OUR TEAM
Staff and Board of Directors
Want to contact one of our team? Send us a message.

into account Staff
We are a passionate, proud and dedicated team, united in our efforts to provide support to survivors of abuse and to hold accountable those who are responsible for the violence.

Stephanie Krehbiel, PhD
Executive Director

Jay Yoder
Director of Operations

Hilary J Scarsella, PhD
Director of Theological Integrity

Erin Bergen
Director of Student Advocacy

Emily Joy Allison
Communications Consultant
Our Board of Directors

Andre Swartley
Director

Azucena Gonzalez
Director

Terri Russ
Director

Stephanie Krehbiel, PhD
Executive Director and Co-Founder
Dr. Stephanie Krehbiel works directly with survivors confronting churches and other religious institutions, accompanying them through reporting processes, investigations, media coverage, and public storytelling. As an advocate, she has worked with over a hundred individual survivors from a range of denominational backgrounds, from Catholic to Amish to nondenominational evangelicals. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, National Catholic Reporter, the Star-Tribune, and numerous smaller publications. Dr. Krehbiel holds a PhD in American Studies from University of Kansas with a concentration in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies, and her work as an advocate began during ethnographic research on institutional violence against LGBTQ+ people in the Mennonite Church USA.
As a collaborator with her Into Account colleagues, Dr. Krehbiel co-wrote a report based on the testimony of forty-four survivors of sexual abuse, assault, and harassment perpetrated by Catholic liturgical composer David Haas, exposing coverups and complicity in the liturgical music industry as well as the Archidiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and contributing to Haas’s lifetime ban from the industry events he once used to target victims. Her posts for the Into Account organizational blog have covered topics such as Title IX regulation changes, the hidden dangers of organizational “lifestyle” policies, sexual abuse in collegiate sports, and the social consequences of institutional betrayal. She is a frequent guest speaker in university and seminary classrooms.
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Jay Yoder
Director of Operations and Co-Founder
Jay Yoder trained in sexual violence advocacy during college at Ohio State University, and has advocated for survivors for 20 years. Trained as sexual violence advocate at SARNCO (Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio), Jay has supported rape survivors during rape exams in hospitals; provided support to callers to a rape crisis hotline; taught workshops and trainings on consent, on supporting trauma survivors, on trauma-informed responses to community conflict, on gender and sexuality, and on undoing oppressions frameworks; and is a self-defense instructor.
Jay spent time working as the Victim’s Services Coordinator for Ohio’s statewide coalition, The Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, supporting rape crisis centers, training police officers and attorneys, and supporting survivors around the state. In addition Jay has supported health care, child abuse, and queer mental health non-profits; as well as political consulting firms in community organizing and fundraising. Jay also co-founded Pink Menno, a movement for queer inclusion in the Mennonite Church.
Jay is certified in Sexual Violence Advocacy, Danger Assessment & Safety Planning, and the Sanctuary Trauma-Informed Model.

Emily Joy Allison
Communications Consultant
Emily Joy Allison is an author, activist and non-profit communications professional as well as the co-founder of the #ChurchToo hashtag, created to expose sexualized violence and abuse in churches, Christian schools and parachurch ministries. Emily‘s full-time gig is in political communications, but she is offering support to the IA team as a Communications Consultant, providing social media strategy, content management, and more. Emily published her debut non-fiction book #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing in March 2021, and has been a critical voice in the conversation about Christianity, purity culture and abuse for over a decade. She currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her wife Caitlin and will be graduating with her Master of Theological Studies degree with a concentration in Religion, Gender and Sexuality from Vanderbilt Divinity School in May of 2022.

Hilary Jerome Scarsella, PhD
Director of Theological Integrity
Hilary is a scholar, speaker, and advocate with expertise in trauma, theology, ethics, religious practice, and policies relevant to sexual violence. She is committed to an intersectional approach to resisting sexual violence, one that centers racial justice. Her work at Into Account focuses on direct partnership with and advocacy for survivors. She is the the primary point person on the IA team for assessing the implicit and explicit theological dimensions of community practices, policies, social patterns, modes of communication, etc., so that the religious dimensions of survivors’ experiences can be named, validated, and addressed in the communities that produced them.
In addition to working directly with survivors, Hilary develops resources to support high quality theological education on the subject of sexual violence. As a part of that work, she consults with religious leaders and communities who want to develop a culture that is more trauma-informed, mindful of sexualized violence survivors who are members of the community, and wise with respect to members who are perpetrators. Outside of her work with Into Account, Hilary is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Director of Gender, Sexual, and Racial Justice at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.

Erin Bergen
Director of Student Advocacy
Erin is an educator, advocate, and dog mom.
From 2014-2016 Erin attended Goshen College, IN. In 2015, she was trained by the Know Your IX organization in Title IX law and student advocacy. With her new found knowledge, Erin worked to rewrite the website, policies, and procedures for the Goshen College Sexual Misconduct Response Team. She started a Survivor Support Network for student survivors of gender violence and did peer-led bystander education trainings. While trying to bring Goshen College into compliance with governmental regulations, she reported her own case of sexual assault as a student. The retaliation and inappropriate conduct of the investigators led Erin to drop out and file a Title IX complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The federal government chose her case for investigation, and substantiated her complaint.
Since then, Erin was trained by the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence as a crisis counselor and advocate. She worked with the emergency hotline and did hospital accompaniments for survivors of sexual violence. Erin works to make her feminism and organizing increasingly intersectional and abolitionist.
In 2020, Erin graduated with her BA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she also received her teaching certification.
When not donning her Title IX cape, Erin wears floral dresses and teaches Kindergarten. Erin’s favorite colors are yellow and rainbow. She has one dog, whose name is Muppet. Muppet is perfect.

Andre Swartley
Director
Andre is a writer and indie publisher in Newton, Kansas. He is on the faculty at Hesston College, where he has been instrumental in encouraging better policies and practices around sexualized violence. He is an award-winning author of four young adult novels. Andre updates and maintains Into Account’s private archive of abuse reports, and works with individual survivors to locate police and court records.

Azucena Gonzalez
Director
Azucena Gonzalez is a Latina, Health Care Data Analyst in Kansas. She gathers data to support quality-improvement efforts in hospitals and clinics. Azucena received a B.A. in Psychology, with certificates in Interprofessional Health Studies and Neuroscience from Bethel College in North Newton, KS. She has worked as a Bilingual Advocate for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. In that role, she served as a translator for survivors during their interactions with the police and other advocates. She listened to immigrant survivors and provided them with resources and skills to advocate for themselves, as well as assistance with navigating the court system. Her continuing focus is on advocating for survivors, including immigrants and people of color, who are unable to receive adequate resources because of language barriers and lack of cultural awareness from those running the system.

Terri Russ
Director
Terri lives in South Bend, Indiana, and teaches Communication Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame. Terri is also an attorney with a background in victim advocacy, and has been invaluable to us when we or our clients have needed guidance around legal issues. She’s a committed justice activist and serves as the Board President for The LGBTQ Center in South Bend as well as being the founder of the Michiana Women Leaders Project.