Rev. Sally N. MacNichol Ph.D

Rev. Sally N. MacNichol, Ph.D, has been an anti-violence activist, advocate and educator for over three decades, counseling victims of domestic violence, designing and facilitating empowerment groups for survivors, working with men who batter and abuse, and training hundreds of staff from child welfare programs and community based organizations across New York City’s five boroughs. Instrumental in developing CONNECT’s wholistic prevention model, she has helped to cultivate and sustain hundreds of community partnerships in a wide variety of contexts, as well as serving on numerous committees working to reform NYC’s domestic violence policies and practices.

Sally created and leads CONNECTFaith, a decade-long interfaith movement in New York City to build the capacity of religious leaders and communities of faith to work to end intimate partner abuse and co-occurring forms of family violence. CONNECT Faith currently partners with over 40 faith communities, offering customized training, support for education and awareness events, resource development, technical assistance for the creation of family violence ministries, consultation for safe practices and policies, and referrals for faith-based counseling.

Over the years, Sally has mentored many women (and some men) of faith as they developed their own ministries committed to addressing gender justice and preventing intimate violence, and has been a spiritual counselor to numerous survivors of abuse. Her interfaith theological roundtable has met faithfully every month for last 14 years providing space for people of faith to deconstruct and transform the belief systems, theological norms, and faith community practices that support abuse. In 2012, Sally also spearheaded the formation of the Ending Child Sexual Abuse (ECSA) Faith Collaborative, which developed and piloted the Safe Faith Community Project, a nine-month training program for churches working to address and prevent child sexual abuse.

Sally serves on the board of Freedom House, one of the few domestic violence shelters in the country for people with disabilities, on the advisory board of House of Peace, a nonprofit organization working to address intimate violence in NYC’s Muslim Communities, and on the steering committee of the New York City Elder Abuse Center of New York. She was honored to be named a New York New Abolitionist and is the recipient of an Agent of Change Award from the New York City Coalition on Working With Abusive Partners (CoWAP), the Seasoned with Hope Award from New Hope for the World Ministries and the Unitas Distinguished Alumnae Award from Union Theological Seminary. Her published work includes “We Make the Road by Walking: Reflections on the Legacy of White Anti-Racist Activism” in Disrupting White Supremacy from Within, edited by Robin Gorsline, Jennifer Harvey and Karin Case, and “Kin’dom Come: Houses of Worship and Gender Justice in the 21stCentury” in Learning to Lead: Lessons in Leadership for People of Faith, edited by Rev. Willard Ashley. Sally earned her Masters of Divinity and Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.