Thank you for your interest in our Zoom Seminar Series this Tuesday, December 1st @ 6PM EST on the Intersection of DV & Financial Status.

Our wonderful panelists will be:

Dr. Claire M. Renzetti is Professor and Chair of Sociology and the Judi Conway Patton Endowed Chair for Studies of Violence Against Women at the University of Kentucky. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1982 from the University of Delaware, with specialties in criminology and the sociology of gender. She joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky in 2010. For more than 35 years, Dr. Renzetti’s research has focused on the violent victimization experiences of socially and economically marginalized women and girls. She founded in 1995, and continues to edit, the peer-reviewed, international and interdisciplinary journal Violence Against Women, which is published 16 times a year by Sage Publications. Dr. Renzetti is also the editor of the Gender and Justice book series for University of California Press; co-editor of the Interpersonal Violence book series for Oxford University Press, and editor of the Family and Gender-based Violence book series for Cognella. She has written or edited 26 books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles based on her own research. Dr. Renzetti is currently co-PI with Dr. Diane Follingstad on a Department of Justice-funded evaluation of the horticultural therapy program for battered women and their children at Greenhouse 17 (formerly the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program) in Lexington. She also studies the problem of domestic sex trafficking, including identifying gaps in the knowledge base and in rigorous and reliable data collection, and assisting health care providers and law enforcement in identifying domestic sex trafficking victims. She also conducts research on the effects of religiosity and religious self-regulation on intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization. She has held elected offices in several national and regional professional associations, including the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Eastern Sociological Society. Her research and community service has been recognized with awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the University of Delaware, Artemis Center (Dayton, OH), and the YWCA of Dayton (OH).

Sonya Passi is the founder and CEO of FreeFrom, a national organization on a mission to create pathways to financial security and long-term safety for survivors of gender-based violence. FreeFrom believes in the creativity, resourcefulness and power that each survivor has to achieve financial independence, and to build communities that support individual, intergenerational and collective healing. They also believe that intimate partner violence is a systemic problem in our society which we are severely lacking the infrastructure to address. FreeFrom’s work is to build that infrastructure, by building capacity for the anti-violence movement, building tech resources for survivors, creating peer networks that build survivors’ collective power, changing and creating state and federal laws, expanding the data and research that exists to support the field, and bringing in employers, banks and other institutions as part of the ecosystem working to support survivor’s financial security and safety. Sonya has been an anti-violence activist since she was 16 years old. Before founding FreeFrom, she launched the Family Violence Appellate Project while earning her law degree at UC Berkeley. Based in Oakland, California, FVAP is the first and only organization in California to provide pro bono appellate legal services to survivors of intimate partner violence and has fundamentally transformed the legal landscape in California. For her work in the field, Sonya was listed in Forbes' 30 Under 30 Class of 2017 For Law and Policy and is an Ashoka, Roddenberry, Draper Richards Kaplan and New America California fellow.

Dr. Cynthia Sanders is a Professor at Boise State University’s School of Social Work and a Faculty Associate with the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis.  She received her Ph.D. from Washington University’s Brown School and her MSW and B.S. degrees in economics and political science from the University of Utah.  Her research interests focus on women and children living in poverty and community based initiatives to promote financial inclusion and capability.  Her published works include a book, book chapters, and numerous journal articles on financial capability and asset building initiatives including microenterprise, homeownership, wealth accumulation, financial literacy, and the economic dimension of intimate partner violence.  Much of her recent research examines the role of financial factors in intimate partner violence and initiatives to promote financial capability among survivors, including financial education, Individual Development Accounts, economic advocacy and empowerment.  Additionally, she is currently examining city and state based policy initiatives that promote financial, social, and political inclusion of marginalized groups.