Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 4 Episode 6: "The Professional Part of Me Is Not Separated from the Personal": An Interview with Nneka MacGregor

Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel Season 4 Episode 6

Survivors who are professionals can live in fear that if they share their experience in the workplace, they will be dismissed and disregarded. In this episode, Ruth and David speak with Nneka MacGregor, founder and executive director of WomenatthecentrE, about the need to transform our systems so that professionals who are survivors can safely share their experience to strengthen the response of systems to gender-based violence. 

Nneka shares her journey as a survivor and a professional, including how attempts by those in the domestic violence field to silence her made her even more committed to speaking out. She outlines how survivor knowledge of systems and service failures is vital to making those systems more effective and responsive. 

Ruth, David, and Nneka discuss how survivors are treated as “other,” reflecting cultural attitudes which see survivors as broken and biased. They dive down into the negative impact on professionals and survivors when organizational cultures operate from a place of demeaning, diminishing, controlling, silencing, and dictating to survivors.  

Nneka also shares concrete strategies from WomenatthecentrE that help in creating a professional, survivor-nurturing, successful, and supportive advocacy organization. Together, David, Ruth, and Nneka explore how professionals and organizations can partner with survivors and the importance of organizational performance markers for supporting survivors inside an agency. 

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