Anne Ream

It can be hard to challenge a status quo that is the culture itself – particularly when we are members of the institutions that we must challenge. It is infinitely easier to allow these institutions – our governments, our media, our militaries, even our communities of faith
-- to blame victims of sexual violence for the damage that has been done to them. This is especially easy to do when the victims of such violence are so often told to remain invisible, and silent. But imagine a world in which individual victims stand up and become a collective, and that collective faces off against the status quo. This is the world that we seek to create through our efforts at CounterQuo. Those who are speaking out about the violence that they have lived or witnessed do not do so because it is healing -- although it can be -- but because it is necessary in a world that fails to understand the scope and scale of sexual violence and trafficking in the United States, and beyond.

 

 

 

 

— Anne K. Ream

Anne Ream is a Chicago-based writer and the founder of The Voices and Faces Project, a national documentary initiative created to bring the testimony of sexual violence survivors to the attention of the public. A longstanding advocate for women’s issues, Ms. Ream is also co-founder and Chief Creative Officer for Girl360.net, an empowerment project for tween girls. A former Senior Vice President and Group Creative Director at Leo Burnett USA, one of the country's largest communications agencies, Ms. Ream believes that creative and media-driven ideas can play an important role in social movements. Her co-founding of CounterQuo is an expression of that belief.

A past finalist for the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Documentary Prize for her profiles of sexual assault survivors, Ms. Ream’s writing has appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Washingtonpost.com and other publications. She is also a contributor to the forthcoming "Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan" (Cambridge University Press).

In July of 2008 Soroptimist International, a non-governmental organization at the United Nations, presented Ms. Ream with its “2008 Making a Difference for Women Award.”  In so doing, the international selection committee lauded Ms. Ream’s “innovative efforts to address violence against women and girls” and her “passion for changing the status quo” through a series of creative, media driven initiatives.

Ms. Ream is the recipient of the Susan Estrich Courage Award and the End Violence Against Women International Visionary Award, and was named one of People Magazine’s “Heroes Among Us” in 2006. Ms.Ream was also recognized as one of “Chicago’s Top 40” by The Chicago Tribune in an article that cited her as a writer and activist working to “put names and faces on the issue of sexual violence."

Along with her work with The Voices and Faces Project and CounterQuo, Ms. Ream currently serves on the advisory board of the country’s largest anti-sexual assault organization, RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  She is a past co-chair of the Leadership Committee for Chicago’s Rape Victim Advocates, and has consulted for the Congressional Commission investigating sexual violence at the United States Air Force Academy.

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