Her Story
About Liza
Liza Chowdhury serves as the director and founder of her nonprofit organization in New Jersey, where she leads community-based violence intervention and healing-centered programming. Her career began with ten years as a juvenile probation officer for the State of New Jersey, working with justice-involved youth in Passaic. Motivated by her own experiences as a childhood survivor of trauma and the rising gun violence she witnessed, she pursued a PhD to develop skills in grant writing, research, and evidence-based program implementation. In 2019, she partnered with St. Joseph's University Medical Center to launch Passaic County's first hospital-based violence intervention program. Over six years, she has grown the organization from its inception to a three million dollar budget with full-time staff, servicing over seven hundred individuals and achieving a less than one percent re-injury rate along with a fifty percent reduction in emergency room visits for gun violence victims. She is a member of Every Town for Gun Safety, the New Jersey Violence and Intervention Prevention Coalition, the State County Gun Advisory Committee, and the Community-Based Crisis Response Team Advisory Board. Her work emphasizes creating safe spaces for staff and community, data-driven advocacy for funding, and maintaining a focus on the original mission while pivoting as needed.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Liza
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say belief and hard work. Belief in myself and hard work. And also my faith, you know, God, and then belief in hard work. Like, if you don't work hard for your and believe in yourself, I don't think that's gonna really help.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I believe that if you believe in something, you should fight for it like hell to make sure that idea comes into fruition. Putting all the work behind it, it's not just think, you can't start big, you have to be okay with the humbling part of it where you're hustling, and sometimes you might have to do things for free to develop relationships. When you have an idea, you have to put action behind it, and then believe in yourself so that you can make your vision into a reality.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
What I would tell them that I wish I would have known is learning, getting some leadership development courses, learning on how to run a nonprofit. Learning about the financial aspects of a nonprofit. If you want a successful nonprofit, you're really running a business. Having a strong board, all those things matter. Start documenting your work, start showing the evidence behind it, start telling your story. Believe in yourself. Not being discouraged when those no's happen. Take that as a challenge to learn from and keep going. It's okay to take it slow and learn as you go, grow, and make sure that you perfect things before you just move on. Don't just change with the tide, pivot to make it make sense to what our original mission is.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
With funding is that people don't understand our work fully, and right now we're dealing with budget constraints. It is very important as a leader to constantly put out data, how this saves taxpayers' money, how this is impactful. Always being in the forefront, always talking, always showing your work, always displaying your evidence, always showing how investing in your work is impactful and can save dollars.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
My family, God, making sure that everybody, people, community is very important to me. Making sure that as much as I'm blessed with, that I can use whatever I've been blessed with to be able to lend a helping hand to others. Friends, family, God, making sure that mental health is always at the forefront of taking care of ourselves. Community.
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