MadFreedom Advocates Staff
Chris Nial
CEO of MadFreedom Advocates
Chris Nial was the team lead for Pathways Vermont’s Community Center and Statewide Warmline until taking on his new role for MadFreedom Advocates. He serves as the co-chair to the board of Alyssum, and has been working in mental health peer support for the past 4 years following his own experience with a mental health crisis and extreme state. He is incredibly passionate about making more spaces for alternative approaches to mental health outside of the traditional medical model, and promoting the voices and choices of psychiatric survivors, ex-patients, consumers, and mad folks.
He particularly believes strongly in people’s capacity to support one another, believing in people’s lived experiences, and reducing the harms caused by psychiatric systems and dominant narratives about mental health.
Neilah Rovinsky
Advocacy and Education Coordinator
Neilah Rovinsky is a psychiatric survivor and a passionate advocate for systemic change and mad liberation. After spending over two years in an involuntary abusive residential facility from ages 16-18, Neilah emerged with a determination to challenge and transform systems of harm.
As a former Project Manager at UnSilenced, she helped organize a lobbying trip to Washington, DC to advocate for the Stop Institional Child Abuse Act (SICAA) and led campaigns to raise awareness of the harms of seclusion, restraint and coercive control. With three years of experience as an early childhood educator at the Greater Burlington YMCA, Neilah emphasizes a relationship-centered approach, fostering autonomy, choice, and respect for youth.
Her commitment to liberation for all and ending all carceral systems extends to FreeHer VT, where she has volunteered to support legislation to halt new prison construction in Essex. Neilah has also interned with AsylumWorks in DC, helping asylum seekers share their stories to drive asylum policy reform.
In her new role at MadFreedom Advocates, Neilah is dedicated to advancing the rights of individuals labeled as mentally ill, with a focus on achieving meaningful policy changes, advocacy initiatives, and training programs that amplify marginalized voices and effectively represent the lived experiences and goals of our community.
Shea Witzberger
Communications Coordinator
Shea Witzberger (they/them) has worked as a writer, facilitator, community organizer, educator, survivor support advocate, transformative justice practitioner, celebrant, and artist. Shea was a co-facilitator and co-author of the Brattleboro Community Safety Review Project, has held multiple roles at Pathways VT, recently worked as the Interim Director of the SafeSpace Anti-Violence Project, and was the Emcee for Mad Pride VT 2024.
Shea’s anti oppression and communication work spans across movements and modalities. You will find their writing sprinkled across the internet, their voice in organizing meetings and on stages, their banners and flags and puppets at parades and rallies, their art thumb tacked to many kitchen and outhouse walls, and their body, typically behind an N95 mask, in spaces centering disability justice. Shea’s vision of mad liberation is a liberation that cannot be separated from the liberation of all people, and the liberation of the planet from white supremacy and capitalism.