Resources

Diana Mancera President and CEO at New Hope, Inc. and former staff at the Massachusetts State Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, known as JDI. Diana was born and raised in Mexico City. Her mother says she begins her advocacy days at five years old, every time she asked her father to stop hurting her mother, that she had enough. She identifies as a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault. She says that her advocacy for her mother and promise to herself led her to her passion…to empower those who were abused and neglected by others.

Diana has over her 15+ years of experience in the sexual and domestic violence movement, she has developed and implemented initiatives around economic justice, technology safety, engaging men and boys in prevention, and programming with women in prison. Diana has facilitated hundreds of presentations and trainings across the country, keynotes and developed needs assessments to identify marginalized and underserved victims and survivors. 

She is also an active member of the GLBTQ Domestic Violence Coalition and a member of the Massachusetts Women of Color Network. She has also served as the President of Latinos Unidos en Massachusetts, a non-profit organization that protects the rights, educates, organizes, and empowers immigrant communities.

Diana is also the founder and host of Las Net@X a podcast that features hard discussions among LatinX families such as racism, colorism, homophobia, machismo, domestic violence, etc. Diana holds an MBA from Tuck, Dartmouth College and a BS in Economics from California State University San Marcos.

When Diana is not advocating for survivors, she enjoys cooking, eating, running, and loves spending time with her family, friends, and doggies.

Dr. Fanta Atkinson, PhD, LMHC, is a distinguished leader in the field of psychology and in the victim rights community, with nearly two decades of experience in victim service work. She currently serves as the Director of the Center for Homicide Bereavement at the Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital. Dr. Atkinson oversees two victim services grants and, with her expertise in trauma-informed care, leads a multidisciplinary team that provides crisis intervention, consultation, and therapeutic services to individuals and families impacted by homicide, street violence, and terrorism. 

Beyond her clinical practice, Dr. Atkinson is a passionate advocate for systemic change and capacity building within non-profit organizations. She serves as a consultant at Empower Success Corps, where she supports organizations with leadership development, strategic planning, and program implementation. As Co-Principal Investigator of a groundbreaking five-year longitudinal study funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Dr. Atkinson is advancing research on the comorbidity of chronic pain and early cognitive decline among older, community-based Black adults.

She is the former Chairwoman of the Executive Board for The Wellness Collaborative, an interdisciplinary collective dedicated to improving health outcomes in local underserved communities. She is currently a Community Board member at TWC.

Dr. Atkinson provides clinical supervision to new therapists, serves as a consultant for various community and private organizations, and conducts numerous trainings and workshops. Dr. Atkinson was a recipient of the Gerard D. Downing Leadership Award, in recognition of her leadership in the field of victim services. 

Elsabel Rincon is a seasoned nonprofit leader with over 20 years of experience advancing social justice and community empowerment. Her work spans immigrant rights, racial equity, anti-violence, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and grassroots organizing. In 2013, she received the Kipp Tiernan Social Justice Fellowship and founded The Welcome Immigrant Network, which supports immigrant integration on the North Shore. Elsabel serves on several boards, including Voices Against Injustice, Project Out, the Latino Leadership Coalition of Salem, and the ECCF Racial Equity Task Force. Her leadership has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40, Amplify Latinx’s Latina Leader Amplifier Award, and the Peter J. Gomes Community Service Award. A PhD candidate in Global Studies at UMass Lowell, she also holds a Master of Education and a certificate in Nonprofit Leadership. Originally from the Dominican Republic, Elsabel now lives in Rowley with her two children and two dogs.

Gwendolyn VanSant is an experienced organizational change consultant and coach who works at the intersection of diversity, leadership, equity and inclusion, and strategic planning. She serves as a non-profit leader as the CEO and Founding Executive Director of BRIDGE and the principal & owner of consulting firm, Equity in Practice, LLC.

With a strong background in health and human services, Jacob’s career has centered on trauma, mental health, and substance misuse recovery. Jacob is experienced in implementing system-change models which emphasize person-centered approaches. Jacob provides strategic planning, training and development consultation and has presented at numerous regional and national conferences.

Kerri Bergendahl, LICSW is the Program Coordinator for The Child Advocacy Training and Support (CATS) Center. The CATS Center is a nation-wide training grant, funded by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), awarded to Baystate Health in Springfield, MA.  In this position, she provides trauma-informed, multidisciplinary team trainings for children’s advocacy centers.  She is a certified facilitator in Foundations for OutReach through Experiential Child Advocacy Studies Training (FORECAST) and NCTSN’s Core Curriculum on Childhood Trauma (CCCT), as well as a Trauma Informed Organizational Assessment Coach.  Ms. Bergendahl continues to carry a small caseload of clients in her role as Behavioral Health Clinician, with clinical specialties in Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Problematic Sexual Behaviors; certified in Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.  

Kim Hopkins, LICSW, has been affiliated with Centerboard in a variety of capacities since 2009.  She has more than 25 years of experience working with youth and families in a variety of settings including residential programs, foster homes, special education day schools, public schools, and outpatient clinics. Kim has engaged in intentional inclusion work for nearly 15 years and has led trainings in this space for the last six years.  Kim is also an international public speaker for Dr. Ross Greene and his non-profit, Lives in the Balance.

Lovern Gordon is a DV sur-THRIVER (a child witness, and a young adult relationship that she escaped). Later, in 2011, she became the founder of Love Life Now Foundation (LLN), a global organization that was launched in 2011 after using back-to-back pageant wins to spotlight the issue that year. Today, LLN continues to focus on raising awareness and supporting survivors of DV.

She is the author of the international memoir, The Legacy He Left Me, that is currently on a nationwide book signing and speaking tour. She is brought in to lead DV awareness workshops for corporations, agencies, schools, conferences and more.

Her media appearances include CBS This Morning, Huffington Post, USA Today, NBC Boston, TV6 News in Trinidad, and more. She has been honored by the Boston Celtics as a ˜Hero Among Us”, received the Glamour Magazine and Investigation Discovery’s Inspire A Difference Award, the NAACPACs Phenomenal Woman Award, featured in Instagram for Business Women’s HER-story Month Docuseries and so much more.

Sharon Imperato is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) trained in Rape Crisis in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Sharon has over 20 years of counseling  experience (individual, group, couples, and family) with survivors of sexual harm and their loved ones, with an expertise in working with men survivors.  Sharon  maintains her own consultation/supervision practice where she provides clinical supervision and consultation to LMHC candidates seeking licensure as well as other mental health professionals on the issues of sexual harm and vicarious trauma.  Sharon is an experienced trainer who has presented a broad range of seminars, webinars, and conference presentations, to a wide range of audiences from how to respond to disclosures of sexual harm to understanding vicarious trauma. Sharon is also the Partner Peer Support Group Manager and Training Manager with MenHealing and is an adjunct professor at Northeastern University’s Department of Applied Psychology. 

In 2023 she was recognized as one of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly's Top Women of the Law. She earned her undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech and her J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law.

Soleidi Alvarez is an Associate Project Specialist at the Geiger Institute, where she provides training and technical assistance to advocates, law enforcement, criminal justice professionals, social service providers, and community leaders nationwide. Her work focuses on supporting communities in developing multidisciplinary strategies to prevent intimate partner violence homicides, including training on the use of evidence-based risk assessment tools to inform intervention and system response.

Before joining the Institute, Soleidi served as an advocate delivering trauma-informed services to survivors and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams on domestic violence cases. She also led outreach and education efforts in Lawrence, Massachusetts, with a focus on immigrant and faith-based communities. 

Stephanie Friends Holt, Esq., is the Deputy Director of Operations at the Victim Rights Law Center, where she has been representing survivors of sexual violence for over a decade. Throughout her career, Stephanie has assisted hundreds of rape and sexual assault survivors in navigating complex employment law matters, defamation concerns, and critical privacy and safety needs. Stephanie frequently counsels survivors who face intimidation tactics from perpetrators, particularly those threatened with defamation lawsuits designed to silence them from sharing their experiences. Her expertise extends to developing trauma-informed workplace policies and she regularly trains attorneys and advocates on representing survivors on privacy and safety matters. 

In 2023 she was recognized as one of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly's Top Women of the Law. She earned her undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech and her J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law.