Fawn Montanye- Aspire. Believe. Achieve

Fawn Montayne tries to help by dropping other people’s names in the right rooms, in the hopes

that it does for other people what it’s done for her in her personal and professional lives. She

hopes that coming together, much like what Leslie Swedish has done with Moxxi bringing

women together, is one of the contributing variables to why she’s been nominated as a Fearless

Female. When she lived in the Saratoga Springs area during a time she was transitioning

professionally from a more corporate position to a non-profit space, there were a couple of

powerful networks of women starting to pop up and culminate and attract one another.

After working for a short time at Saratoga Economic Opportunity Council, Fawn had the

privilege to be on the pioneering team of the Healing Springs Outreach and Community Center

in Saratoga Springs, NY, the first recovery community and outreach center Saratoga Springs had

seen. The area had a very active community group called Recovery Advocacy that worked

together with the Prevention Council of Saratoga to bring the center forward, and the group

was awarded a grant that was quite substantial covering six counties, allowing three centers to

be opened. Fawn was at the flagship Healing Springs center in Saratoga Springs that went from

zero people and just a handful of help to realizing about 130 volunteers in the first month and

seeing operational hours of nine o’clock in the morning to nine o’clock at night and even

opening for kids to have a fellowship meeting at the midnight hour and it was just a

tremendous community that came together in the first year that she was there.

What prompted Fawn’s transition from corporate to nonprofit would be her own personal

recovery and lived experience at the height of her corporate career when she thought she was

doing her best as a single independent woman who had just invested in herself and had always

been a single mom of two really remarkable kids. Within a year of having gastric bypass surgery,

Fawn became a full-blown alcoholic and really fast it really accelerated before anybody’s eyes

The amount of control that was lost took her to a place where she’s thankful for where she is

today and for every experience that she’s had that’s gotten her here. For Fawn, it’s been a long

road, and it came with losing not just her job, her kids, her house, her dignity, a lot of

professional relationships and contacts, and having to really start at point zero and rebuild in

her mid-30s right back to where it is that she finds herself today. This includes a reunified

family, a beautiful family in recovery, and her work in the nonprofit space helping recovery

community organizations professionally develop and really transition from being charities to

nonprofit organizations that are worth investing in and having in the community.

Most recently Fawn was really pleased to be part of the authoring team for a $515,000 grant to

pioneer a program for peer-to-peer advocacy from the State of Vermont, the largest the entity

she was working for at the time. For Fawn, it was just substantial to be in this space after

managing a federal grant award in the state grant award in a state database transfer and all

these things she was doing in her everyday duties to also have this award approved for this

amount because of the corporate nature of what she saw for the nonprofit community. Fawn

shared that for her “it really took the idea of having a leadership academy for people coming up

in the field of peer-based recovery to have an opportunity to become professionalized and

work with the state and the grants and understanding where core funding comes from and

then how to diversify and sustain in meaningful ways so that they would be an everlasting part

of their community.”

Fawn stepped away from that organization in 2021 and into another organization that she was

a board member of. This move was to take a step further and really deal with the population of

individuals involved with treatment port in Vermont. She felt that it was an underrepresented,

underfunded, underutilized, really useful tool that represented social justice reform, correct

utilization of community-based services but really investing in peer-to-peer recovery for that 18

to 24 months that we know is needed to help people rebuild and actually live their life in a new

way before we expect that they just have it all and in 90 days can just be free to do it on their

own. Treatment court in Vermont is under the judiciary so it’s not available in all regions, one

of the legs was to bring equity and make it statewide. Right before leaving this position in

August, Fawn was on the authoring team of a grant for $15,000 from the Ben and Jerry’s Social

Justice and Equity Fund out of Waterbury. These unduplicated funds have been directed

towards what this organization was intended to do, participant support and program quality.

When somebody hits a barrier with being able to participate with treatment court ,their case

manage can make an appeal for direct funds to help out with that; the organization has a

mission to help people with dental care if somebody is getting back into the career force and

they need dental work that would be an option; housing expenses for sober housing are just

crazy at this point in time and limitations of space so really any barrier to accessing treatment

or participation in anything. The organization also does a lot for parents in recovery, helping out

if there’s a way to help with childcare. Basically, any resource that the case management team

can come to the organization and say this person would like there to be there, this is what’s

preventing them from doing it – a CV jaunt in a car is often a very legitimate call that we will

get when it’s a 50 mile trip to and from where you’re going in rural Vermont and there’s no

funds available to fix the car that you have and because you have a car you can’t qualify for a

Medicaid ride or another subsidy.

There is always hope and there are opportunities to come together on regular occurrences

about limitations with the system. Leslie shared that she had recently heard a phrase that is

often associated with recovery, and it is “we recover loudly so that those behind us don’t have

to suffer in silence.” She asked if Fawn would say that her path over the course of the last few

years really embodies that and that’s what she’s trying to accomplish with her personal path.

Fawn knew she had to make a choice in rehab. In the halfway house when she was navigating

going back to work, she had to start rebuilding a resume. The choice was right then and there,

was she going to keep her recovery this hidden part of her life and not let any of her co-workers

or the interview team or anybody know that alcoholism and dependency on pharmaceuticals in

any way were a part of her life and that she was in recovery from these things. Fawn asked

herself, “Why was that going to be a secret?” She had to at least make that choice for herself,

though she feels that people have to choose for themselves what works in their life. Fawn felt

that “for me, I didn’t want to live a dual life. I knew that I was going to not be quiet. We have

addiction in my family, we have cycles and different things, and I didn’t want to keep quiet, I

didn’t want to make that something I hid.” She had hid so much when she was an active

alcoholic and all the things that came with that from a lifestyle perspective of where your

behaviors take you in that place. Fawn is really proud to be able to say that consuming alcohol

isn’t something that she does at all. There are reasons behind that, and she’s a different person

today and is a better person. Fawn notes, “I’m a better person to hire. So, for me it was a

professional decision.” She knew then that she was going to recover out loud professionally

because in her personal life her passions had become advocating for other people who didn’t

have a voice. Her decision had nothing to do with the fellowship that she was in or any kind of

treatment that she was partaking in to get herself well or to remain well. Fawn found a voice in

advocating for other women and other families who were overcoming their struggles and the

potential they had in the contributing factors that they also offered their communities. She

knows she’s not a liability.

Fawn is not still with the organization dealing with some of the issues involved in drug court.

She had a hybrid role, and it was really great, working not only with the nonprofit entity that

she most recently left but also a public benefits company in Vermont that was a supportive

employment company. Fawn recently separated with both organizations, sharing she

“separated in mid-August over some ethical conflicts if you will and things that I just didn’t

know were going on and couldn’t be a part of.”

Fawn is intentionally not mentioning any company or individual names because she is not

bringing this history up in any way to harm. She shared, “the fact of the matter is that I’m

hoping more people will use their voice to help others. I was blatantly put in a situation where I

unknowingly was representing somebody who had been convicted of sex offenses under 18 and

represented that in their second chance employment opportunity that they were ultimately

going to be face to face with sexually victimized people and people that were in very vulnerable

places in their lives. And as a survivor of sexual victimization myself I felt very violated that I

was knowingly informed that I was supervising people who had sex offenses in their history and

doing so without issue. However, the coworker that I was being sent out of state to support and

be an ambassador of, I was never informed, and it was really damaging to say the least. And

there has been a few hard weeks that we’ve just really pushed through personally me to go

through what it's brought up but then professionally to separate employment, to be actively

looking for a position when I had just started one but to know that the non-monetary ask of

improved policy amongst practice and the organizations that you partner with was declined

that was alarming.”

Leslie noted to Fawn that “it doesn’t seem to me like it’s possible to advocate for victims of

sexual abuse or survivors of sexual abuse in that position that you were put in.”

Fawn disagreed with Leslie, “from a position of social reform and social justice, there’s many

contributing factors and when we look at anyone who has the sex offense in their background

it’s not an automatic disqualifier. There’s many levels and different things and the most often

one that comes to mind as I think about these scenarios is where you have an 18-year-old man

who is carrying a lifelong offense and something on his registry because he was with a girl who

was 16 or 17 and perhaps it was supported at one point in time and the families were okay. But

life Is life and this person wound up in a situation where they were over 18 and this was the

outcome. There are other scenarios. And this is why everybody gets a second chance, and when

you present and you’re looking to rebuild your life and you say what you’re doing and how you

want to do it and there’s a level of transparency, there’s a level of accountability, and there are

some different roles and placements for people.”

In Fawn’s specific situation, a person who is an account manager in a position is, in her view,

something parallel to an intake coordinator. This person is receiving personal information, they

are not in the supervised capacity, they’re one on one with an individual, it may be the same

sex or the opposing sex. A person who might have offended 10 years ago and has had 10 years

to live in our communities and, in Fawn’s words, “prove that they’ve rebuilt their lives

authentically and are doing meaningful things and doing it in a way that blends” is very

different than having a recent offense and not having those same opportunities to even

reintegrate. She goes on to say, “You don’t know the background. But I know what I read as the

offense, and I know that that isn’t somebody that I would in any capacity when I was a peer

coach or when I was the director of a recovery center that I would feel comfortable sending

someone that I was working with to go and sit for a job. Well, without the transparency there is

no choice and when choice is taken away that’s a problem. That was the absolute pinnacle and

that was in my email to my employer as we were going through all this, was I didn’t understand

why I was being informed four months later when I was actually working to design services for

sex offenders that we served in their second chance employment roles in manufacturing

facilities or any placements where we had the opportunity to allow people to go and have a fair

chance at a second chance employment opportunity. And with that, when you work for this

company, you’ve got peer coaching once a week for an hour a week. And in as the director of

the peer support team we have to have appropriate supports in place and tools, so it’s my job

to make sure that we’re supporting people appropriately. And when somebody has probation

and parole criteria that coaches should be informed of to ensure that they’re helping the

person they’re coaching comply with, perhaps it would be beneficial to have some information

form domestic violence and other professional that deal with and have trauma-informed

services to see how coaches could best be doing their job to support an offender who’s looking

to do the things that they’re being asked to do, which is socialize and get involved with things

and how to do that and be socially responsible. And it was only at that point that I was told a

coworker was a factor to be considered and how I was designing things. And it was four months

after I was hired, it was two trips after being out of state and in a car along with somebody and

reporting back both times behaviorally and something was amiss and I wasn’t comfortable and I

was trying to figure out how we could support this individual do a better job at the job that

they were doing because that’s what I was sent to do and not being transparently told why

there might have been some anxiety, why there would be the behaviors that I experienced

happening. Rather than giving me the choice because it’s like I told them at the beginning we

would have been in a completely different situation had I been told at the onset upon hire, you

know what, as a member of the leadership team here’s who you work with and it no different

than anything that I’ve ever expected or done for the teams that I work with. It’s just mind-

blowing to me that asking for more transparency, and if you say that this is what you’re doing

as a business and you say that your full team supports this and your full team doesn’t know,

that goes against. And to be asked to just keep somebody’s confidentiality and their dignity in

the foremost after sharing that. It has damaged me in such a way given my lived experience and

how I’ve been treated personally and professionally.”

Fawn also learned in recovery, and thinks it bothers her the most because she works in

recovery, is that “when somebody that has harmed us approaches and shares the harm that’s

done, you don’t get to say no I didn’t. And that happened not once but twice and that’s the

position that I’m left in.” So, Fawn forgot about severance and all of that kind of stuff she felt is

so superficial and trying to change one person’s mind about the fact that harm was done. Fawn

would much dedicate the time and energy to bringing light to the issue, that “we have practices

in place at organizations, that peer-driven services providing organizations are unaware of and

in my six years of professional experience I’ve never had to develop a business agreement or a

memorandum of understanding and build in the criteria of asking what the hiring practices are

of the partnering organization.”

At this point in time, Fawn is actively pursuing where she can align herself professionally, and

exercising everything in her practice that taught her the right thing will come at the right time.

She feels she is supposed to be where she is, that right now she is supposed to be talking to

Leslie and everyone listening, and not keeping quiet like she was told. She knows her house is

being sold, there’s a bear tearing apart her shed, her transmissions leaking, and as she puts it, “I

could pity party it up and I’m super grateful I had every one of these things, to listen, the

opportunity to talk about it today in continuous recovery, not having to be a mom that needs a

Cosmo or my favorite bottle of Kim Crawford and bring light to the fact that we have a number

of opportunities before us to allow people to do better just by knowing what’s going on. I think

that it’s really important to show more people and pave the way for using your voice and not

keeping quiet about a lot of different things because I think that we are conditioned to not

making waves, taking the easier way, staying quiet at the threat of how difficult things can be if

you don’t.”

Fawn went on to admit, “It's really difficult Leslie when this is the second time now because I

did it in the space of recovery before. I left a previous organization and supported multiple

centers and recovery organizations together, but now I’m doing it again and you become the

spokesperson and you make the stance and everybody agrees this is wrong, this shouldn’t have

happened. But then you blow the whistle and there’s nobody there to answer, there’s nobody

there at the local level, there’s nobody there at a regional level, there’s nobody there at the

state level, there’s nobody there at the private level. So great, now we’ve raised issue to this

and it goes on your YouTube and I push it out on social media a little bit and what happens

now, how many organizations are going to revisit their policy and procedure manual and take a

pulse on their organizational wellness and bring their staff bodies in for an in-service and talk

about practices and procedures.”

Fawn continued that she is not pointing any fingers or pointing anybody out. In general, she

feels “we say we have a team culture or an organizational culture and that we value the team

members, how are we showing them that and what organizations are going to come together

and revisit their business agreements and their memorandums of understanding and go

through line by line and start doing a proper risk analysis and acting like non-profit entities and

not like charitable grassroots organizations that just don’t have to do this because they’re just

doing the best they can.”

This is going on, it’s a fact. As Fawn stated, “we know that whether an offender, anybody, it’s so

difficult because people that get caught aren’t … there’s a big enough problem with people that

we don’t know about. And then we know about who we know about.” From that we have the

benefit of learning about people. We know that with certain offenders in certain categories of

people, just like treatment court is meant for one classification of people who would do best in

that program, there are certain contributing factors to sex offenders who groom people, who

collect information, who have practices embedded in its behavior that need to be taken into

consideration. “We need to ensure that if we have practices in place, that we’re transparent

with the people that we serve and the that fund us,” Fawn shared.

Leslie agreed that it is a reasonable ask of pretty much any entity doing anything for

“transparency in what they’re doing so that people can make choice and safeguards for the

people that they either employ, serve, or both.” She was “surprised that with a non-profit that’s

dedicated to serving others that they wouldn’t be more compelled to put in some safety

measures, even if it was something that, it doesn’t sound like it was maybe super intentional

but maybe just something that slipped through the cracks. And mistakes happen and things get

to a certain point. But when it’s been pointed out to you maybe just acknowledge and address

it.”

Fawn agreed, and shared “that’s kind of where I saw the opportunity to come.” Fawn made

sure to clarify that the company she left is a public benefits corporation, and that there are

people investing in the corporation, that it’s private and it serves the public by developing

relations with service providing non-profits. That “even more, being an investor-led entity, you

would hope again that your investors were as clear on your policies and practices and it’s

supportive of them as the employees and there would be no problem hiring a workforce that

supported the same and aligned with every value that the leadership team wanted. You could

absolutely design and build that, there’s nothing restricting that. But I know for me that wasn’t

what happened. I know for co-workers I know there that I shared why I left with, they weren’t

informed of it. [And] I know from the emails that I’ve received from leadership that there will

not be any change in practice, along with my ass and so that’s exactly where it can stay.”

Fawn is much more concerned about other people who are providing services, who have a

tremendous number of things to think about in the course of any day when they’re providing

critical services to very vulnerable people. She noted the last thing they need to think about is

“As I’m driving this person to an appointment or when I’m sending them along to go meet with

somebody, can I potentially be putting them in harm’s way?” She asked, “If we were to be

speaking directly to a population who is utilizing services, are there any questions that people

can be informed to ask so that they might then gain information that’s not being given to them

transparently?” in this situation, she would say it goes right back to just asking directly about

what your hiring practices are. With any non-profit that she’s operated with, Fawn shared

“background checks are the norm. With a background check you know it’s not a disqualifier,

but there’s a criteria of what’s acceptable.” If you’re going to be doing business with a new

business partner, Fawn knows that she will be much more upfront and inquiring about what

their hiring practices are because “I have no say or knowledge about who they feel is qualified

and what criteria equates to them being in any position that would impact those that I am

serving.”

Leslie agreed with this as well, sharing that she thinks “that’s probably an important question

for anybody to ask any employer in or outside of non-profit. If they have trauma in their past

that could be triggered by the knowledge of what a particular co-worker may or may not have

in their own past.”

Fawn went on to share, “I think it’s very very good to get the knowledge out there, that it’s a

good thing to ask, to be aware that maybe these organizations and entities aren’t being quite as

forthright as they should be, and to advocate. Always continue to advocate for yourself, always

continue to advocate for others, always stand up and use your voice when there’s injustice and

do our part in raising awareness and hopefully maybe at some point in time we can work

towards there actually being an entity that will check these people or a note to investors to

take a deeper dive into some of the practices that are happening with these non-profits that

they’re donating to.”

Fawn’s message is sharing information and hopefully seeing improvement, continuous quality

improvement, that’s something that’s embedded and should be embedded in any leader. She

doesn’t care what their title is in an organization, they should strive for continuous quality

improvement. Her issue is when your product is people, that the standard can’t just be cookie

cutter and run of the mill and just good enough. That just doesn’t cut it. She asked, “When your

product is vulnerable people, well don’t you think that’s kind of why we’re here in this place

where there are so many. I’m just starting to look the number of things that I’ve began to learn

about by embarking on this journey of like let me interview people. It’s put me into diving into

worlds outside of my own. I have some things that are recurring. A lot of the things that are

recurring is the number of people in recovery, the number of services that are out there for

recovery, the number of people who are quote unquote awakening to a more conscious level of

seeing that we have been going through this life in a cookie cutter fashion, which is accelerating

burnout and distance and separation. It’s just insane.”

Fawn questioned where did this cookie cutter process start? She wonders if it started in the 60s

with “The mass production of everything and all of the developments where literally all of the

houses look the same and all of the clothing looks the same and all of the cars look the same.

She feels it goes back to a social services derived from it, because when you look at what

you’re talking about it correlates directly back to when did people become units of service.

Fawn has a whole other soapbox of this, that “we all, once we enter into a data set driven

trackable system, that’s what census is, that’s why you can check male or female on a box. It

took so long to get other put on there because you’re dealing with standardized data sets. The

only way people have to collect data is on surveys and analysis. Again, these are humans. In the

space of recovery, I mean God forbid you’re a single mom that wants abstinence-based

recovery and you don’t want to be on social services. I mean try to find some help there. I don’t

have anything for you, me, or the next person because that’s the path that I’m on. However if

I’m a mom on MAT [Medication Assisted Treatment, now also called Medication Assisted

Recovery] and I have to go to the clinic and get my prescriptions and participate in other

treatments and therapies and my doctors don’t ever want me to be off the lowest dose of what

I’m on and they say that medication is a part of life and I need this forever, well then I know I’m

probably going to live in the same neighborhood and my kids are going to have this kind of

upbringing and it’s kind of destined to be in one way or another. But the cookie cutter approach

came to the shift to community-based services, de-institutionalization, and shifting the urban

spread.”

When Suboxone and some of these other supports were introduced, it was supposed to be to

help people get through withdrawal symptoms and be a short-term help. Now, it has become

very long-term in the science and everything. Fawn admitted she’s not a doctor, not somebody

who takes these things, but in the space of peer-based recovery this is a lot of what she shared

has been seen, “It’s September, it’s National Recovery Month, people absolutely need

medicated assisted treatment to begin their path of recovery if that’s where they find

themselves. I can speak for myself and peers who have found their way as I did. I’ll tell you

when I was in rehab and going into a halfway house the deal was you better have me off of

absolutely everything, I don’t want to ever ever have to consume anything again to be normal

or live because I had an issue with alcohol and prescribed medications before.”

Leslie asked Fawn, “Do a lot of people go that path with getting off of everything or do you see

it being more weighted towards long-term medicated assisted recovery?”

Fawn responded that it is really varied. Regrettably, what she sees today is a lot of people in

long term care not being given the option or a plan to become abstinent, or information about

what other recovery supports and services are available outside of the medical practice. When

a person comes into recovery, Fawn shares, “the only thing that has to change is everything.

There’ a lot of hours in a day and when we don’t have people and activities and supports in our

life to start doing different things with different people and learning new ways.” It’s very easy,

especially in a lot of rural communities, without transportation, for people to rely a lot on social

services. Fawn admitted it’s hard for her, “I’m taking the position that I am because I ask people

today in my role how long have you been in recovery and they say well I don’t know, I’ve been

on Suboxone for like three months. There’s non differentiation about are you in recovery, are

you on medication. I live a firm role, you’re in recovery when you say you’re in recovery. I did

no kickback for me at all. I don’t care your pathway if it’s moderation, if it’s medicated assisted

treatment, if it’s abstinence, it’s your life and your path.” Fawn doesn’t think people are being

given an opportunity to pursue any path very far because they’re so regulated when recovery is

assisted by medication and there’s not enough light being drawn to the different opportunities

that we have in recovery. Fawn went on to share, “Forget about in recovery, just in non-

consuming activities, there’s a whole space of people who have decided that drinking just isn’t

something that they want to do these days. Not everything has to be a pain and stuff. It’s really

hard when you’re dealing with social determinants and in areas that are depressed, when

you’re trying to give people new things to do without appropriate community supports that are

vibrant, thriving and active. When we don’t have thriving recovery communities attracting

people to come and see what we’ve got and what’s going on over here, it minimizes what is

available and really limits the individual to how much they can thrive because if we could do it

ourselves we would.”

The term “self-help group” has been abandoned for mutual aid for a reason, according to Fawn.

“We have to do it for ourselves. We have to get up and go to the mutual aid meetings if that’s

our pathway. Or we have to go to the gym, or we have to go to our medical appointment and

then do the things that we told our therapist we were going to do as part of the medicated

assisted recovery that we’re doing. But when it’s just take a pill and call it a day, when’s the last

time your provider asked you if you were happy, what would make your life better today, do

you enjoy the life you live?” Fawn wonders, though she’s not sure of the answer, if there’s

even a crossover from maybe one medical doctor that you’re seeing for one issue versus

another medical doctor that you’re seeing for another issue and communication between the

two. What’s even really going on? Because if you’re going to one doctor and I’m getting MAT

from this one doctor but you’re going to another doctor, and you know they’re not informed of

what your other processes are, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to work either because they

don’t have all of the information.”

Comprehensive care teams are a luxury privilege. Even if you have coordinated insurance like

through MVP or Blue Cross Blue Shield. Even if you live in New York State and on your Medicaid

you’re enrolled in the HARP program, which is for people who utilize services more than others,

a care management team in a case management team is very hard to come by. Fawn shared

“My son has had two brain tumors removed and even getting his care team together was like

moving the earth for something not significant. There’s not a lot of practitioners in the space of

community and human services that are going to come together to see if the dentist prescribed

Hydrocodone to somebody who’s taking Suboxone or on something else. Now I just had a tooth

extracted this week and I went in and I informed my doctor. I said this is my history, these are

the things I cannot have, this is what I need. He was great, but he had questions, he had to ask

me why can’t you take this.”

Fawn shared that, “Often we become educators and advocates as we find our recovery for

ourselves and our family members. I mean that sounds important to me, to educate and I mean

I guess what I don’t understand is why aren’t these people with all these letters after their

name with the ability to prescribe these things already educated. The college hasn’t changed in

the schooling so you can approach it for that route.” She would go right to regulatory

authorities and say “if that would be like my Congressional ask at this point in time, as some

kind of mandate that everybody with a current practice within the next two years has to have X

number of education specifically in addiction and recovery and how the grant funded process

works in this state versus that state.”

As an example, Fawn mentioned a van that just left Nevada called Mobilize Recovery that will

be going across the country “this month.” It will be bringing information “literally across the

country, all the way to Maine” to areas across the states. She says blame whoever you want to,

chalk it up to whatever, we lose more people a day to overdose and alcohol related substance

use related matters than anything that the amount of money or emergencies rooms go through

because people don’t believe in clean needle exchange. Oh, if you give somebody a clean

needle you’re endorsing they can use Heroin. No, I’m not endorsing that they can use Heroin,

no I’m endorsing that they’re going to use Heroin anyways and I’m trying to prevent them from

having a blood infection that’s going to cost taxpayers $300,000 when they’re admitted into the

emergency department.”

Leslie agreed “there’s a lot of misinformation out there because that’s definitely a hot button

issue. I think one of the things that’s the most disappointing let me count the ways to say that

it’s not feasible or affordable to get these types of trainings in the hands of these people that

need it just blows my mind. I mean, I know and I don’t know where it’s progressed, but I know I

believe it’s the state of Massachusetts for hair stylists which I was a hair stylist prior to all of this

stuff, they have to go through domestic violence training as part of their maintaining their

license and I know New York was talking about it at one point in time, I know that it’s offered

but I don’t think it’s been mandatory but if they can put something like that together for a hair

stylist, our certifications aren’t nearly as, we don’t have people’s lives int eh balance, maybe

just their confidence, why is it so difficult, I mean there are so many different, like it’s already

been recognized that hairstylist can be a first point of contact they get comfortable in your

chair, they talk to you, it made perfect sense to incorporate that kind of training and I for one

was one who was willing absolutely I need to go through this as a victim of domestic violence

myself, why aren’t I – it does seem like it is a no-brainer to try to add what more could we do

and some said here you could do this and you said I’ll be the first one right.”

According to Fawn, “There so many products out there and programs that it’s all bureaucracy. I

learned early on in the private company that I loved, and built every good thing about me, that

innovation has to trump bureaucracy and you have to push through and that you can’t

compromise quality and that people come first.”

Leslie feels she sees it herself, because the deeper she gets into her Moxxi Women’s

Foundation journey, “the more I’m being exposed to these very small grassroots hand-to-

mouth organizations that I think are doing a lot of good. So long as we continue to have

individuals like yourself stepping up and continuing to advocate and continuing to raise

awareness to some of these issues of larger corporations, larger nonprofits that are maybe not

doing the job that they were set out to do in the best way that they could, we’re going to see

more and more of us stepping up and doing more and we’re making noise, we’re using our

voice and we’re gonna just continue to advocate just louder and louder and louder until they

listen at some point.”

Leslie continued, “My daughter’s lost enough this year as has yours in terms of our rights. At

some point the girls are going to have their day and I hope that those that are present for it do

it with as women of integrity and dignity.”

Fawn was in total agreement with Leslie, “Absolutely, absolutely and we lead by example, and

yes that’s the best that we can do. So I’m very happy to be on the personal path that I’ on. I am

for myself as well as to be able to have a platform for women such as you to use their voice and

we’re going to push this as far and as wide as we possibly can.”

Fawn is very grateful for Leslie taking up the issue and giving a platform to the cause and all

that Leslie does and that Moxxie Women’s Foundation is doing for women in the Capital Region

and beyond.

Leslie shared, “We’re excited to be here every day. We’re gaining the momentum is real and

expansion is on the horizon so the more noise we make the farther our reaches so we’re all

doing it together.”

Fawn responded, “If it weren’t for your willingness to sit here then it also wouldn’t happen so

that’s what we’re doing. We’re just gonna all band together until the difference is actually seen

and realized in real time so that’s good.I have strong faith today and I am exactly where I’m

supposed to be so fear is not on my radar.”

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