Lisa Nitsch, MSW

Director of Training & Education

Lisa is responsible for House of Ruth Maryland’s intervention services for abusive partners and the Training Institute, which coordinates professional development for staff, external community education, and professional technical assistance. She has been with House of Ruth Maryland since 1998 and has advanced through a variety of positions, including overseeing the agency’s Clinical Services for survivors and their children, the Teen Initiative, and the Developmental Childcare Center.

Lisa is an appointed member of the Maryland Governor’s Family Violence Council and is on the Board of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence.  She served as Vice President of the national organization, Women in Fatherhood, and as Co-Chair of Maryland’s Abuse Intervention Collaborative. She has been on training teams for notable organizations such as Futures Without Violence, Battered Women’s Justice Project, Women of Color Network, Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community, and the National District Attorneys Association. She has served as an advisor to the United States White House, the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, and the United States Department of Health & Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families.

Lisa is most proud of being recognized as a field leader in Ed Gondolf’s 2015 book, “Gender-Based Perspectives on Batterer Programs”, her 2013 award from the Center for Urban Families for her “years of dedication in serving Baltimore City’s most vulnerable citizens”, and the Special Day of Honor designated for her by Mayor Nagin in 2007, for “promoting positive outcomes and providing support to the fathers of New Orleans” following the devastation of hurricane Katrina.

Her current, but ever-changing, interests include developing programs for abusive partners within disinvested communities that address the dual experience of both holding privilege and being oppressed, increasing access to learning tools for service providers globally, and exploring community-based accountability models for abusive partners beyond the criminal legal system.

Lisa’s roots run deep in her hometown of Baltimore City, Maryland, where she proudly works and lives with her remarkably patient husband, incredible nieces, and gentle pit bull.

Angélique Black McKoy, LGPC, NCC, CTP

Training Institute Manager

Angélique McKoy is the Training Institute Manager at the House of Ruth Maryland (HRM). In this role she oversees the efforts of the Training Institute team and ensures the quality of its services with efforts to best meet the educational needs of the community. She is also responsible for creating professional development opportunities that are responsive to HRM’s staff and develop a package of technical assistance products that highlight field best practices and serve as a social enterprise for the organization.

Angélique is a seasoned trainer and facilitator a well as a Licensed Professional Counselor and National Certified Counselor (NCC). She has notable counseling experience with a myriad of populations including children and families (child-serving organizations/OMHC), child welfare (treatment foster care), marriage and singles (pastoral ministry).  She is also licensed minister, public speaker, pastoral counselor, and recorded singer.

Angélique is a native New Yorker, transplanted to Maryland, and holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Phoenix, a CACREP-accredited master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and is clinically licensed in the state of Maryland, along with Trauma and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace certifications.

As a fierce advocate for special needs children and families, her philanthropic work includes serving as Co-Chairperson of the Harford County Special Education Citizens Advisory Committee (SECAC) and a Board Member of Not-Another Child, Inc. in New York City, whose mission is to provide wholeness, healing, and advocacy to communities and families of gun violence and other traumatic events.

Charnell Danae’ Covert, MAWH

Community Educator

Charnell Covert is an educator, activist, community organizer, minister and  healer. Charnell currently works as the community educator for the House of Ruth Maryland, one of the leading organizations against Intimate Partner Violence in families and communities. A seasoned educator, she is currently faculty in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Towson State University where she uses liberation and creative pedagogy that challenges her students to become servant leaders in their own spheres of influence.

Previous roles include working  with FORCE: upsetting rape culture, an anti-sexual assault and intimate partner violence collective, as the community organizer were she helped to lead local, national, and international outreach with community based organizations while developing new research that centers the voices of survivors of sexual assault, intimate partner violence/abuse.  Specifically, she was one of the lead organizers, facilitators, mc, and performers at FORCE’s largest event for over 20,000 participants in one weekend held in Washington D.C. at the National mall called the Final Monument Quilt Display and Healing Festival (MAY 2019). She started activism, community organizing, and large scale performance work when she was 14 in her beloved home city of Baltimore. Covert has written three plays all of which center the health narratives and healing stories of Black women and girls and their communities. Through her integrative consulting company, Covert Consulting, founded in 2011, she has served as creative director and contributor to several community based and national arts projects including but not limited to the New School Social Justice and Arts Conference (2005-2009), Essence’s 50th Anniversary Music Festival (2020), and various “dance stories” with original choreography performed by youth dancers from the He Has Risen Dance Ministry also founded by Ms. Covert in 2002.

Charnell has been a fierce advocate for justice for Black folk and people of color, particularly Black women and girls, wherever she goes. Recent movement work includes her work with #Sayhername and #metoo Baltimore movements which both center Black women(cis+trans), girls, and non-binary folks experiences of violence with the police and sexual assault. Her artistic and social justice work has been profiled in print, tv, radio, and social media including but not limited to The Baltimore Sun, Time Out New York, The Boston Herald, BBC World News, and most recently the Library of Congress- the world’s largest library and collection of global leaders.

She identifies as a proud and bold victim survivor of childhood molestation, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence. She uses her platforms of research, teaching, spiritual healing, and performance arts to encourage other victim-survivors, allies, and anyone that the popular culture tends to forget.

You can tune into her podcast The Healing Journey with Charnell Covert on all major podcast platforms. Feel free to connect with her on IG and Twitter @justcharnell or Charnell Covert at FB so that we can heal the hood together