Board of Directors and Staff

In 2009, SAFER reorganized as a volunteer collective. Our Board of Directors is responsible for all aspects of organizational operations and programming, while also working full time or attending school. We value diversity, and strive to maintain a Board that represents the wide range of student experiences in order to better serve our college audience. For information on how to join SAFER's Board, please contact us. 

Who We Are

Christine Borges, M.P.H., has been active in the anti-violence movement since 2001. Her work has focused on promoting sexual health and violence prevention through direct service, education and advocacy. She currently works at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as the HIV Coordinator and has served as the Policy and Research Coordinator for SAFER since May 2009. Christine received her M.P.H. with a concentration in Community Health Education from the CUNY School of Public Health and received her BA Boston University.

Erin Burrows, M.A. completed her Masters of Arts in Women's History at Sarah Lawrence College in 2009.  She was a leader in the successful campaign to rewrite the Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Policy and improve sexual assault services on campus.  Erin was awarded the Senior Appreciation Award in recognition of her undergraduate leadership in 2008.  She has been working for SAFER since August, 2008 developing resources for student activists and their movements.  She is currently the Campus Accountability Project Coordinator at SAFER.  

Emily Greytak, Ph.D is the Evaluations Coordinator on SAFER's Board. She is currently Senior Research Associate at GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network). She has also worked as a research and evaluation consultant to a variety of non-profit and education organizations, including the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and Campus Outreach Services. She first became involved in the anti-sexual violence movement while in college where she coordinated the sexual assault education program and helped to rewrite the campus policy. She later worked at a rape crisis center and then served as the advisor of Students Against Acquaintance Rape (STAAR) at the University of Pennsylvania. Emily received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Pennsylvania. She has presented at numerous conferences, such as the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the American Evaluation Association, and her research has been published in a variety of publications, including the Journal of Youth and Adolescence and the Prevention Researcher.

Renée Heininger currently works as the Administrative Assistant in the Department of English at the University of Rochester. She graduated from New York University with her B.S. in Media, Culture and Communication in January 2010 where she spent her senior year writing an honors thesis on the intersections of street harassment and new media. While she misses NYC, Renée is back in her hometown of Rochester, NY, where she will be heading back to school in the spring. Renée began working with SAFER as an intern in June 2009 and joined the Board in October 2009, where she currently serves as the Activist Resource Center (ARC) Coordinator.

Jenise Jenkins, M.A., invested in the fight to end violence against women, joined SAFER's Board in October, 2009.  In 2008 Jenise received her MA in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She dedicated her studies to researching the effects of intimate partner violence on college students. Jenise completed an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Fisk University. While a student at Fisk University, she helped to organize and lead the Clothesline Project in collaboration with Vanderbilt University's Women's Center.  The Project successfully united college communities in Nashville to raise awareness of violence against women, in an effort to give a voice to survivors, victims, and victims loved ones. Currently, Jenise works as an advocate for victims of domestic violence at the NYC Family Justice Center in Brooklyn.

Sarah Martino (Chair) began volunteering for SAFER in June 2008 and officially joined the Board in May 2009. Sarah received her B.A. in Literature and Creative Writing in 2007 from Bard College, where she was also involved with student journalism and a literary magazine for incarcerated students. She is currently pursuing a masters in public administration at the New York University Wagner School of Public Service. Prior to returning to school, Sarah worked for three years in communications at the William T. Grant Foundation. She has written extensively about issues regarding campus sexual violence for SAFER's blog, and her work for SAFER has also been published on RH Reality Check, Jezebel, and Feministing.

Megan McKendry is currently pursuing her Master of Public Health in Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. Prior to graduate school, she wore many hats as a Resource and Outreach Coordinator at a college sexual assault counseling center in Chicagoland called Porchlight Counseling Services. As an undergraduate student, Megan advocated for the holistic needs of domestic violence survivors, sang the praises of contraception and consensual sex to many a college audience, and rode her vintage Schwinn Le Tour from New Orleans to Charleston in the name of reproductive justice. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Deesha Narichania, LMSW, has engaged in a diverse range of anti-violence efforts for over ten years. As the Partnerships Coordinator of SAFER's Board of Directors, she seeks to cultivate collaboration around specific actions, and also to facilitate sustaining relationships with individuals, organizations, and movements. At her day job as Coordinator of a hospital-based rape crisis program in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Deesha provides program planning and coordination, direct service, and education. In this position, Deesha also provides leadership in Envision-Williamsburg, a community mobilization project to prevent sexual violence in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Anti-sexual and intimate partner violence work at once empowers and challenges Deesha to creatively express her radical feminist politics. A saying that grounds her in the inter-sectionality of social justice work: When one of us is oppressed, none of us are free. In addition, Deesha is a dedicated student of kathak, a classical North Indian dance form.

Erica Rotman began interning for SAFER in Fall of 2010. She is currently working on her Masters of Public Health at NYU with a focus on Community Health. Erica is from Montreal where she did her B.Sc. in neuroscience at McGill University. During her undergrad, Erica was involved in organizing the campus sexual assault center and providing support to survivors of sexual assault via an anonymous helpline. She has also worked at a youth organization, Head & Hands, in Montreal fundraising for comprehensive sex-education. 

Selena Shen joined SAFER's Board in January 2011 as co-communications coordinator. In her role, she is responsible for media relations, student outreach and campaign visibility. Selena first became interested in gender issues and sexual violence during her studies at New York University, where she graduated in 2010 with a Bachelors of Science in Media, Culture and Communication. Selena is an active member of the New York Women in Communications, Inc, and was a 2007 recipient of the NYWICI foundation scholarship and Interpublic Group internship award. She is currently an Associate at Greentarget Global Group, where she coordinates day to day media relations strategies and corporate positioning.

Davinia Troughton joined SAFER's Board in 2009 and is the Board Development Coordinator. She is Director of Development at ASTEP, an arts education and empowerment nonprofit supporting underserved youth, where she coordinates fundraising, board development, and communications. She came to ASTEP from the NoVo Foundation, where she worked as the Manager of Grants and Research and in the Women and Girls Initiative, focusing on funding efforts to end violence against girls and women around the world. Davinia is also a New York State certified sexual and domestic violence crisis counselor at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City and volunteers regularly at Sanctuary for Families in the Children's Program. She is dedicated to social justice and supporting the voices of women and children.

Dan Wald works at a government healthcare consulting firm. During his time in college, Dan started a proactive student organization to end rape and rape culture. Dan also was a co-founder of the sexual assault workgroup which spearheaded many judicial policy changes that passed and made his campus a more survivor friendly campus.