Prevention Summit 2023- Meet the Presenters
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Phillip A. Burse
Phillip A. Burse is the Chief Operating Officer at In Our Own Voices, Inc. (IOOV) and has worked in various capacities at IOOV for close to 15 years with a focus on working with LGBTQ+ communities, communities of color and LGBTQ+ victims/survivors of trauma. In his current role as IOOV's Chief Operating Officer, Phillip is responsible for overseeing programs, services, and events that focus on reducing barriers and increasing access for LGBTQ+ and People of Color communities by addressing the socioeconomic, political, cultural and health related disparities that disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ communities (with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ people of color). Phillip is also responsible for providing training & technical assistance to communities, businesses, and service providers, grant writing, and strategic planning. Phillip has represented IOOV on local, statewide and national initiatives that impact/address the intersecting needs of LGBTQ+ communities and has served as President and Vice President of the Board of Directors of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the New York State Office of Victim Services Advisory Council. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood. In his spare time, Phillip enjoys karaoke, brunch, traveling, and listening to music.
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Lorien Castelle
Lórien Castelle has been an activist and advocate for social justice issues focusing on gender based violence for over two decades. She joined the team at the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NYSCADV) in 1998 and has had the honor of working closely with communities and state coalitions across the country during her tenure. Ms. Castelle split her time between NYSCADV and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence from 2011- 2013 in order to launch a statewide prevention initiative in Pennsylvania. Ms. Castelle specializes in community and school-based based prevention strategies, including: teen dating violence prevention, promoting healthy relationship norms, developing youth activism and leadership, engaging men as allies, workplace violence prevention and community organizing. She has a strong background in organizational development and strategic planning which she applies to coalition building, prevention planning and supporting coordinated community response efforts.
Ms. Castelle works on many of NYSCADV’s special projects including promoting best practices for serving people who have been victimized and organizational capacity building with a particular lens on trauma-informed, survivor-driven approaches. Ms. Castelle serves on numerous national, statewide and regional committees and is a much sought after trainer, meeting facilitator and keynote speaker. As Director of Prevention for NYSCADV she has assisted communities in designing and launching local initiatives in and across school districts, college campuses and in the workplace with activities that promote social norms change and prevent domestic violence from happening in the first place. Ms. Castelle provides a wide range of coaching, support and training to domestic violence programs and allies throughout New York State and to coalitions and communities throughout the country.
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Lisa Fujie Parks, MPH
Lisa Fujie Parks, MPH, is an associate program director at the national nonprofit Prevention Institute, where she works to promote safety, wellbeing, health equity, and racial justice. She is a leader in community-driven, culturally rooted approaches to safety and healing. She has extensive experience providing coaching and consultation and supporting learning communities, and has worked with many cities and counties, as well as states, to develop and implement community-driven collaborative strategies to prevent violence across the life course. Lisa serves on the Board of Directors of Our Family Coalition, a community-based organizing advancing equity for the full and expanding spectrum of LGBTQ+ families and children. She also serves on the National Advisory Board of Vital Village Network, a national network of residents and organizations committed to maximizing child, family, and community wellbeing and promoting healthy social and emotional development in early childhood.
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Rus Ervin Funk, MSW, CSE, is a long-time racial justice activist and organizer working to engage and mobilize men and boys. He is the founder of numerous organizations and efforts include MensWork: eliminating violence against women in, The Ohio Men's Action Network and the North American Men's Engagement Network. He has written numerous books, articles and chapters, his latest being the 2019 manual "What's Wrong with this Picture: The Impact of Viewing Pornography." Rus was a key architect with NYSCADV's "Because we're Dads" initiative.
Currently Rus acts as a consultant, trainer and activist. He lives in Louisville, KY with his partner, their 14 year old child and a cat. Rus enjoys baking, writing, photography, and hiking.
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Brian Heilman
Brian Heilman is the Deputy Director of Research at Equimundo, where his work focuses on preventing all forms of gender-based violence and achieving broader gender equality and social justice in the United States and around the world. Brian is a co-author of the State of the World’s Fathers 2017 and 2019 reports, the lead author of The Man Box study on harmful effects of rigid masculine norms in the US, UK, and Mexico, and a co-author of multiple reports using International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) data. Brian has particular program and research experience in South Asia and the United States, in addition to many other valuable opportunities worldwide. He holds a BA in English from Saint John’s University and an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
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Harvey Herne
Wat hat ka ha teni ne Ion kats (He turned around is his name) Harvey Herne is his English Name. Harvey grew up in Akwesasne, NY and instead of an education steeped in cultural knowledge and traditions he was met with dysfunction, criticism, and violence. He grew up a very good student of this and eventually found a partner who only knew the same thing, which led him down an unhealthy path. He continued on a path of destruction in his adulthood until he went to the reservation run rehab, The Partridge House. Here he was able to start to unwind the insanity that he went through and learn who he was really meant to be. During his time in rehab he learned about smudging, sweatlodge, ceremonies, talking circles, the cultural and traditional way. He was able to start the healing through self-awareness. Through honesty he was given validation for feelings of low self-esteem, insecurity, low self-worth, abandonment, and fears. After two years of recovery, he was hired at the Partridge House to share his knowledge of the Native American culture and shortly after he became a shift supervisor. He worked at the Partridge House for twenty years. He often states that “I am not STUCK in the problem anymore; I AM part of the solution.” Harvey came to work seven years ago for Seven Dancers Coalition to run Honsekwiroton (Standing The Trees Back Up) Men’s Program. He helped create the curriculum that is based in Traditional Cultural and Oral Traditional Stories that is designed for men who have been taught the wrong things. He assists them build a foundation built on Cultural knowledge with roles and responsibilities as a guide. He soon began a Youth program, Sapling To Cedar to begin teaching cultural knowledge at a younger age as a preventative measure. He is wealth of knowledge and teaches on the 2-3 way value system, creation story, mind-mapping, sweatlodge and more.
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Chris Kosakowski, MSW
OVW Campus Grant Project Director and Coordinator of Student Inclusion Initiatives for SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Chris Kosakowski, MSW, works as both the OVW Campus Grant Project Director and Coordinator of Student Inclusion Initiatives for SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Outside of this role, Chris serves as Board President for CNY Pride and Couselmember for the CNY Hate and Bias Prevention Regional Council. Through these various roles, Chris aims to help support individuals who have been impacted by harm while actively working to prevent it from happening. For over a decade, Chris has worked in direct service, clinical mental health, and violence prevention work to combat these issues from all angles. Chris believes that through empathy, humility, and an appropriate level of sarcasm and humor, we can have meaningful dialogue and create social change.
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James Young
Starting Westchester County's First LGBTQ Youth Program in 1992, James has had a long commitment in exploring queer culture and its positive effects on the dominant heteronormative culture.
James is the recipient of the 2007 GLSEN Hudson Valley Leadership Award for his work with LGBTQ youth in both Rockland and Westchester Counties where he worked with numerous high schools and colleges on LGBTQ safety. He coordinated the Common Threads Youth Empowerment Retreat for several years in Rockland County where students and advisors as far as Rochester attended annually. He served on the planning committee at Pride Works, the annual conference held in Westchester County for high school students and their advisors.
Young also co-designed, facilitated and trained with PeaceWorks in Reading, PA, working with youth on various isms (i.e., sexism, racism, etc.) and learning more about intersectionality, power and inclusion.
As the faculty advisor for Rainbow Alliance at Monroe College, he assists students in raising funds for Ali Forney Center, an LGBTQ homeless shelter in NYC as well as builds community through campus activities.
Young is currently a volunteer and facilitator trainer at the Loft, the LGBTQ center in White Plains, faculty advisor for Rainbow Alliance at Monroe College in the Bronx campus, and serves on the Westchester County LGBTQ Advisory Board.
Young is excited to bring his talents and experience to Queery as he is eager to be part of the movement that brings about equality and celebration of diversity using critical thinking and questioning.
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Don McPherson is the 2021 recipient of the William Pearson Tolley Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Lifelong Learning, presented by Syracuse University’s School of Education and, the 2020 National Football Foundation’s Outstanding Contribution to Amateur Football. These honors signify a lifelong mission to use a unique social position to serve the greater good.
In 2019 McPherson published You Throw Like a Girl: The Blind Spot of Masculinity, which chronicles 37 years of harnessing the power and appeal of sport to address complex social issues and focuses on a quarter century of work on gender-based violence prevention.
McPherson was an All-America quarterback at Syracuse University and is a veteran of the NFL and Canadian Football League. As captain of the undefeated 1987 Syracuse football team, McPherson set 22 school records, led the nation in passing and won more than 18 national “player of the year” awards, including the Maxwell Award as the nation’s best player, the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award and the inaugural Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. He was second in the Heisman Trophy voting. In 2008 McPherson was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. In 2013 Syracuse University retired his #9 jersey.
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Maya Pilgrim
Maya Pilgrim is a mixed Filipina/Cajun mother, partner, and independent consultant. For the past 10 years, she has been supporting evaluative and learning efforts around preventing and addressing sexual violence and advocating for racial justice. She has been a part of collective efforts towards more equitable and just communities within the United States and internationally for over twenty years in the connected fields of youth development, reproductive justice, gender-based violence, and racial justice. She has a BA in Psychology and a Master’s in International Development and Social Change.
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Sarah Podber, MSW
Sarah joined the NYSCASA staff in 2016 as the special projects coordinator, later transitioning into the role of director of prevention. In her current position, Sarah serves as the project lead for NYSCASA’S Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative (SADI) prevention cohort, as well as other prevention projects. Prior to joining NYSCASA, Sarah was an advocate at Disability Rights New York and the program and policy director at The League of Women Voters of New York State. She has a Bachelor of Arts in women’s studies and a Master of Social Work from the State University of New York at Albany.
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Farah Tanis
Farah Tanis, CEO/Founder of Restore Forward and Executive Director/Co-Founder of Black Women's Blueprint, is an internationally acclaimed grassroots activist and advocate for Black women and girls. She has over twenty years of experience in community leadership, fundraising, human rights initiatives, movement building, organizational development, public speaking and strategic mobilization.
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Ponny White
Ponny White (she/her) is an NYU Master of Art student, reproductive justice advocate and a storyteller. Her passion for social equity has allowed her the opportunity to work with notable organizations like Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, Girls for Gender Equity and others.
Ponny's reproductive advocacy efforts predominantly centers and uplifts the experiences of children and youth. Using her advocacy knowledge–her professional experience as an early childhood policy consultant, her personal experience as a survivor of CSA (child sexual abuse), and her love for storytelling–Ponny strives to create spaces that affirm the voices of young people, and challenges community and system leaders to radically value the expertise of children and young people in this work.
Ponny is a big picture thinker whose activist praxis is love. She plans on spending the next 5 years solidifying herself as a multimedia storyteller who helps to uplift authentic stories.