NSVRC Blogs by Virginia Perez-Ortega

Virginia is currently the Program Administrator for the Community Based Crime Prevention Initiative at Office of Bernalillo County District Attorney. She is also an independent consultant, provides training, facilitation and coordination of victim advocacy related projects and events on the topics of domestic and sexual violence prevention. She is a certified SOAR (Stop, Observe, Act and Respond) Trainer with the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center and a consultant for the Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center; her recent work includes a role as Co-Instructor of the National Victim Assistance Academy, Effective Management Series: Outreach and Marketing.

In addition, she is an English-Spanish translator and interpreter. Her translation work includes media campaign IT STARTS WITH US prevention campaign. She is an experienced media campaign coordinator, community event planner and a successful community organizer. She has served as a subject matter expert and spokesperson in the creation of public awareness campaigns targeting Latinos in the United States. She has also co-produced the “Mas Allá de la Adversidad” documentary about a survivor’s life to bring awareness about domestic violence issues at the local community level.

Virginia is a social and human rights activist with over 15 years working to end violence against all women and girls. In her previous role as Violence Prevention Director for a local NGO, she was responsible for the developing and implementing community-based prevention programs and a pioneer in developing a one of its kind prevention programs of men against family violence.

She describes herself as someone personally committed to social justice and to improving the conditions of those affected by inequalities. She is about making a better life for each other through family, culture, caring, discipline, fun, collaboration and action. Her strengths are her own roots in the tradition of people’s movements and democratic processes. She is the proud mother of 2 beautiful children. Virginia was born and raised in Mexico and has lived in New Mexico since the late 90s.

She has served as a Victims’ Rights Advocate at the statewide New Mexico Victims’ Rights Project and as Project Coordinator for the New Mexico Coalition Against Domestic Violence where she coordinated, managed, and implemented all aspects of a community engagement project. She was also instrumental in instating the Limited English Proficiency Accessibility Project, addressing language access issues in the State of New Mexico.