescents, Universal Health Coverage and on the Human Capital development projects. In 2021, Julie led a national study exploring the impact of COVID19 on the social, health, economic and education of adolescents in Kenya’ that was one of the first in the world to look exclusively at the impact of COVID-19 on adolescents’ lives. Julie is currently with the Global Partnership for Education where she leads advocacy efforts in mobilizing political support at the highest levels to ensure children in lower income countries receive the best quality education.

Melina Milazzo is the Deputy Director of Public Policy for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, where she helps lead federal advocacy efforts to advance policies that prevent, respond to, and address the root causes of gender-based violence. Melina also helped lead civil society efforts to inform the development of the first-ever U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. She has 15 years of federal advocacy experience on gender justice and human rights issues. Melina received her J.D. with high honors in international law from Florida State University College of Law.

Lynn Rosenthal is the HHS Director of Sexual and Gender-based Violence at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where she leads the Department’s work to implement the National Plan to End Gender-based Violence. In 2021, Lynn was appointed by Secretary Austin to chair the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Harassment and Assault in the U.S. Military. From 2009 to 2015, Lynn was the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women and a senior advisor to then-Vice President Biden. Lynn is a social worker, an advocate, and has an MPA from Ohio University. 

Yvette Efevbera is founder and CEO of SHE Thinks Group LLC. Previously, she was Advisor in Gender Equality at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leading the Gender-Based Violence, Child Marriage, and Adolescents & Social Norms Evidence programs, and an NIH-funded research lead at Harvard University. A graduate of Michigan State University and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Yvette brings 15 years of experience to uniquely blending technical training, strategy skills, and culturally-intentional collaboration. She is a global health and equity leader, philanthropy advisor, Board Member, award-winning speaker, college football fan, daughter, sister, and mom.

Diana J. Arango is the portfolio coordinator for Gender based Violence (GBV) in the Social Sustainability and Inclusion Unit for the Latin America and Caribbean region at the World Bank.  During her tenure at the Bank and as the first Global Lead for GBV led the institution in growing and changing its approach to integrating GBV into WB-financed operations across all sectors and all regions. Diana also led efforts to provide guidance on mitigating risks of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment which may be triggered or exacerbated by WB lending. 

She fostered a unique and strong partnership with the Sexual Violence Research Initiative that funded innovative research in low- and middle- income countries to build the evidence base on what works to end GBV. The joint effort supported fifty teams in their research and has led to numerous articles, tools, and resources to help programmers scaling evidence-based interventions to address GBV. The partnership has also been an important entry point for local World Bank dialogue with governments on addressing GBV. 

Before joining the World Bank Group, Diana was a Research Scientist at George Washington University's Global Women's Institute leading research on violence against women and girls in conflict settings. Prior to that she served as the Global Coordinator for the development and implementation of the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS), an innovative inter-agency initiative that aids humanitarian workers in collecting timely data on GBV incidents that can then be used to inform programmatic work. She has an MSc from the London School of Economics in Anthropology and Development, and has on the ground experience in several all WB regions.