For over 20 years, Maren has provided guidance and consultation to communities across rural, urban, and suburban areas nationwide, helping them assess and enhance their approach to gender-based violence. Maren’s commitment the movement began in northern Minnesota in 2000, when she served as the coordinator of an extensive community-based analysis of the U.S. criminal justice system’s response to violence against Indigenous women. This work laid the foundation for a career dedicated to transforming systems that often fail survivors. Since then, Maren has expanded her impact through volunteer roles as an on-call advocate for a domestic violence shelter and as a birth doula for low-income women.
Maren's expertise spans a wide range of systems, including supervised visitation, child protective services, advocacy, and both criminal and civil legal systems. She has co-developed several essential resources, including Engage to Protect: Foundations for Supervised Visitation and Exchange, Building the Practice of Orientation in Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange: A Trainers Guide, and Make the Call – A Toolkit for Advocacy Programs to Implement Advocacy-Initiated Response to Domestic Violence Crimes. Most recently, she contributed to the Ganawenim ingiw abinoojiinyag - Indian Child Welfare Act Institutional Analysis Guidebook.Â