Laurie Holmes, Drylongso Award Recipient 2010

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Consultant

Laurie Holmes has over 20 years professional experience bridging the fields of community organizing, economic development and human services. A college dropout in the seventies, Ms. Holmes found a job as a school bus driver, which provided her fundamental education in neighborhoods and cultures all over Boston. She raised children and was active in her Egleston Square community, where she also worked at the Elizabeth Stone House as an advocate for women recovering from domestic violence, substance abuse and mental illness.

After returning to school for a Masters in Community Economic Development Laurie worked with survivors in Roxbury to create economic development programs such as the Women's Business Opportunity Program and PEP, the Personal Economic Planning economic literacy project. Ms. Holmes established the Economic Stability Working Group on the Massachusetts Governor's Commission on Sexual and Domestic Violence, co-chaired the Steering Committee for the Massachusetts Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Project and served on numerous boards including the National Network of Women in Community Development.

From 1998-2007 Ms. Holmes was the founding Executive Director at Harbor Communities Overcoming Violence.  There she worked with a primarily immigrant and low-income community to build a new kind of organization to end partner violence and injustice through community development. Multicultural and explicitly antiracist, HarborCOV collaborates broadly to create responsive networks of support and improve access to education, economic opportunity and alternatives that help survivors stay safely in their homes and communities. In 2006 HarborCOV opened Massachusetts' first permanent affordable housing designed for domestic violence survivors. Recognized as an innovative model, The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence published Laurie’s paper:  HarborCOV: One Community’s Effort to Build Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence.

Currently Ms. Holmes works as a consultant with a variety of local, regional and national organizations including DC-based Wider Opportunities for Women.  She is Business Manager for What She Knows, a play that breaks taboo about incest and lights a way for healing and change.  With the Women of Color Network, National Call to Action, Laurie’s role involves organizing with white aspiring allies to advance women of color leadership and promote structural antiracism practices in the movement to end violence against women.