SFWAR | San Francisco Women Against Rape

Julie Baltzley

Julie began her advocacy work at Women Escaping a Violent in Environment (WEAVE) in Sacramento, and started volunteering at SFWAR when she moved to San Francisco in 1998. She continued as a volunteer hotline and medical advocate until she began her "nomadic period" and left the country for Latin America in 2001. For several years, Julie worked with numerous humanitarian and Latin American solidarity organizations, including IFCO/Pastors For Peace, Annunciation House and Casa de la Peregrina. After spending a year on the El Paso/ Juarez border working with undocumented immigrants and refugees Mexico and Central America, Julie finally wandered home to San Francisco. She worked as a case manager at Hamilton Family Center and Toolworks before returning to SFWAR in 2007, bringing lots of heart and a spirit of solidarity to her work with survivors of sexual violence.

Isaak Brown

Isaak Brown is the new Community Educator with SFWAR. Starting in high school, Isaak was trained as peer sex educator at Berkeley High's peer educator program. He continued to do service and community work with City Year Americorps in Seattle. Isaak is the lead facilitator for Fellowship of Reconciliation's Nonviolent Youth Collective, leading anti-oppression trainings. He is also a youth trainer for Groundwork, a Unitarian Univeralist anti-racism collective. Isaak looks forward to bringing community learning, popular education and lots of fun to the Community Educator position. Isaak appreciates all of your support and is excited and humbled to join you in the SFWAR Community!

Frolayne Carlos

began her work in social justice through a research group examining the impact of reported domestic violence in court mediation at San Diego State University. Inspired by personal stories and critical dialogue, she continued her activism through an internship at a domestic violence transitional house in San Diego, where she was later hired on as staff. She relocated to San Francisco Bay Area and worked at AACI's Asian Women's Home in San Jose, a shelter serving abused asian immigrant women. She then joined SFWAR to continue her work in deconstructing a culture which promotes violence and the oppression of marginalized communites.

Frolayne sits on the board of Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity spearheading the annual Face2Face solidarity trip. She endeavors to interweave her Pilipino heritage, activism and new motherhood. Frolayne is honored to work in partnership with community members and organizers addressing the negative impacts of militarism and imperialism. As a new mother she is continually enlightened and joyed by the little hands that grab her fingers and the little face the gives her kisses. And, it is because of this miracle that her dedication to the movement is further deepened.

Evelyn García

bio coming soon

Erica Guajardo Johnson

Growing up in Detroit, Michigan with a civil litigator for a father, Erica Guajardo Johnson learned early about her passion to help others. Although she has always been interested in social justice, it wasn't until she went to Mexico to visit her mother's side of the family that she became politicized. She came back with a greater connection to her Mexican heritage and a more thorough understanding of gross inequity.

At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor she studied Environmental Studies with a concentration in Environmental Justice and had the opportunity to work under Dorceta Taylor and Bunyan Bryant, two prominent Environmental Justice academics and activists. Through the Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative, Erica organized an Environmental Justice symposium which brought together representatives from international NGOs and local grass roots organizations to share information and build community. To illustrate the disparity in living conditions of her own home state, Erica organized an environmental tour of southern Michigan including: Detroit, Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Ypsilanti.

Erica wholeheartedly embraced grassroots organizing when she worked as an intern for the American Friends Service Committee in their Prisoner Advocacy office. Wanting to learn more about community organizing, healing, empowerment and diversity, she decided to move to the bay area for further work and academic experience. Erica is excited and honored to have joined SFWAR's staff and looks forward to building community relationships!

Amal Kouttab

is a registered drama therapist, teacher, mediator, and filmmaker. She has used drama, art and writing to facilitate therapeutic groups in mental health settings, nursing homes, hospitals and drug rehabilitation centers in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area. She obtained a bachelor's degree in the performing arts and women's studies from the University of Virginia in 1997, and a master's degree in psychology and drama therapy from New York University in 2001. For the past four years, she has facilitated therapeutic workshops with Palestinians and Israelis and other groups in conflict in the Middle East and the Bay Area. She has taught graduate psychology classes entitled Drama Therapy for Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she developed part of the curriculum focused on internalized oppression. She co-founded the Araceli Theater Project based at San Francisco General Hospital, which rehearses and performs original educational theater pieces for people with cancer. She is honored and excited to join the dedicated team at SFWAR as the Director of Community Initiatives.

Teresa Martyny

joins the staff of San Francisco Women Against Rape as the Director of Volunteers after being a volunteer for 4 years. Initially she volunteered doing outreach and fundraising, then transitioned into medical advocacy which she still does today. She has been active in movements to end state and interpersonal violence through organizations such as the Riley Center, Free Battered Women, Challenging White Supremacy workshop, And Castro for All, and POWER. As a part of this work she organizes, through workshops and discussion groups, white social justice activists to challenge white privilege and white supremacy. She believes that as a queer woman it is important for her to focus particularly on challenging racism within queer communities. In a previous life she was a big tech geek, so now she builds websites for social/racial justice agencies pro-bono when she has free time. Since self care is such an important part of this work, when she's not organizing, she's learning how to play her dobro, riding her motorcycle, or romping around with her dog.

Lisa Thomas-Adeyemo

In 2001, Lisa began her journey with anti-violence work in Santa Fe, NM as a staff advocate and program director for her local rape crisis center. She worked with middle and high school youth to challenge stereotypes and behaviors that lead to all forms of violence and oppression. She organized forums to break silence and address sexual violence within Native American Pueblos in northern New Mexico and provided opportunities for both youth and adults to develop an experiential based understanding of systems of oppression, and the abuse of power and privilege that leads to violence. She later organized and facilitated groups for bi-racial young women of African descent dedicated to exploring positive body image, self-esteem, and building spiritual awareness of self.

For four meaningful years, Lisa participated in the organizing core of the People of Color Institute for Creating Change, an annual conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). The conference has a 28+ year history as the largest gathering of queer people of color in the country.

Lisa actively integrates her activism with music and healing work. She has organized women's singing and healing circles, and has contributed her vocal gifts to a wide range of artistic spaces including, the Vagina Monologues, Sins Invalid and Artist Against Rape.

As a New African healer, activist, educator, facilitator, vocalist, and Mother, she brings her enthusiasm, experience, and joy for healing to SFWAR as the Director of Counseling.

Alma Muñoz

Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, Alma attended Fine Arts School and graduated as a Photographer. She has performed a diverse range of jobs throughout her life, from art photography to farm work, from construction to Audio Visual Tech, janitorial work to management work. She has been Bookings Coordinator for The Women's Building for the last 8 years! She grew up in a household supported by women, giving her firsthand experience with the struggle it takes to survive as a woman in an oppressive social setting. She has also been able to witness the empowerment that self-sufficiency and mutual care does to one family and could do in a whole community. As the latest addition to the SFWAR team, she is honored to join as the new Development Director hoping to build further the grassroots support to strengthen our effort to fulfill our mission and as a community end sexual violence.

Janelle L. White

returns to the staff of San Francisco Women Against Rape as the incoming Executive Director. She has been active in the movement to end violence against women for over ten years working with the University of Michigan Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, the YWCA Rape Crisis Program of Greater New Orleans, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the Hate Crimes Project of the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of New Orleans, and as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Orleans (UNO) and Director of the UNO Women's Center. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan. Her doctoral work examines US based Black women's mobilization to confront sexual and domestic violence. She is excited to once again be connected to community based organizing efforts to challenge violence against women.