Keynote Speaker: Tania Araya

Tania Araya received her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Maryland at Baltimore in 1995 and has 34 years of service in the field of abuse prevention and treatment with adults and adolescents. Ms. Araya worked with the House of Ruth Maryland from 1990-2010 and held a variety of positions in the Hotline, Shelter, Counseling and Outreach and finally Children’s Department, where she co-founded and managed the Teen Dating Violence Prevention Program. She later managed the Family Violence Response Program at Mercy Medical Center, a hospital-based victim advocacy program serving more than 700 patients each year who experienced sexual assault/abuse, domestic violence and human trafficking. As manager, she was also responsible for providing training, education, and technical assistance to Mercy’s 2,000 healthcare workers on developing screening and treatment protocols for patients presenting with abuse. Ms. Araya has more than twenty years of experience in program development and management as well as curriculum development and training and community education with diverse groups. In 1998, Ms. Araya was qualified as an expert witness with the Baltimore City Circuit Courts and was named Educator of the Year in 2004 by the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence (MNADV) for her groundbreaking work of providing dating violence education to more than 10,000 Baltimore City and County public and private school students. In 2023, she was awarded the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s (NSVRC) Visionary Voice Award for her longstanding work to end sexual violence and promote safe, healthy communities in Maryland. As the Director of Programs at TurnAround, Inc. she is responsible for the oversight, development and management of legal advocacy, case management, and economic empowerment programming for survivors of human trafficking and sexual and intimate partner violence in Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County.