Andrea Clemens - Author/ Activist/ Speaker
SHEARED Mentor since 11/05/2014, Victims of Educator Sexual Misconduct
Andrea received her master’s degree from Boston University in clinical social work and has spent the majority of her career working in higher education. She is currently the Director of Admissions at the Digital Animation & Visual Effects School at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Relating to her personal experience, she has been educating school faculty, students, administrators, parenting groups, mentors, and the general public about educator sexual misconduct for over ten years. She has participated in both local and national television shows, including the Montel Williams Show and Fox News Live.
Andrea is a key member of the speaker’s bureau for S.E.S.A.M.E., a national organization dedicated to preventing sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment of students by teachers and school staff. She is also an instructor with the non-profit organization, KidSafe Foundation, whose mission is to prevent child sexual abuse, bullying and internet dangers by providing education programs to children, seminars to parents, workshops to teachers and counselors and trainings to all professionals working with children.
Andrea continues to invest time and energy ensuring schools can be safe environments for our children – free from harassment and abuse.
Debbie Ghavami - Cofounder, Vice President and Secretary of SHEARED
SHEARED Mentor since 4/6/2014, Parents of Cult Victims (One-On-One and Group)
Debbie feels fortunate to have been a stay at home mom during her daughter’s early years, after leaving the cosmetic industry. Married to her restauranteur husband, Majid, a native of Tehran, Iran, for 27 years, Debbie worked intermittently as the restaurants' special events' coordinator and in outside sales when not accompanying their daughter’s travels in the early part of her career. As the mother of Marissa Ghavami, who was the victim of a one-on-one cult, Debbie knows firsthand the nightmare and devastation a parent feels when their child’s entire personality drastically changes and their child’s world that once was, comes to an abrupt halt. Debbie is grateful and proud of her daughter’s fortitude in not only healing, but starting SHEARED in order to help others and to educate the public as well as professionals. Email Debbie at debbie@sheared.org.
Marissa Ghavami - Founder, President and CEO of SHEARED
SHEARED Mentor since 4/6/2014, Cult Victims (One-On-One and Group), Victims of Emotional, Psychological, Verbal, Spiritual and Financial Abuse, Parents and other loved ones of victims
Marissa Ghavami founded SHEARED, Inc. in 2014 along with her Ph.D. therapist and mother at the end of her healing journey from surviving a "one-on-one cult." (To learn more about Marissa's story and hear her share it on an internationally syndicated online radio show, please see our About Our Founder page.) She started SHEARED in response to the enormous need she saw; the lack of integration between the trauma, mental health and medical fields, the missing link between all forms of abuse and exploitation and the harmful lack of understanding of trauma common among the public and professionals. She wanted to create the organization that she so desperately looked for during her healing process, sharing the information from various fields and sources that helped her the most by shining a light of accurate understanding of the root issues, and to provide hope by being an example of true healing.
Marissa grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, the only child of Debbie and Majid Ghavami, a former make-up artist and model and later a stay at home mom and a restaurateur, respectively. Marissa has also worked as a professional actor, singer, voice over artist and model since she was a child. Please visit www.marissaghavami.com and Marissa's IMDb page for more information about her work in the entertainment - or as she prefers to call it, storytelling - industry. Marissa also excelled academically, graduating high school as Valedictorian, President of the Student Council and with a 4.2 GPA, and was accepted into the prestigious New York University and University of Southern California, among others, but chose to defer her acceptance to continue pursuing her career. She later studied acting, voice and speech and movement at the esteemed William Esper Studio in New York, NY, the world's foremost studio dedicated to Meisner based actor training, and singing with the acclaimed Seth Riggs and later, Liz Caplan.
Marissa enjoys spending time with her family, friends and pets (a Maltese dog, Q-Tip, and two Bengal cat rescues, Sebastian and Viola), going out to eat, coffee, tea, reading, writing, poetry, yoga, theatre, film, television, music and dance as well as being an advocate for fellow survivors and victims and doing her very best to affect the change that she believes is so needed. Email Marissa at marissa@sheared.org.
Natacha Tormey - HR Consultant and Writer
SHEARED Mentor since 9/12/2014, Cult Victims (Group, including people born into cults)
Natacha Tormey was born and raised within The Children of God, a religious cult that became infamous for its bizarre sexual practices and religious doctrines. After escaping the cult at the age of 18, she fought for a normal life in society and her struggle gave her the driving force to publish her memoir.
Natacha is an HR Consultant and Writer who strives to raise awareness of the damage that cults impose on their victims and the psychological, physical and emotional aftermaths of a cultic experience. She has recently partnered with SHEARED organisation who work towards the same goals.
She lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband and two very mischievous cats.
MENTORS
SHEARED works with survivors of various types of abuse, exploitation and trauma who have experienced healing and made the transition from victim to survivor to advocate, along with some of our own staff, to provide mentors to victims and survivors of abuse and their loved ones at no cost. It is important to note that our mentors do not and should never take the place of a mental health or medical professional and therefore SHEARED, Inc. holds no legal responsibility; they simply provide very real hope for victims, survivors and their loved ones who have lived through similar traumas, pointing them towards helpful resources and offering genuine empathy, support and guidance. Our staff is also able to advocate for victims and survivors and try to connect them with proper help in their area. Click the links to go to our mentors' websites or email addresses to contact them directly or contact us if you would like our input on who to connect with. Note: if you are looking for help connecting with proper treatment or other advocacy work, please be sure to contact our staff, not one of our other mentors.