Dr. Busch-Armendariz has more than 20 years of experience working to end interpersonal violence. She is the University Presidential Professor at the School of Social Work and Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Austin. Noël teaches graduate courses in domestic violence, research, and social policy and an undergraduate course on modern slavery. Noël is the founding and current director of the UT Austin Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (IDVSA), a collaboration of the School of Social Work, the School of Nursing, the School of Law, and the Bureau for Business Research with more than 150 affiliate community organizations. Since joining UT, Noël has directed research totaling more than $8.3 million dollars in external funding for the National Institute of Justice, the Office for Victims of Crime, the Office on Violence Against Women, the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, and the Texas Health and Human Services, to name a few. Her areas of specialization are interpersonal violence, refugees, asylees, survivors of human trafficking, and international social work. She is regularly called as an expert witness in criminal, civil, and immigration cases and directs statewide and national trainings on the topic. She is well published and has been recognized by her colleagues and students with many awards. Noël is a returned Peace Corps volunteer and a licensed social worker. She is happily married to Larry Armendariz and takes the utmost joy in parenting her son, Daniel. She is a survivor of sexual assault.Dr. Nsonwu is an Associate Professor and Interim Bachelor of Social Work Program Director at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in the Department of Sociology and Social Work. Over the last two decades she has also held previous teaching and administrative positions at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and High Point University. For over 25 years Maura has practiced as a clinician, educator and researcher in the areas of refugee resettlement, human trafficking, health care, child welfare and social work education. Since 2004, Maura has been a Research Fellow with the Center for New North Carolinians at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where her research has focused on working with refugee and immigrant communities and issues of human trafficking. Her collaborative work, on a number of interdisciplinary projects, has been recognized as the recipient of awards. She was the 2010 recipient of the Sister Gretchen Reintjes award which recognizes persons who have made outstanding contributions to refugee and immigrant communities. Maura has conducted multiple funded research projects with co-authors Noël Busch-Armendariz and Laurie Cook Heffron, at the University of Texas at Austin in evaluating the delivery of social services to human trafficking victims and creating typologies of traffickers. Their research team has presented at conferences throughout the United States and has numerous publications. Maura lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with her husband, a Nigerian immigrant. They have three adult children ages 20, 21 and 24 years old.Dr. Cook Heffron is an Assistant Professor of Social Work in the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. She has interest and expertise in the areas of forced migration, domestic and sexual violence, and human trafficking. Laurie has both direct social work practice and research experience with a variety of communities, including refugees, asylum-seekers, trafficked persons, and other immigrants. Her recent research explores the experiences of, and relationships between, violence against women and migration, with a focus on migration from Central America to the United States. Laurie studied Linguistics at Georgetown University and earned a Master of Social Work (MSW) and Doctorate in Social Work from The University of Texas at Austin. Laurie is, above all, a mother of two energetic and creative children.
