About Us
Zoe Collins (she, her, hers) is a white, autistic, queer, disabled and chronically ill survivor of sexual assault and intimate partner violence from Denver, Colorado. Each of her identities has vastly shaped her experiences with abuse, how she pursues healing, and how she approaches advocacy and education. She has facilitated workshops for a range of audiences spanning from local victim services agencies to international conferences on a variety of subjects including; abuse, anti-ableism, autism/neurodivergence, advocacy for disabled survivors, and accessibility.
Zoe has over four years of experience with victim advocacy, including as a legal advocate in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Colorado, where she provided complex victim advocacy to disabled survivors of abuse. She was honored to receive the “Excellence in Advocacy Award” from the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center in 2021 for her work on cases involving ableism within the criminal justice system. Through her personal experiences, and her close work with clients who all come into their need for advocacy from vastly different backgrounds, she has witnessed bits and pieces of the overwhelming foundational inequities which are built into the blood and bones of our systems. She holds dear to her heart both the horrific truth that existing within these systems causes just as much trauma as an assault, and the inescapably beautiful truth that human beings are all worthy of love, respect, autonomy, and hope. Zoe’s own healing journey has forced her to reconcile the ingrained impulse to hate those who cause us harm, with the powerful understanding that the root cause of harm lies much deeper than within individual choices and that only by addressing systemic oppression, and by taking responsibility for the roles we’ve each played in it, can we prevent more harm and heal communities.
Previous Work
Though her recent work has been with local and national non-profits, she began her advocacy as a campus activist, fighting to update the St. John’s College sexual misconduct policy to include sexual coercion, and to empower student survivors. Since Covid began, she has collaborated with incredible organizations like the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition and the Phamaly Theater Company to bring stories of disabled survivors to the center of discussions about the pandemic. She is currently involved with transformative justice work in both Denver and Colorado Springs, and is available for circle facilitation, including High Impact Dialogue cases.
Before launching Spiramind, she was the Director of Outreach and Communications at The Initiative in Denver, Colorado. She has been featured as a presenter at the Colorado State Public Defender Conference in 2021, the Colorado Advocacy in Action Conference in both 2021and 2020, the Colorado Summit on Sexual Misconduct in Higher Education of 2021, the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance Conference in 2020, and the Chrysalis Network International Conference 2020.
Emily Kindschy (she/her/hers) is a white, autistic, queer, disabled and chronically ill survivor of sexual violence located in Providence, Rhode Island. Her strong sense of justice since childhood laid the foundation for her to pursue a career in social work when she began college in 2010.
Emily received her Master’s in Social Work from Simmons University in 2016 where she was awarded the Faculty Leadership Award during her time in academia. Since then, she has worked exclusively in the field of trauma treatment, eventually opening her own private practice that focused on trauma treatment through an intersectional anti-oppressive lens for folks that have traditionally been pushed to the margins within the mental health industrial complex. Prior to opening her own practice, Emily worked in victim’s services and advocacy through providing 1:1 trauma treatment for children, youth, and adults impacted by sexual abuse, trafficking, and adoption/foster care, facilitating support and psychoeducational groups, and training.
Since accepting her limitations due to her disabilities, Emily had to close her practice and chose to leave the field and give up her clinical license to focus on her health. This choice confirmed what she had always felt both in her education and in her 6 years of practicing in the social work field — the current frameworks we are using in the mental health field are rooted in white supremacist capitalism, making it impossible for disabled and neurodivergent clinicians to thrive in the field.
Emily hopes to use her expertise in the impacts and treatment of trauma, nervous system regulation, and facilitation to support Spiramind clients in creating workplaces and programs that are rooted in trauma-informed care and disability justice.