Ren Grabert, M.Ed.

Program Director

Ren joined Midwest Access Project as the new Program Director in January 2020. In this role, Ren manages MAP’s individual clinical training program, its provider and community education program, the speaker’s bureau, and regional collaboration activities. Ren will lead the development and implementation of  innovative program and evaluation strategies.

Ren comes to MAP with over a decade of sexuality and reproductive health education experience. Most recently, Ren worked as a research coordinator and sex educator at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. While there, Ren piloted Lurie’s first ever clinical sex education program, designed to enable physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers to comfortably discuss sexual health matters with adolescent patients, with a specific focus on transgender youth. Ren has been a guest lecturer to medical students across the U.S. at schools including Thomas Jefferson University and California Institute of Technology /USC Keck Medical School.

Over the 2015-2017 school years, Ren served as a small group facilitator and then facilitator coordinator for the American Medical Student Association’s Sexual Health Leadership Course. Ren also worked as a Reproductive Health Center Assistant at Planned Parenthood, where they provided comprehensive reproductive healthcare education and assisted clinicians with long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) insertion and removal procedures.

Ren holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Temple University, and a Master of Human Sexuality Education from Widener University.

Lynne Johnson, JD

Executive Director

Lynne joined Midwest Access Project as its new executive director in the fall of 2017. Lynne has extensive experience in nonprofit management and leadership, program development and oversight, public policy, and fundraising.

Lynne’s work experience included time with the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation and Chicago Foundation for Women. At Chicago Foundation for Women, Lynne served as its Program Officer managing the foundation’s Freedom from Violence and Health grant portfolios. As CFW’s Director of Advocacy, Lynne developed and implemented a strategic advocacy plan for the foundation’s work in freedom from violence and reproductive health. Lynne has advocated for comprehensive sexual health education and worked to end Illinois’ acceptance of Abstinence-Only federal funds.

While serving as Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’s policy director, Lynne led a statewide campaign to transform the community’s response to prostitution and sex trafficking. In that capacity, Lynne led the passage of six legislative initiatives in as many years, including policy victories to defelonize prostitution and reform the state’s human trafficking laws. Lynne created a Litigation Guide to assist attorneys representing survivors of prostitution in petitions to vacate prior prostitution convictions and co-authored a policy proposal entitled, “Statewide System of Specialized Services for Survivors of Prostitution and Trafficking.”

While an attorney in Maryland, Lynne represented survivors of domestic violence in Protective Order hearings and abused and neglected children in Baltimore City’s Juvenile Court system.

Lynne holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Baltimore’s School of Law.

Madeline Mangiaracina

Individual Clinical Training Manager

Madeline was thrilled to join Midwest Access Project’s team as the new Program Associate in the summer of 2019. In this role, Madeline works closely with our individual clinical training program trainees and coordinates their training experiences. Madeline also works with MAP’s community partners to plan and conduct provider and community education workshops.

Before joining the MAP team, Madeline worked at Resilience (formerly Rape Victim Advocates) as their Medical Advocacy Coordinator, where she was the liaison between the rape crisis center and their 17 partner hospitals providing institutional medical advocacy and training. In her time at Resilience, Madeline conducted over 125 hours of training to over 750 medical professionals on working with survivors of sexual violence in healthcare, providing trauma informed medical care, and understanding the neurobiology of trauma. Madeline’s work is driven by her unwavering belief in complete bodily autonomy, and her commitment to influence and change the ways institutions and our community respond to survivor’s experiences.

Madeline also worked as a Reproductive Health Assistant at Planned Parenthood from 2015-2018, where she provided comprehensive reproductive healthcare education and assisted physicians in abortion and no-scalpel vasectomy procedures.

Outside of her work with MAP, Madeline is pursuing a Master’s in Public Health degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago, as a full time Maternal and Child Health/Epidemiology student and enjoys spending time in nature, dancing, crafting, and her cats.