The Interdisciplinary Team:
Jennifer Eyl, Indra Lusero, and Seth O’Donovan
Jennifer Eyl, Esq. is an attorney, licensed professional counselor, and fierce victim advocate who believes that the first step in achieving justice is ensuring access to justice.
Her work in social change, social justice, and the rights of victims of crime has spanned more than fifteen years. Jennifer has a bachelors degree in journalism and mass communication, a masters degree in counseling psychology and a law degree from the University of Denver, which inform her efforts to change public policy and public opinion, advocate for victims of sexual and domestic violence, and create a better world for those who are often overlooked, both inside and outside of governmental systems.
Jennifer began her career working at a shelter for homeless families where she was first exposed to the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual violence. From there, she worked as a victim advocate with the Denver Police Department and became aware of the way the criminal justice system impacts victims’ experiences, especially those who are also members of marginalized communities.
Jennifer left the Denver Police Department to join WINGS Foundation, a nonprofit organization serving adults who were sexually abused as children. While at WINGS, Jennifer developed a growing interest in the intersections of violence and oppression and the failure of both community and government based programs to address these issues.
Jennifer is actively involved in her community and serves as the Chair of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault Public Policy Committee, Co-Chair of the Colorado Bar Association Domestic Violence and Legal Issues Committee, Member of the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence Public Policy Committee and Domestic Violence and Child Custody Task Force, Member of the Victim Rights Act Task Force, and Member of the Denver Domestic Violence Coordinating Council.
Indra Lusero, Esq. is an attorney, ethno-hybrid, creative community builder, queer parenting, super-dork reading, erotic power wielding, idea generator.
Indra has been known to speak passionately about childbirth as a social justice issue, make art, practice karate, dismantle racism, get excited about administrative law, eat ice cream, love, talk to god, and interface with bureaucracies – all in one day. Indra is deeply connected to the Rocky Mountains and the high desert plains stretching from Wyoming to New Mexico, and is committed to seeing the people of Colorado thrive.
Indra has been a teacher of elementary and middle school students, a performance artist, a doula, a wall-paper hanger, and is a licensed attorney in Colorado. Indra is currently the Director of Operations for the Palm Center, a think tank that studies critical and controversial issues of the day, most recently gays in the military. Indra’s interdisciplinary work is published in The Journal of Democracy and Education, Educational Insights, and Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology among others.
Indra is a social midwife. This is a term coined by Civil Rights leader and longtime Denver activist Vincent Harding to describe people who help give birth to a new way. This term captures the way Indra works, whether it is as a volunteer helping to give birth to a new organization, or as a doula supporting a family through labor: Indra listens deeply and assumes that the organism in question (the piece of writing, the performance, the audience, the author, the pregnant woman, the family, the team) knows what it needs. In general, Indra’s main role is to believe, tell uplifting stories and breathtaking truths, and hold space for what’s to come.
seth siobhan o’donovan is a community organizer, facilitator, bee keeper, herbalist, and cellist.
seth is constantly in the process of figuring out what it means to live in the intersections, de-compartmentalize self, and confess in deeper ways in this world. seth’s work in the community focuses on what it means to create new ways of being while honoring the wisdom of our history & stories.
Some favorite activities include: facilitation about privilege, oppression, & liberation; super nerdy organizational structure & culture work; developing community organizing power, skills, and analysis; artistic subversive activity; watching chickens scratch around in the backyard; theatre of the oppressed; creating tasty teas & elixers from what the ground has provided; connecting back to land as a way to dismantle dominant ideology and transform herself and the world.
In Germany as a child, seth learned that disconnection from history and story are not an option and that we carry our generational stories in our streets, our bodies, and our names. Ze also learned that no amount of land mines, barbed wire, or cement walls can withstand a community’s desire.
In Philadelphia Ze learned that the lessons absorbed while sitting with death and dying transcend all safe ideological construction, all well-socialized identities, and all fear of who we are in our moments of vulnerability.
In Denver Ze learned that sustainable movement is built on long-term, accountable, intimate relationship and that disrupting dominant culture is essential to reclaiming all of our humanity. Ze also learned that our ways of knowing are limitless and dismissing the voices of our land and our bodies has great consequence, while connecting with them inspires desire for a new way of being.
In Kosovo, Washington, Maryland, Florida, South Dakota, rural Colorado, and West Virginia, seth learned that communities know best what they need and that we all long for new ways of being.
We believe that an interdisciplinary approach is best suited to address these kinds of problems, no one tool or skill is adequate.