Rachel Friedman
Deputy Director
Rachel Friedman brings remarkable skills and talent to her position as the first Deputy Director of MCSR. Appointed in May 2012, she began her career in the organization in 2008 as Development Coordinator and worked her way up to Director of Foundation and Government Grants in 2009.
Ms. Friedman works closely with MCSR’s Executive Director Neil Irvin, helping set priorities and direction for the organization’s short- and long-term goals. In this role, she focuses on the management of day-to-day activities of the organization, including the smooth integration of policy, development, finance, communications, programs, and administrative functions to ensure seamless operations and achievement of strategic goals. She leads the organization’s national Assault. Services. Knowledge. (ASK) project, a website and downloadable app that combines life-saving and pertinent resources for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, and intimate partner violence, as well as their friends, family members, and colleagues. The project now includes six versions including UASK DC for all eight universities in the District of Columbia; ASK DC which hosts over 75 District resources and is available in eight languages; state-wide versions of ASK in Arizona, Connecticut, and North Dakota; and UASK Duke. Based on the coordination of the District’s resources, Ms. Friedman positioned MCSR to organize a coordinated community response for the city – establishing a forum for mobilizing community agencies around intersectional gender-based violence issues.
Rachel speaking at MCSR’s 25th Anniversary Celebration in April 2022
As part of this and in partnership with the DC Rape Crisis Center, Ms. Friedman leads the District’s sexual assault coalition, now called the DC Coalition to End Sexual Violence (DCCESV). This pioneering collaboration is the city’s premier sexual assault alliance for direct service providers, prevention programs, and stakeholders in the city. DCCESV was formed to create effective alliances among service providers throughout the city that address the needs of victim-survivors through education, policy, and advocacy and is particularly interested in centering the most vulnerable and marginalized as the core constituents of these efforts.
Since 2010, she has played a lead role in establishing summer youth programs and contributed to the establishment of the organization’s youth development program for girls, Women Inspiring Strength and Empowerment (WISE). Ms. Friedman has served on the Leadership Council for the Victim Assistance Network of DC since she was elected in 2013, as well as on the District’s Missing Youth Taskforce. She has consulted to the White House Council on Women and Girls and participated on the steering committee for the NO MORE project, a groundbreaking initiative designed to galvanize change and radically increase the awareness of domestic violence and sexual assault in our communities. In addition, she leads high-level technical assistance, trainings, and workshops; and has provided keynotes that discuss the role of women in engaging men in healthy masculinity and the connections between MCSR’s work and Judaism. She has been interviewed by such media outlets as Al Jazeera, Fox News DC, NBC Washington, CBS, Associated Press, Washington Post, Liz Claiborne’s It’s Time to Talk Day, and Voice of Russia, to name a few.
Since joining the organization, Ms. Friedman has helped to secure over $7 million by seeking out new funding sources and engaging in outreach with funders and donors. She has been integral to developing other fundraising initiatives for the organization, including strategies focused on fees-for-services, marketing and public relations, individual donors, and special events. She has also helped plan large-scale events for the organization, such as the Healthy Masculinity Action Project, Solutions through Film, and the Men of Strength Awards, along with testifying at city council hearings and planning Capitol Hill briefings.
As Director of Foundation and Government Grants, she focused on deepening, renewing, and building relationships with funders from national foundations and federal government agencies, as well as local foundations and city agencies. These funders have included the NoVo Foundation, Open Society Institute, Verizon Foundation, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the DC Mayor’s Office, to name a few. In 2011, she won Discovery Communications’ “Creating Change Award” to produce a signature public service announcement for MCSR.
Prior to joining MCSR, Ms. Friedman worked as a Research Analyst for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). She also volunteered with a variety of women’s organizations – including the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the Mass Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, the White House Project, and the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault – as a researcher, writer, and special events planner. Her feminist background brings added dimension and depth to MCSR’s mission of creating cultures free from violence, especially men's violence against women.
Ms. Friedman holds an M.B.A from Trinity Washington University and graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a B.A. in Women’s Studies. She also studies group dynamics with the A.K. Rice Institute and provides freelance writing, editing, financial, and business development consulting. She lives in Southwest DC with her husband, Adam, and is a proud native of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Contact Rachel at rfriedman@mcsr.org