Elizabeth Ward Saxl, Executive Director
Elizabeth has overall strategic and operational responsibility for MECASA’s staff, programs, expansion, and the execution of its mission to end sexual violence in Maine and to support high quality sexual violence prevention and response within Maine’s communities. In addition, she focuses on initiating and advocating for victim-centered public policy at the State House and in other policy arenas. Elizabeth lives in with her family in Belgrade.
Destie Hohman Sprague, Associate Director
As the Associate Director, Destie leads MECASA in developing the agency’s work plan; working on evaluation and how we measure our efforts; grant writing and reporting; and helping to set the agenda for statewide prevention and programming. She also helps to support the staff who are coordinating programs, such as the Maine Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, the Maine Sex Trafficking and Exploitation Network, and member services. She is happy to help out with questions about program development, outcome evaluation, collecting data and making it useful, primary prevention (and spreadsheets!). Destie lives in Bath with her family.
Meg Hatch, Children’s Advocacy Centers Network Coordinator
Meg is the Network Coordinator for the Maine Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers. Her work is focused on providing support to Maine’s existing and emerging CACs and multidisciplinary teams. The Network also creates a monthly Resource Round-up, maintains the CAC website and updates the online CAC toolkit. Meg’s goal is to create programs across the state so that all children have access to high quality intervention services provided at CACs. Meg lives in Whitefield, Maine and when she’s not working she enjoys spending time outside with her family, running, creating delicious food and reading.
Katie Church, Children's Safety Partnership Coordinator
Katie works to coordinate the efforts and act as a resource for the Children’s Safety Partnership, an initiative that began in response to the legislation passed in 2015 mandating child sexual abuse prevention for all publicly funded Pre-K through 5 programs in Maine. When not at work, Katie loves trying out new recipes and going on adventures with her family.
Jennifer Wilkey, Communications Coordinator
Jennifer oversees MECASA’s communication strategies, striving for consistent statewide messaging and visual aesthetic. She supports both MECASA’s in house staff and state providers with a range of communication needs, including creating digital, print, and web content, working with Maine media, responding to current issues and events, and writing talking points, press releases, and op-eds. Jennifer loves to create engaging content utilizing graphic design, photography, and video to help prevent sexual violence and improve accessibility to resources and information. She lives in Brunswick with her family and various critters, and can be found reading science fiction, dancing to Queen with her toddler, and engaging her artistic side with woodturning, drawing, and sewing.
Katie Kondrat, Equity & Access Coordinator
Katie works with culturally and community-specific providers and sexual assault support centers to create accessible and equitable services for all survivors. She looks for opportunities to create community-led sexual violence services for populations who have barriers to services, and are therefore, underserved. When she’s not at MECASA, she can be found urban farming in Portland, swimming, or somewhere outside eating ice cream with her family.
Julie Agri, Financial Coordinator
Julie is the Finance Coordinator at MECASA and brings many years’ of finance experience with her. She enjoys spending time with her two teenage kids, road trips, kayaking, and photography.
Canyon Sears, Intervention CoordinatorAs the Intervention Coordinator Canyon's primary responsibility is to assist advocates across the state in the delivery of all core sexual assault support center intervention services, including helpline, support groups, and sexual assault response teams. They are here to listen to advocates' needs, provide technical assistance, and support the development and implementation of intervention programming across the state. They also develop and facilitate the bi-annual intervention affinity meetings and manage the MECASA Intervention Toolkit. Canyon believes that advocates know what is best for them and want to center advocate voice and vision in the further development of SASC programs. Outside the office, Canyon is probably walking along the rocks on the coast, working on their truck, or making food with friends. They are excited to talk to you about your ideas on how we can continue to improve our core services, including making them more accessible, deeper, and aligned with anti-oppression values. They are also excited to talk to you about astrology, art, therapy, and food.
Caitlin Kelty-Huber, Prevention Coordinator
Caitlin’s work is focused on providing technical assistance and support to prevention educators at all of Maine’s sexual assault support centers. This includes supporting the development and implementation of prevention programming and evaluation across the state, facilitating bi-annual prevention affinity meetings, managing the MECASA Prevention Education Toolkit—MECASA’s online resource for preventionists—and creating round ups of relevant tools and trainings. Outside of work, she is very interested in animal rescue, human-animal relationships, ecological gardening, and other overlapping approaches to violence prevention and justice.
Sarah Firth, Quality & Compliance Coordinator
Sarah coordinates compliance and quality where she helps Maine’s sexual assault support centers figure out how to offer services and develop their workplace in ways that also satisfy the regulations. She conducts site visits and trainings on these issues, and also works on projects to develop consistent statewide services like text/chat and support group facilitator training. She lives with her family in Vienna.
Jess Bedard, Trafficking & Special Projects Coordinator
Jess is the Trafficking & Special Projects Coordinator. She provides technical assistance to sexual assault service providers and community members who are delivering services in complex systems, specifically with survivors of human trafficking and incarcerated survivors. Please reach out to Jess with questions around any of these issues.
You can reach any of our staff by filling out our contact form.
