ABOUT

Nicole Baran, MSW, is the Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness, started in 2005. She has been dedicated to the domestic violence movement since 2000, working both as an advocate with survivors of domestic violence and at the policy level for systemic change. She has conducted national trainings and contributed to publications to improve the institutional response to domestic violence since 2001. She has delivered over 300 customized workshops to organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, the San Francisco Bar Association, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and CPEDV, California’s State Domestic Violence Coalition. In 2006, Nicole successfully partnered with Stanford University to institutionalize a commitment to addressing violence against women on campus and was instrumental in implementing Stanford’s first Office on Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse. In addition, she developed and teaches a course on violence against women in the Feminist Studies Program at Stanford University. Prior to the Center, Nicole was the Grant and Contract Manager at the Support Network for Battered Women in Mountain View. She received her BA and MA in English from Stanford University and received her MSW from Washington University in St. Louis, with a specialization in management and a focus on domestic violence research.

Read Nicole’s interview with Maestro Market to learn more about her work.

Shannon Moskitis is the Program Director for the Center for Relationship Abuse Awareness. She received her BA from Stanford University in Urban Studies with a minor in Feminist Studies, concentrating in Gender Violence and Human Rights. Her honors thesis, “‘It’s a Catch 22′: The Intersection of Homelessness, Domestic Violence, and the Shelter System’s Response”, based on in-depth interviews with women utilizing homeless shelter systems in the Bay Area, was awarded the 2011 Firestone Medal in Urban Studies. Shannon served as an intern with the Center for four years, as a peer educator with a focus on relationship abuse in the LGBT/Queer community, before joining the Center’s staff. She plans to pursue an MSW and continued work against gender violence. She also currently serves as a rape crisis counselor and advocate in Alameda County through Bay Area Women Against Rape.

“The Center has given me the courage to speak out, with the facts, with compassion, with the knowledge that the movement to end violence against women is a movement that affects all of us. In no small way, my life has been changed by this internship.” – Intern