59. Maya Siegel - Founder of Space to Speak - Advocate for Sexual Assault Survivors

<p>By now you may have seen Sarah Everard’s name floating around on your social feeds. On March 3, Sarah went missing while walking home from a friend’s house. Nine days later, it was confirmed that she had been murdered, her alleged killer an active police officer. Her disappearance and the week-long search that ensued before her body was found, sent shockwaves throughout the world, sparking widespread conversations about women’s safety in 2021. I was absolutely heartbroken when I heard the news and realized what lengths we go to ensure our safety and how many other females have gone through something similar.&nbsp;</p> <p>According to a recent poll, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/almost-all-young-women-in-the-uk-have-been-sexually-harassed-survey-finds" rel="noopener" target="_blank">80 percent of all U.K. women have been sexually harassed</a> and in Canada, <a href="https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/gender-based-violence/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">half of all Canadian women have been victims of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16</a>. These staggering figures are but a snippet of today’s realities as women or non-binary people. Yet within conversations surrounding Sarah, <a href="https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/sarah-everard-victim-blaming" rel="noopener" target="_blank">victim blamers and misogynists</a> have still found ways to take up space.</p> <p>With that in mind, today I am joined by Maya Siegel.</p> <p>She the Founder and Executive Director of Space to Speak, an organization dedicated to giving youth a leading voice in the sexual violence prevention movement. Under her leadership, Space to Speak helped raise over $118,000 for survivors experiencing domestic violence during COVID in 2020.&nbsp;In addition to her work with Space to Speak, she is also a web designer, strategy consultant, campus outreach manager, and full-time college student.&nbsp;Her work has been recognized in the Washington Post, HuffPost, MTV, and the NYT Upfront.</p> <p>In this ep