Karla Juarez, Cohort 8

December 4, 2021
LEAP

Karla was born in Los Ángeles, raised in the Florida Keys and definitely has an island spirit. Karla comes from a family of five siblings, she was the only sibling who furthered her education in child development, social services and criminal justice. She has been working in the DV/SA field for 16 years, in this time she has held positions working in an emergency DV shelter as the Latina emergency shelter case manager and transitional housing case manager. She has worked at Project UNICA for over 5 years. In those 5 years she has worked several positions and most recently as the crisis line coordinator.

This field has been her passion, growing up in a home with domestic violence she knew at a very early age she wanted to become an advocate someday. Karla unfortunately experienced a great loss and trauma after her mom’s life was taken by an abusive partner; this caused her to take a break allowing her to go back to school and pursue a degree in criminal justice. She realized that she would continue to do this work and help other survivors of DV/SA violence in honor of her mother. Today she is the Urgent Services Manager with Unica as well as an activist always looking for ways to help lift the voices of our BIPOC communities; with the dream to one day end domestic and sexual violence.

Karla has five children; aged 18,15,13,6,2. She is sending her oldest daughter off to Seattle university. She stays very busy with work, kids, sports and everyday life. She enjoys dancing, hiking, fishing and lots of outdoor activities.