Danielle Gallo

Danielle Gallo is thrilled to be a Project Coordinator for Family Voices! Based in Washington DC with a unique and varied professional history, Danielle is a deeply passionate, mission-driven, multi-hyphenate hurricane. She is a human rights advocate, a teacher of multilingual students with disabilities, an actor and theatre artist, a Brazilian jiu jitsu world ranked competitor and coach, and a queer, first-generation college graduate with disabilities, who has made it her mission to advocate for inclusion and accessibility. Danielle is the first ever graduate of American University to have earned a dual degree in Theatre and International Relations– an innovative combination that has driven her passion for using storytelling and the arts as a means of transformative justice, peacebuilding, and community empowerment.

Danielle’s passion for sustainable and community-driven advocacy led her to international human rights nonprofits, including the European Disability Forum in Brussels, Belgium, where she served as the Strategic Communications and Policy Coordinator. There, Danielle worked to execute massive strategic communication and political campaigns to lobby for a more inclusive and accessible world for over 200 million Europeans with disabilities. Since then, she has worked for several organizations and coordinated efforts in gender rights, educational access, mental health advocacy, democratic governance, global health, religious freedom, and cross-cultural exchanges in post-genocidal countries across the globe.

Educational access has always been a pillar of Danielle’s personal and professional life, and as such, her experience as an educator and youth advocate is extensive. Danielle has worn many hats: as a preschool teacher, a theatre arts educator, an educator of students with disabilities, a director, an online learning specialist, a writer of accessible curriculums, and a Brazilian jiu jitsu coach for the last decade. She has always been eager to tangibly make a difference in students’ lives, and be able to witness the impact she was making. But in doing so, Danielle’s commitment to creating systemic changes and building lasting foundations of inclusion was strengthened, and she has excitedly jumped back into the behind-the-scenes advocacy world.

Outside of work, you can find Danielle geeking out over Shakespeare, curating weirdly specific Spotify playlists, trying pescatarian recipes with herbs that she and her boyfriend grow, planning how she will win Survivor one day, and training to compete for more world titles in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.