PHOTO BY LAURA PETRILLA

Katie M. Shipp
Executive Director, I Have The Right To

Katie M. Shipp always wanted to work with children. As a lawyer, she represented survivors of childhood sexual abuse in Pennsylvania and New York for more than a decade — focusing on cases of hands-on abuse, online exploitation and Title IX campus assaults.

But she realized she wanted to do something more proactive than reactive. Now, as head of I Have The Right To, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit, she oversees programs nationally that go into the middle and high schools and colleges not only to educate students but also parents and educators.

“I think that a lot of my clients could have had different experiences had they received the education that we provide,” she says.

Going forward, she’d love to expand programs about trauma-informed care to law and medical schools. “I have clients who were survivors of sexual abuse and it took them several doctors and lawyers before they found somebody who could really understand what they were going through,” she says.