Last Updated: July 26, 2022

By: DanceSafe Board of Directors

This year has been a huge success for DanceSafe! Our organization has been instrumental in harm reduction efforts around the nation, including removing paraphernalia status on test kits in Colorado and huge strides to push education and testing for fentanyl.

An often silent, but very important aspect of DanceSafe is its Board of Directors. We are happy to announce the Board of Directors is growing! As you recall, we added board members Monique Chavez and Jessica Breemen earlier in the year, and now we are thrilled to announce the addition of Sara Gael, MA to our leadership team. These individuals not only bring a diverse skill set to the Board, but more importantly they bring a level of passion needed to develop the mission and vision of DanceSafe. Further, our board members span across the nation, which gives us the ability to expand our reach and promote education in more places!

Sara Gael, MA is a Psychotherapist with several years professional experience with the Zendo Project. She has over 7 years experience in strategic planning, public speaking, project management, program development, networking, human resources, fundraising, financial management, event planning, evaluation, and conflict resolution. Her other specializations include psychology, peer support and the development of safe spaces, harm reduction education, training, and consultation, mediation, festival event collaboration, and interdepartmental emergency service collaboration (medical, law enforcement, security).

Jessica Breeman is a multi-faceted practitioner with over 10 years experience coaching creative strategies, intelligent solutions, and continuous improvement to complex problems with individuals, teams, and communities through servant leadership. During her MSW, Jessica focused research on criminal justice reform, full spectrum harm reduction, drug policy reform, as well as MDMA-assisted therapy. She brings her incredible experience as a Scrum Master to DanceSafe in addition to her past experience as a former DanceSafe intern.

Monique Chavez, JD comes to DanceSafe with over 16 years of experience in harm reduction, event production, project management and anything legal. She co-founded a chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy during law school, and after law school started New Mexico NORML to advocate and push for cannabis policy reform for the medical cannabis patients and consumers of New Mexico. Monique has been involved with harm reduction since the early days of DanceSafe in the late 90s, coming full circle to bring experience in event planning, project management, fundraising, festival design and management to DanceSafe’s leadership team.

DanceSafe simply wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for the passion and perseverance of the predecessors of this growing organization. A special thank you to Bryan Oley for serving 16 years with DanceSafe, and leaving us with a strong foundation to build upon.