Sandra (she/her/ella) joins the Community Response Team from Southern California, bringing to the Cornell community deep commitments to care approaches that are trauma and resiliency-informed, intersectional, culturally humble, equity and justice-minded, body-inclusive, and compassionate. Sandra has had the privilege of partnering with a number of communities in international and domestic human services contexts and in higher education contexts, learning along the way that vulnerability is a gift and superpower that should be received and engaged with respect and tender regard. In her experience, vulnerability cannot be demanded from communities. It flows from steady care and invited presence that is willing to evolve with community needs and concerns and pace with communities’ trust and connection to their partners, resources, and providers.
 
Prior to Cornell, Sandra worked in national and local crisis response with three organizations committed to person-centered advocacy, support, and counseling for those impacted by sexual assault, rape, gender-based violence, bias, and for those in the LGBTTQQIAP+ community seeking care and support for life realities, identity exploration and affirmation, and suicide prevention and care engagement response. Over the last year, Sandra consulted with University of California San Francisco, University of California Los Angeles, and the California Department of Public Health offering trauma informed and grief support programming to COVID-19 first responders, health care providers, and other pandemic response specialists.
 
Sandra is a certified victim support advocate with the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), a certified provider of Mental Health First Aid with the National Council for Behavioral Health, a registered (RYT-500) Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga Facilitator (TCTSY-F, The Justice Resource Institute), and a certified teacher in the Trauma Resource Institute’s Community Resiliency Model©. She has trained in sexual assault and intimate partner violence support, counseling, and advocacy in multiple states in the U.S. and has held space for people of all identities, across the lifespan, who have been impacted by these experiences. In her partnering with people impacted by experiences of harm, Sandra offers support that meets people where they are, acknowledging and validating their experiences, perspectives, and sources of meaning-making. She is kink and sex worker affirming, in her partnering with people who have survived harm and committed to holding herself accountable for her impacts on others.
 
Sandra identifies as a survivor of ancestral and relational trauma. She comes to care work having experienced the healing power of being consensually and gently companioned in her recovery and seeks to offer all people the space to draw in the people and resources that will support them in that moment of hardship or season of ongoing harm in life. Sandra brings to Cornell paths and practices where joy and pain can coexist, where bodies are deserving of kindness for all that they do and hold, where shame can be met with compassionate curiosity, and where our approaches to caring for others flourish when we center voices that historically have been pushed to the margins. She is the proud dog mom of one Tallulah Belle “Tally,” a fiery little dog who has shared life with her for eleven years and in five states.