Cristina Damiani, M.A.

(She/Her/Ella)—Cristina has over two decades of experience working for nonprofits and government agencies, playing an active role in efforts to end domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of interpersonal violence and abuse. 

Cristina joined the Alliance of Local Service Organizations (ALSO) in 2015 and has held various roles since then. Currently, as its Director of Safe Homes, she oversees the day-to-day work of this unit and provides strategic direction for program development and management. 

The Underserved Technical Assistance Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, is central to the Safe Homes unit’s work. This project aims to increase the capacity of communities nationwide to better reach and serve survivors from underserved populations. Additionally, Cristina leads ALSO’s Safe Homes program offering wraparound direct services to high-risk individuals experiencing domestic violence and living in historically underserved and marginalized communities disproportionally impacted by street/community violence in Chicago’s Northwest Side. The cross-pollination of Safe Homes’s local and national programming permeates and strengthens its work with survivors and the community-based organizations it supports.   

Before ALSO, Cristina worked at the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center (OCVLC), a nonprofit specializing in victim rights legal and advocacy services. As co-director, Cristina managed OCVLC’s operational budget and administration. In this role, she also provided bilingual advocacy services to crime victims, which included individuals experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

Cristina’s experience includes system-level advocacy in Puerto Rico, where she worked for its Office of Courts Administration. There, she coordinated program development and implementation to enhance system responses to domestic violence in this jurisdiction. Most notably, this work allowed her to play a seminal role in planning, implementing, and expanding Puerto Rico’s first specialized domestic violence court.

Cristina started her professional career at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City. At Vera, Cristina contributed to the work of the Judicial Oversight Demonstration Initiative (JODI) and the Peer-to-Peer Exchange Technical Assistance Projects funded by the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women.

Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Cristina holds a B.A. in Law and Society from the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., and an M.A. in Anthropology from the Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Cristina is proud of her cultural and linguistic roots, which inform how she perceives and is perceived as she walks through life moments. Cristina’s deep commitment to ending all forms of violence and abuse is supported by three core beliefs: all human beings are interrelated, everyone should have equal access to what they need to thrive, and violence and abuse will not end until everyone is free from violence and abuse.