Alicia Oeser
“I love being a queer person in this work,” says Alicia Oeser, UCLA’s Director of Campus Assault Resources & Education (CARE) Program. “When you think about the prevention of gender-based violence, obviously gender has to be talked about. And we cannot have conversations about gender without talking about gender beyond the binary. And we cannot talk about healthy sex and relationships between folks of all genders if we don’t also talk about sexual orientation.” Oeser has been working in gender-based violence prevention for the past 11 years as Volunteer Trainer for the Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline, LGBTQ/Hate Crimes Specialist for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, Coordinator of Sexual Violence Support Services at DePaul University and Director for Harvard University’s Office of Sexual Assault Prevention & Response. Through her work, she hopes to “create systems-level change by helping organizations develop trauma-informed practices and policies.” “My queer identity makes me hopeful and on some days it is what gives me life,” Oeser says. “This work makes sense to me the way linear algebra makes sense to mathematicians. Which is to say, sure it is hard, but I can very clearly see the path to the prevention of gender-based violence and if I can do that, why would I do anything else?”—TB
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