About RHJ

Hi, I’m Kate (she/they) and I’ve primarily worked under the broad, red umbrella of sex worker rights. This has been rooted in both community organizing and peer-developed programming, and in direct service providers supporting sex workers, and people experiencing trafficking and exploitation in other industries. I’ve been a community organizer with the Sex Workers Outreach Project and Sex Workers Action New York, as well as navigated systems for survivors of violence with Give Way to Freedom. This has given me a unique perspective on service provision for people who trade sex, and a deep understanding of many of the barriers faced when trying to access support - both institutional and interpersonal. Through this work, I’ve also been able to focus on coalitional advocacy, changing and addressing laws and policies on the city, state and national level, and was the National Policy Advocate at the Sex Workers Project. In the last few years, I’ve been working on the federal level and was lucky enough to be a co-founder of Survivors Against SESTA, which culminated planning the country’s first sex worker advocacy day on the Hill, bringing sex workers from around the country to meet with representatives and talk about their experiences. I also have degrees from California Polytechnic State University and The New School.
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My speciality area at Reframe is working on policy and advocacy - and especially sharing what I’ve learned with more folks on the ground. It can be really challenging to sit in a room as the person without a law degree, but the closest knowledge of the topic at hand. I’m most excited when I’m helping people re-contextualize the skills they’ve developed and teaching how to figure out the rest of it to move forward a new campaign or fight a proposed law.

Hello! I’m Sasanka (they/them) and I’m based in Durham, NC. For the past seven years, I have focused on creating organizational cultures that are more generous with their resources, more accountable to their communities, and more practiced in challenging injustice. I am committed to developing anti-carceral solutions to address conflict and violence. Some of my consulting projects have included: developing racial equity curricula for health departments, coaching nonprofit staff on accountability, building capacity for nonprofits on addressing trauma, and facilitating inter-movement conversations on harm reduction, racial equity, and (de/anti)criminalization. I have been primarily trained in harm reduction, public health, and studies of racialized gender and sexuality. I received my Masters in Public Health, focused on Addiction and Overdose as well as Health Finance and Management, from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

At Reframe, I tend to lead projects that focus heavily on curriculum development, resource creation, and/or organizational strategy. I also facilitate conversations related to strategic decision-making and support people in working through values-based conflicts. As an experienced trainer, I love partnering with harm reductionists to make their training and toolkits more effective for the communities they hope to serve. 

Jessica Peñaranda (she/her) is an anti-violence and harm reduction educator, participatory researcher, strategist, and healer with over 17 years of experience. She specializes in direct services, anti-oppression training, curriculum development, and strategic leadership within communities impacted by systemic and interpersonal violence. As a mind-body somatic coach, Jessica supports frontline and management-level direct service teams assisting survivors of violence and criminalized communities. Through her consulting work, she facilitates workshops and learning cohorts using an anti-oppressive, healing-centered approach—emphasizing curiosity, self-determination, and non-judgment to help providers strengthen their practice with sustainability and care.

Previously, Jessica served as Assistant Director of Intervention at Common Justice, providing restorative justice-centered support within an alternative-to-incarceration mode for young people. She also served as Director of Movement Building and Counselor/Advocate at the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, leading policy advocacy and community engagement efforts. A co-founder of Decrim NY, she has been fighting for sex worker rights and advocating for decriminalization and destigmatization efforts for people in the sex trades. As a participatory action researcher, she has worked with Yale’s Global Health and Justice Partnership to advance the rights of sex workers on various community led projects including  police accountability for sex workers. Rooted in healing justice, transformative justice, and cultural humility, Jessica prioritizes mutual aid and collective leadership in all aspects of her work.

At Reframe, she enjoys leading projects focused on building organizational capacity, developing anti-oppression and healing centered curricula, and strengthening workplace care models and  sustainability. She loves to co-create and coach organizations to focus on community care strategies by integrating conflict transformation as a restorative harm practice, helping teams navigate interpersonal and structural challenges. Through facilitation, training, and coaching, she supports organizations in fostering accountable and values-aligned cultures. Jessica holds an M.A. in Human Rights from NYU and a B.A. in Women’s Studies from The College of New Jersey.

Hola, I’m Justice (she/they, ella/elle). I’ve been working at the intersection of social justice and public health since 2010 when I became a peer outreach worker and community organizer with Prax(us). There, I formed my anti-oppression and harm reduction orientations working with street-based youth in their teens and twenties vulnerable to/ or experiencing exploitation. I joined the Sex Worker Outreach Project’s Denver chapter and advanced to Co-Director. In 2014, I transitioned to working at Denver’s largest syringe access program, the Harm Reduction Action Center, and received my BA in Self Determination and Social Change from the Metropolitan University of Denver. One year later, I moved to Washington DC to become NASTAD’s inaugural Drug User Health staff where I helped advance federal drug policy reform and HIV/HCV appropriations. I also fell in love with training nonprofits and service providers. I began consulting on decarceration initiatives in 2016, then co-founded Reframe Health and Justice in 2018 to continue supporting organizations reaching towards racial equity, compassionate care, and comprehensive systems. Body Autonomy: Decolonizing Sex Work and Drug Use, the anthology that I co-authored, highlights the work I love doing with Reframe Health and Justice from designing programs rooted in healing-centered harm reduction to providing education on sex worker-centered harm reduction.

In my role with RHJ, I like to lead projects focusing on capacity building assistance, training, facilitation, community-based research, and program development. I love multi-faceted projects where I can work with the community and help make a community-wide impact. I love public speaking and communications ranging from messaging to resource development. In the past few years, I’ve trained hundreds of clinicians, service providers, students, and lawyers on sex worker health and rights, amongst other topics (see our training topics under the Client Services tab). Some of my other consulting projects have included: analyzing anti-trafficking policies and programming, researching the syringe access funding landscape, supporting racial equity within reproductive care, serving as an expert witness in drug and trafficking trials, and facilitating a leadership development and networking cohort of BIPOC harm reductionists.