Meet Nigel!

Nigel Perrote | National and State Programs Director at SVJI @MNCASA

Hi all and welcome to this edition of the Rural Realities blog series. My name Nigel Perrote and I am the new National and State Programs Director overseeing the Sexual Violence Justice Institute (SVJI) with the Minnesota Coalition against Sexual Assault (MNCASA). I have a history with MNCASA and SVJI, one as part of a member program, but also as board member for three terms serving as an officer in the position of Secretary, Vice-Chair, and finally Chair in my last term. Coming back to MNCSA and SVJI in this role feels like a homecoming of sorts, so it has been a pretty good return so far.

I started my career working with a Minneapolis based organization, Division of Indian Work working with Urban American Indian populations on a variety of different issues including sexual violence, domestic violence, trafficking, child protection and homelessness. I also worked with a northern MN sexual assault agency based out of Duluth, PAVSA, providing sex trafficking advocacy and implementation of programming under the state’s Safe Harbor law and program. My last few years of employment transitioned me out of the non-profit field into the government sector. I worked with the Minneapolis Health Department as part of their Youth Development and Youth Violence Prevention Programs, supporting policy and programing to addressing healthy sexuality and violence prevention specific to issues of sexual violence and trafficking. I came to SVJI/MNCASA from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, working on policies and programming related to supporting Tribal Nations public safety needs which included support the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Task Force.

The work of SVJI is tied into system change to improve the response to those who have experienced sexual violence. I have found the importance of system change throughout my experiences and in this new role I am exciting to continue to hone my skills around this work and take it to the next level. This past year has been challenging to us all and I believe the thing we can take away from the pandemic and civil unrest is that we have an opportunity to make the necessary changes and reforms to make change a reality for systems to work for all.