Alena Schaim is the Executive Director and an Instructor. She has worked on issues of gender and violence for a decade, including work with Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families in Santa Fe. As an instructor with IMPACT, she particularly enjoys exploring issues facing boys and men and the relatively new arena of technology and safety. Alena does public speaking on how pop culture and systems of oppression interact with individuals’ personal safety choices, and the interaction between different cultures’ approaches to safety and larger social goals.
Darya Peterson is the Program Coordinator and an Instructor. She was drawn to work with IMPACT because of how deeply practical and immediately life-changing she finds the experiential classes to be. She works extensively with young people and enjoys the preventative nature of that work, as well as helping others change their perspective of interpersonal relationships to include expecting joy, satisfaction, and a better quality of life.
Peter Vance is an Instructor has been working as an independently licensed psychotherapist for over 15 years. Peter has a special interest in trauma rehabilitation, nonviolence and equality. He is excited to be part of an organization that supports the empowerment and healing through active personal development and self-awareness.
Jenny Sanborn is an Instructor and former Program Coordinator. Before becoming an instructor, as a graduate of IMPACT, Jenny used her skills to stop an attempted kidnapping. With the adrenaline management tools IMPACT teaches, Jenny later provided a clear and concise testimony against her assailant who was arrested after kidnapping a teen girl. He was subsequently jailed. Jenny believes that the physical and communication skills she learned from IMPACT keep her safe in her travels and aid her in her work as a translator and intermediary. As a bilingual (Spanish and English) instructor, Jenny hopes to impart these same skills to others.
Ken Mathews is an Instructor and served as a founding board member of the New Mexico IMPACT chapter. Ken was exposed to the serious problem of sexual assault in the Santa Fe community working as a dispatcher for the Santa Fe Police and as an office manager for a local psychiatrist. Ken has participated in various men’s groups and knows that the issue of sexual violence is not limited to only women. He served as a rape crisis and domestic violence victim advocate. IMPACT gives him hope that progress in ending the cycle of violence is being made.
Scott Harrison is an Instructor and has served on IMPACT’s Board of Directors. Scott was first introduced to IMPACT when he attended his wife’s IMPACT graduation in Washington, DC 15 years ago. A large part of Scott’s motivation to become a suited instructor is that his family has been directly affected by domestic violence and IMPACT offers him the opportunity to be a part of ending the cycle of violence. Scott acted professionally in New York, Boston and Washington, DC for 15 years before founding Ironweed Productions, a local theater company in 2004. In 2004, he also directed THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES in Espanola, NM casting 25 women and girls, several of whom were domestic violence survivors. The production helped raise over $13,000 for Peacekeepers, a domestic violence prevention organization serving the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos.
Matthew O’Reilly is an Instructor for IMPACT who taught martial arts and martial arts’ style women’s self-defense for 20 years. While attending a friend’s IMPACT graduation, he was impressed at how effective and quick the IMPACT training was. Because of that graduation, he decided to become an instructor. Matt serves at Santa Fe’s City Land Use Director, has been the Chairman of the Santa Fe Planning Commission, and a member of Santa Fe’s Long-Range Planning Sub-Committee. Matt also spent two years as President of the Board of DirectorsWarehouse 21, a local art-centered youth center.
Adrianne McCurrach has been an Instructor with IMPACT for both the New Mexico and the Los Angeles chapters. Adrianne enjoys working with teens to help them learn to speak up for themselves and prevent regretted situations and violence. She worked for a decade doing production work for commercials and movies and has recently returned to Santa Fe. She is now the mother of new twins!
