The Wendy Wood Kjelvik Women Making History Award

Every March, in honor of Women’s History Month, Safe Living Space honors two women who have made incredible strides in brain injury research, advocacy, and education.

2026 Awardees

Amanda Farías is a Bronx-born, second-generation Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent serving as New York City Council Member for District 18. In 2024, she made history as the first Latina Majority Leader of the New York City Council as part of the Council’s first women-majority body. Farías proudly led the legislative push to advance and pass Intro 29, now Local Law 160, ensuring first responders are trained to assess traumatic brain injury in cases of domestic and intimate partner violence—closing a critical gap in survivor care. Recently appointed Chair of the Committee on Women and Gender Equity, she will continue championing policies that protect vulnerable communities and strengthen responses to gender-based violence while advancing opportunity and equity for working families across New York City.

Dr. Ann McKee, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Boston University, is a neurologist and neuropathologist and the leading authority on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). She is the Director of the Boston University CTE Center, the Director of the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and the Chief of Neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System. Dr. McKee defined the key neuropathological criteria for diagnosing and staging CTE. She and her team established that repetitive head impacts—concussive and sub-concussive—across contact sports, military service, and domestic violence can lead to CTE. Dr. McKee's work elevated CTE to a global public health concern.

2025 Awardees

Associate Professor, Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare,
Dr. Monahan is a premier educator and PhD professor of social work at the Stony Brook School of Social Welfare in New York. In addition to being an Associate Professor, she also founded the Family Violence Education and Research Center, whose mission is to provide multidisciplinary training and research in the field of family violence, at Stony Brook in 1998, and served as the Director until 2009. Dr. Monahan has been in private practice since 1984 and specializes in women’s health, specifically childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and intimate partner violence (IPV). She has written over 30 publications on these topics with her current research focusing on neurological outcomes for women who have experienced IPV and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Most recently, she was awarded the Long Island Network for Clinical and Translational Science (LINCATS) grant in 2024 for her work using PET/MRI modalities to better understand the sequelae of IPV-related TBI in women, investigating a potential link between metabolism and cognitive impairment after injury. Dr. Monahan also lectures nationally and internationally and provides therapy and clinical supervision and consultation services to domestic violence shelters in Long Island. We are in awe of her accomplishments and contributions to the intersectional fields of domestic violence, traumatic brain injury, and mental health, and we are honored to present her as a 4th-annual SLS Women Making History award recipient for 2025.

Director of the Brain Injury Research Center (BIRC) at Mount Sinai Medical Center
Dr. Kristen Dams-O’Connor is the Director of the Brain Injury Research Center (BIRC) at Mount Sinai and holds the Jack Nash Professorship and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance, as well as a Professorship in Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She earned her BA in Neuroscience from Colgate University, followed by a PhD from the University at Albany, and completed predoctoral training at NYU’s Rusk Institute. Her postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology and brain injury research led to her joining Mount Sinai’s faculty in 2011. Her multidisciplinary research program aims to improve long-term outcomes for individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and repetitive head impacts from various causes, including sports, military service, and intimate partner violence. She leads several large-scale, federally funded multicenter studies investigating the chronic health sequelae of TBI. Notably, the NIH-funded Late Effects of TBI (LETBI) project is a longitudinal prospective TBI brain donor program that seeks to characterize the clinical phenotype and postmortem pathological signatures of post-traumatic neurodegeneration to facilitate in-vivo diagnostics. Additionally, the ‘Leveraging Existing Aging Research Networks to understand associations of TBI and Alzheimer’s Disease (LEARN TBI-AD)’ project aims to harmonize data across five of the largest longitudinal studies of cognitive aging in the United States to investigate associations of TBI with Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias. Throughout her career, she has authored over 200 scientific publications and received numerous awards for her research, mentorship, and advocacy in brain injury. We deeply admire Dr. Dams-O’Connor’s achievements and contributions to understanding the long term outcomes of TBI and it is our privilege to recognize her as a recipient of the 4th Annual SLS Women Making History Award for 2025.

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2024 Awardee

Wendy Wood Kjelvik was a driving force for Safe Living Space and worked hard to bring changes in the diagnosis, treatment, and care of individuals with recognized and unrecognized brain injury caused by domestic and intimate partner violence. A beloved team member since our organization’s inception in 2021, Wendy contributed to a variety of projects, such as authoring grant applications, planning the annual Safe Living Space 5K - Your Way, and even crafting our organization’s mission statement.
Wendy also co-led the Mental Health Psychosocial Initiative, helping to create research and guidelines for mental health providers assisting clients with histories of abuse-induced brain injury. As a former OR nurse, Wendy always approached her work through a patient-centered lens, offering insights and new perspectives on this heavily stigmatized issue. Wendy was an inspiration, advocate, gifted writer, loving mentor, important voice guiding our organization and efforts, and a dear friend to us all. The SLS Women Making History Award was renamed in Wendy’s honor as a tribute to her lasting contributions to Safe Living Space and to the fields of domestic violence and brain injury research and education.

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2023 Awardees

Research Scientist, Carrie Esopenko, PhD, has produced some of the most important work in this field in addition to coordinating research internationally through ENIGMA.
Dr. Carrie Esopenko is a prominent researcher and educator in the field of IPV-related brain injury. As the principal investigator of an R01-funded study for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Dr. Esopenko investigates the sub-acute and chronic effects of repetitive head impacts on the psychological, cognitive, and neural health of women with IPV related head trauma, military sexual trauma, and blast-related injury. She is also developing sex specific prevention and assessment strategies for sports-related head injury. She represents Rutgers University as the Co-Principal Investigator of the Ivy League/Big Ten Epidemiology of Concussion Study and the Big Ten Cardiac Registry. In addition to her research, Dr. Esopenko is the Lead Investigator of the ENIGMA Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Working Group, a global collaborative effort to explore the effects of IPV-related brain injury, and the ENIGMA Sports Related Brian Injury, Military, and TBI Working Group. She pays this knowledge forward to future doctors and researchers as an Associate Professor of Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City.

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Licensed Social Worker, Rachel Ramirez, is recognized for innovative education initiatives and clinical research collaborations to support concussion awareness for all advocates and survivors if DV/IPV.
Rachel Ramirez, LISW-S, RA, is the Founder and Director of the Center on Partner-Inflicted Brain Injury within the Ohio Domestic Violence Network (ODVN). The Center provides statewide, national, and international leadership expertise to increase system-level collaboration and raise awareness for the unaddressed public health crisis of brain injury caused by violence. Under Rachel’s leadership, the Center has developed numerous resources, virtual trainings, and an in- person training and technical assistance series that has helped DV professionals in over 25 states, 4 countries, and at multiple national and international conferences. In her 14 years at ODVN, Rachel has also spearheaded initiatives on mental health and substance abuse and helped DV programs implement trauma-informed approaches in their work. She co-authored the ODVN’s publication “Trauma-Informed Approaches: Promising Practices and Protocols for Ohio’s Domestic Violence Programs” in 2010, with revisions published in 2019, as well as multiple journal articles on the experience of brain injury among survivors and the perceptions of this experience among DV service providers. As a bilingual licensed independent social worker and a registered advocate in Ohio, Rachel has been able to provide comprehensive services at the individual and organizational levels throughout her career.

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2022 Awardees

Katherine is an internationally recognized Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has spearheaded a social revolution for equity in concussion diagnosis, treatment, and support for women. In 2013, after having her own experiences with concussion and identifying the disparity in concussion care between women and men, Katherine founded Pink Concussions, the first ever non-profit organization dedicated to “improv[ing] research, medical care, and community support for females with brain injury.” As the Executive Director and Founder of PINK Concussions, Katherine has produced more than 40 episodes of Casual Conversations, a live video series featuring interviews with brain injury experts across various fields. She also moderates online forums that support more than 8,000 members of PINK Concussions and has given over 45 presentations - both nationally and internationally - on brain injury in women and children. In 2016, Katherine organized two of the first international summits on female concussion, helping to train over 4,000 medical professionals and researchers. She is also responsible for founding and leading the first International TBI and Domestic Violence Task Force. Katherine’s work has been recognized by media companies such as Forbes and U.S. News, a true testament to the worldwide impact she has had.

Katherine is a visionary leader and effective advocate for women and girls around the world, and we are thrilled to recognize her innovative work.

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Known for her groundbreaking research, Dr. Eve Valera, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Research Scientist at MGH, published one of the first studies to investigate the prevalence and effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women who had experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). In this seminal study, she and her team found that more than 70% of battered women had sustained a partner-related brain injury, with approximately 50% reporting multiple brain injuries. Over the course of 20 years, Dr. Valera has authored more than 50 publications including as an editor of the first-ever issue of The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation devoted entirely to IPV and brain injury in January 2022. Recently featured in NY Times Magazine, her work has been a guiding force of our work at SafeLivingSpace.org to promote concussion screening for people who have experienced domestic, intimate partner and family violence.