Amber January

I've been working in domestic violence intervention for a little over a year now, after a career change when I moved to Oklahoma City. I work for ARRIVE DVI Educational Services as a Client Care Coordinator, where I conduct assessments and facilitate classes for both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. My role is client-facing and requires me to focus on victim advocacy while also working with perpetrators through intervention programs. I conduct domestic violence intakes and inventories to assess where clients are on their violence scale, looking at stress management, drugs, alcohol, and childhood experiences that may have contributed to their behavior. I facilitate five different classes, including one women's class, three in-person men's classes, and one virtual men's class. These are 52-week programs where participants are either court-ordered or voluntarily attending to show they're trying to change. I use models like the power and control wheel to help people understand that domestic violence includes emotional abuse, financial abuse, minimizing, denying, and blaming, not just physical violence. I teach clients about how their brains work, how to control responses, and how to unlearn and relearn behaviors. This work is deeply personal to me because my grandmother was killed by her significant other before I was born, so I never got to meet her. I've always worked in nonprofit fields, previously with Goodwill in disability services and re-entry programs helping people recently released from incarceration find jobs. When this opportunity came up, I started part-time just facilitating classes, but my boss saw how passionate I was and created this full-time position for me. I've participated in several trainings at the state capitol and worked the Partners for Change conference, where I met people who write the training materials we use and introduced speakers to attendees from across the U.S.