WHAT: “Domestic Violence: How Workplaces Get Hurt and How They Can Help” is an interactive conference for human resources professionals, managers and workplace leaders to discuss intimate partner violence, its cost to workplaces in both human and financial terms, and methods to help employers become part of the solution. Most of the 4 million women who are victims of domestic violence each year go to work every day – and so do their abusers. Rutgers School of Social Work’s Center on Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) and Institute for Families are among the sponsors.
WHO: Morning panelists include Martha Delehanty and Michael Mason, human resources and security executives, respectively, Verizon; and Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, health and wellness executive, Prudential (moderator). Afternoon panelists include Judith Bess, employee assistance executive, JP Morgan Chase & Co.; Dennis Butler, chief human resources officer, Diocese of Paterson; attorneys Uchente Emuleomo and Christine Heer, who also is assistant professor of social work, Seton Hall University; and Judy Postmus, associate professor and director, VAWC (moderator). Kim Wells, Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence, and Jane Shivas, New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women, also will speak or lead breakout sessions.
WHEN: Friday, Oct. 18, 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Registration/breakfast, 8 a.m. Featured panel, “Making our Workplaces Part of the Solution,” 9:35 a.m. Intro to the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence, 10:15 a.m. “Intro to DV101” followed by breakout sessions, 10:30 a.m. Experts panel on multiple forms of abuse, 12:30 p.m. Rutgers’ SCREAM Theater presentation followed by breakout sessions, 1:30 p.m. Survivor speaker (Cynthia Fearon, communications executive, MetLife), 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: Busch Campus Center, 604 Bartholomew Road, Busch Campus, Piscataway
BACKGROUND: VAWC strives to eliminate physical, sexual, and other forms of violence against women and children and the power imbalances that permit them. SCREAM (Students Challenging Realities and Educating Against Myths) Theater is a peer education improvisational theater group at Rutgers that educates audiences on issues of interpersonal violence. It is associated with Rutgers’ Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance.