Date: Friday, October 23, 2026, 4:00 - 5:30 PM ET
Location: Online via Zoom and
In-Person at Phillips Brooks House, Harvard Yard
Annual Student/Alumni Roundtable
Domestic Violence: A Public Policy Crisis
Domestic violence has far-reaching physical and psychological effects, with consequences for survivors, families, communities, and health systems. Join GlobalWE for a hybrid roundtable exploring its clinical and societal impact, and why it calls for a public policy response.
Come and hear a discussion with four brilliant speakers on why gender-based violence against women should be understood as a public and structural issue, even though it is so often minimized as something private or interpersonal.
We hope to examine how individual experiences of violence are shaped by broader cultural narratives and inequalities of power, and we will explore the consequences of domestic violence on health policy and health systems.
Meet our Speakers….
Dr. Eve Valera
Dr. Valera is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and a Research Scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has been working since obtaining her doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
As a pioneer in the field, Dr. Valera’s research is groundbreaking, with her studies being among the first to look at the prevalence of brain injury and its association with cognitive and psychiatric difficulties in women who had experienced intimate partner violence. She was also the first to use neuroimaging to investigate the effects of partner inflicted brain injury on neural connectivity and cognitive function in these women. She was awarded the prestigious Robert D. Voogt Founders Award from the North American Brain Injury Society as well as the inaugural Women Making History Award from Safe Living Spaces, and her work has been featured in many news outlets including The New York Times Magazine and Forbes.
In addition to her many publications and speaking engagements to the academic world nationally and internationally, Dr. Valera has translated her research on the effects of these often-overlooked brain injuries into education and training for police officers, judges, ER clinicians, domestic violence advocates, and others who work with women in the aftermath of violence.
Dr. Denise Ziya Berte
Dr. Berte is a licensed clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the State of Palestine for over 35 years, with a specialty in trauma, torture, oppression, war, interpersonal violence, and indigenous populations.
Dr. Berte has written over 20 published professional articles, five book chapters, and presented on over 700 occasions domestically and internationally related to her topics of specialty, including violence, trauma, multicultural practice, and human rights.
She has previously served as the Director of Children and Adolescent Services for Community Behavioral Health in Philadelphia, the Executive Director of the Liberty Center for Survivors of Torture, the Vice President of the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington, the clinical Director of the An Najah Child Institute, and as a professor in the medical Faculty at the An Najah National University of Palestine.
Dr. Berte is currently the Executive Director of Peaceful Families Project, which is a 23-year-old national project addressing Family Based Violence in Muslim communities in the US. PFP conducts trainings, research, develops resources and curricula, and serves as a strategic representative of Muslim voices in the U.S. Dr. Berte manages programs funded by the US Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women.
Dr. Caroline Light
Caroline Light is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in WGS. Her research explores histories of citizenship and belonging in the United States, including how Jewish immigrants created a web of benevolent organizations in the South. Light's first book, That Pride of Race and Character: the Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014), tells the stories of Jewish orphans raised in institutions that lifted them from poverty to prosperity. Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (Beacon Press, 2017) tracks the evolution of our nation’s ideals of armed citizenship, from the centuries-old “castle doctrine” to the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have removed the duty to retreat in a majority of the states. A ten-year anniversary edition of Stand Your Ground - with a Preface by historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - was released in February 2026.
Ruth Zakarin, CEO
Ruth Zakarin spent over 25 years working with youth and adults impacted by domestic and sexual violence before becoming the inaugural Executive Director, and now CEO, of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence in May of 2019. With over 120 member organizations, the Coalition works to address gun violence in all its forms through advocacy, public awareness, coalition building, and community organizing.
Ruth has her MSW from the University of Pennsylvania and is also trained as a community organizer. She is particularly interested in creating models of trauma-informed advocacy and policymaking. Outside of her Coalition work, Ruth is very involved in local interfaith organizing, is an avid knitter and foodie, and is the proud mom of two incredible young adults.