Pierre R. Berastaín is the Chief Strategy & Operations Officer of DASH, where he has operational responsibility for all program areas.
As Chief Strategy & Operations Officer, Pierre partners closely with the Presidents & CEO to chart DASH’s future growth and strategic response to an increasing demand for the organization’s services.
Prior to DASH, Pierre was the Director of the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (OSAPR) at Harvard University where he led and provided oversight of advocacy, education, and prevention services as well as University-wide coordination to address the needs of people who experienced interpersonal harm. Before Harvard, Pierre served as the Assistant Director of Innovation and Engagement at the National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities (NLN), the federally funded, Latino specific resource center for gender based violence in the United States. During his tenure, Pierre led multi-year federal grant programs under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Justice; partook on public policy initiatives with federal agencies; oversaw strategic communications; and conducted trainings nationally and internationally on sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking. He worked with federal agencies, college campuses and universities, domestic and sexual violence state coalitions, shelters, and community programs to infuse cultural competency on violence intervention and prevention initiatives.
In previous roles, Pierre worked for Renewal House, a domestic violence shelter in Roxbury, Mass as the Restorative Justice Advocate, and served as the Director of Media Relations for the Hispanic Black Gay Coalition. He co-founded the Massachusetts Restorative Justice Collaborative and served as the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) Domestic Violence Coalition. From 2012 to 2013, Pierre was a Fellow at the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s National People of Color Media Institute. His work has appeared in national and international publications and books, including the Huffington Post. From 2015 – 2018, he served on the board of MERGE for Equality, an organization that works to engage men around violence prevention. He is one of the founders of Latinos United for Peace and Equity; sits on the board of Caminar Latino, a national organization dedicated to working with Latino families affected by violence; and serves on the Board of Directors for Transition House, a domestic violence shelter and social justice organization in Cambridge, MA. In 2019, Pierre was named Top 25 Most Influential LGBTQ People of Color in Boston.
Pierre holds a Bachelor’s in Social Anthropology and a minor in Ethnic Studies: Human Rights from Harvard College as well as a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. Originally from Peru, Pierre immigrated to the United States with his family in 1998 and remained an undocumented immigrant for 14 years until he received DACA in 2012.
