Lori Palisin

Founder & CEO

Lori Palisin is the national award-winning executive director of Safe Journey, a domestic violence services agency that serves more than 500 survivors of domestic violence each year in Erie County, PA. Her decades-long career is marked by an unwavering determination to restore dignity and personal power to all victims of domestic violence.

Lori grew up in rural northwestern Pennsylvania, where she graduated from Corry Area High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in business, liberal arts and science with a minor in psychology from Penn State Behrend. She was hired as a counselor advocate for Safe Journey in 1994. It was there she developed her leadership skills, immersing herself in every facet of domestic violence advocacy – creating policy and procedures, grant writing, developing prevention curriculum and community trainings, and managing the agency in the absence of the executive director. Most importantly, Lori provided direct services to victims, learning first hand over the years the complexity of domestic violence and its negative effects on individuals, families, and the community at large.

With all that experience, Lori was a natural choice to become Safe Journey’s executive director in 2007.  In that role, she works tirelessly to advocate for individual victims and unite communities in rural Erie County around the common goal of eliminating domestic violence. To that end, Lori co-founded the Rural Erie County Domestic Violence Task Force in 2015, uniting a group of diverse professionals to serve as a coordinated community response to domestic violence in Erie County. The work of this group was instrumental to Safe Journey’s ability to apply for and receive a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. That grant became the impetus to the development of PurpleOne, a domestic violence and bystander intervention training and awareness campaign program designed to empower victims and educate community members.

But none of it would have been possible without Lori’s vision and energy to create change. Serving as PurpleOne’s chief executive officer, Lori created the innovative program to educate communities on how to recognize, respond to, and refer victims to state-recognized comprehensive domestic violence agencies like Safe Journey. PurpleOne received national acclaim in 2021 when DomesticShelters.org and Theresa’s Fund selected PurpleOne as a Purple Ribbon Award gold medalist for an Outstanding Awareness Campaign.  In 2023, Lori herself was recognized as a Shelter Executive of the Year Purple Ribbon Award gold medalist.

Lori is continually focused on growth and transforming the lives of increasing numbers of victims and survivors.  Her next vision is the creation of Orange Circles, a school and community-based teen dating violence awareness campaign designed to educate and support youth experiencing all forms of interpersonal violence.  Lori’s work on these campaigns has made her an increasingly significant presence on the local and state level regarding efforts to end domestic violence in our communities. And it doesn’t end there.  Recognizing the value of PurpleOne to communities everywhere, Lori is taking PurpleOne to the national level, offering the program across the nation.  With her conviction that all victims and survivors deserve our support, Lori is inspiring entire communities to join her in the fight to end domestic violence.