A Project of
the San Diego County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls,
the Women's Museum of California,
SDSU Women's Studies Department, and UCSD Women's Center.
Ashley Walker
2006
Bridge Builder
Ashley Walker is widely acknowledged and honored for institutionalizing the domestic violence movement in San Diego. Many decades ago, she pioneered YWCA's Battered Women's Services with the county's first shelter and comprehensive domestic violence services. Through her passionate determination, the City Attorney and Police Domestic Violence services became national models upon which other cities have relied for guidance. She served ten years as a certified trainer in child abuse and domestic violence responses for POST: Police Officers' Standards and Training (all nine County Departments).
Since the 1980s her lectures and seminars have also educated civic, financial, educational, legal, medical, business, religious and social service organizations. Her consulting group, Horizons Unlimited established the protocol for domestic violence services in the U.S. Navy Family Service Centers in the Western Region; her 1983 domestic violence emergency assessment publication was the first used by emergency room staff. In recent years, she brought her sensitivity training and management and organizational skills to her work as Executive Director of San Diego City's Human Relations Commission-a 15-member commission devoted to issues of discrimination and equal opportunity, conflict resolution and violence prevention, and multiculturalism and diversity.