The Radical Act of Listening: Lessons from Virginia’s Survivor Voices Project
Listening to survivors is one of the most transformative practices we have – yet it is often the step that systems minimize, rush, or unintentionally shape around institutional needs rather than human ones. As advocates, practitioners, and system actors, we cannot meaningfully advance justice or healing without first honoring the lived experiences of the people most impacted by harm.
In Virginia, the Survivor Center led a year-long series of survivor listening sessions that brought together individuals from diverse communities and lived experiences. These conversations offered survivors the opportunity to speak on their own terms about safety, justice, accountability, unmet needs, and what meaningful support truly looks like. The insights revealed a clear throughline: survivors want clarity, options, culturally rooted care, and systems that recognize the complexities of trauma and structural inequity.
This workshop uses Virginia’s listening sessions as a model for how jurisdictions and organizations can meaningfully engage survivors in shaping practice, policy, and service delivery. Participants will learn what we did, what we heard, and how these lessons can guide trauma-responsive, survivor-centered approaches in their own work. They will also leave with practical strategies rooted in autonomy, dignity, and emotional safety, tools that help turn listening into genuine accountability and change.
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Speaker
Robyn C. Sordelett is the Survivor Center Director at the Prosecutors Alliance and a nationally recognized speaker on sustainable advocacy and survivor-centered best practices. A clinical social worker by training and a 2026 Office of the Virginia Attorney General Unsung Hero Award winner, she has built her career across the criminal justice system, community-based organizations, and policy spaces, always centering trauma, resilience, and systemic change. At the Prosecutors Alliance, she leads efforts to center survivors in conversations about justice and reform while supporting victim advocates’ psychological and emotional well-being, exploring vicarious trauma, burnout, and the conditions that foster resilience and shared power. A frequent national presenter, Robyn is regularly consulted on organizational wellness and trauma-responsive advocacy, with a core focus on reconnecting justice workers with the purpose that brought them to the field. She is also deeply interested in work that advances collaborative, trauma-responsive approaches to domestic and sexual violence and innovative responses to gender-based violence beyond traditional systems. Robyn was appointed by Governor Abigail Spanberger to the Criminal Justice Services Board in 2026, serves on the National Organization for Victim Advocacy’s Public Policy Committee, and stays up far too late reading mystery novels. Robyn holds a B.A. in English and Sociology from the University of Richmond and an M.S.W. from the University of Southern California.