Rosie Hidalgo is serving as the Co-Director of the MOSAIC Initiative as a Senior Consultant at BWJP’s National Center on Reimagining Coordinated Community Response. She is also a Visiting Senior Research Scholar in the Human Rights Program of the University of Miami School of Law. Rosie previously served as the Director of the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2023 until January of 2025, after previously serving as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor on Gender-Based Violence at the White House Gender Policy Council from 2021-2023. She also worked at OVW as Deputy Director for Policy from 2014-2017.
Rosie has worked in the movement to end gender-based violence for over 30 years as a public interest attorney and as a national policy advocate. At the outset of her career, she provided direct civil legal services through non-profit organizations in New York and Virginia. She later served as Senior Director of Public Policy for Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities, now known as Esperanza United. Rosie also served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence.
The daughter of immigrants, Rosie spent a total of 10 years as an adult living in three different countries in Latin America, including the Dominican Republic, where she helped establish and coordinate a community-based domestic violence prevention and intervention network and worked as a consultant for the World Bank on social services reforms.
Rosie received her Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She currently lives in Washington, DC.
Rosie's experience in the GBV makes her an exceptional addition to our work here at BWJP. Her dedication makes us stronger as a organization. - Amy J. Sánchez, CEO BWJP
Meet Rosie:
Q: What brought you into the field of gender-based violence?
I graduated from law school one year before the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which was enacted in 1994, and had the opportunity to see the transition in services and support for survivors of domestic violence and their children as a direct legal services provider, as well as the importance of creating a coordinated community response. Additionally, it was through funding from the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) that I was able to collaborate with advocates, survivors, researchers and others in the Latino community to launch the first national resource center focused on preventing and addressing domestic violence in Latino communities.
Q: What drew you to BWJP?
It is exciting to join the wonderful team at BWJP with the breadth of experience that the staff brings across eight national resource centers, helping to transform systems and strengthen the role of communities through survivor-centered approaches. I also appreciate BWJP’s spirit of innovation to support the launch of the MOSAIC Initiative to address emerging issues and mobilize change at the local level, through both a public health and public safety approach, using the framework of the first-ever U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence as a catalyst for action.
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