about
Alison Turkos is a sexual assault survivor, advocate, and storyteller fighting for systemic change.
Whether it’s through telling their story publicly, working behind the scenes with organizations and companies, filing litigation to hold systems accountable, or supporting survivors as they come forward, Alison centers and lifts up survivor voices and pushes the narrative to be more survivor-centric.
Alison has been an architect for change for over a decade, from organizing NYC’s first SlutWalk in 2011 to live tweeting their IUD insertion in an effort to demystify the process for others to leading chants on the steps of the Supreme Court fighting for abortion access.
As an outspoken survivor of sexual assault, Alison has fought to challenge the systems that further harm and silence survivors. During the 2018 Congressional confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Alison joined thousands of protesters in the halls of Congress and personally confronted Joe Manchin about his expected vote to confirm a perpetrator of sexual assault to the nation’s highest court.
After Alison was kidnapped at gunpoint by a Lyft driver and gang-raped in 2017, they refused to stay silent about how system after system failed them and so many other survivors. On January 31st, 2019 Alison filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department because of the callous disregard and negligence they were met with when reporting their sexual assault. The following September, they filed another lawsuit—this time against the rideshare company Lyft, for continuously dismissing their story and refusing to take any meaningful action to make the company’s platform safer.
“I do not believe there is one pathway to justice. I believe sometimes you have to work within a system to change the system. And sometimes you need to tear the whole system down and rebuild it,” says Alison.
In 2020 Alison founded the NYPD Survivor Support Group, working with survivors to build collective power in their communities. The group has supported one another in preparing testimony for City Council meetings, navigating the civil and criminal legal systems, and in June 2022 their relentless incrementalism played a major role in the Department of Justice announcing their investigation into the NYPD Special Victims Division.
Alison worked exhaustively alongside other survivors to pass New York’s Adult Survivors Act (ASA). This landmark law opened a lookback window giving survivors the opportunity to file a civil lawsuit against the individual who harmed them or the institution that knowingly covered up the harm. The ASA is the law that granted E. Jean Carroll the ability to sue, and win, against Donald Trump.
Alison has been interviewed about their experiences and work to hold systems accountable across dozens of national news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, CBS This Morning, New York Magazine’s podcast The Cut on Tuesdays, The Huffington Post, ABC News, Bloomberg, and NBC News.
In addition to their advocacy with sexual assault survivors, Alison works in the reproductive health, rights, and justice field. They have worked to increase access to abortion and contraception in the US and Latin America and currently serve on the steering committee of the All* Above All Action Fund. They previously worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood of New York City, and served on the board of the New York Abortion Access Fund.
Alison was born and raised in Vermont, graduated college in New Hampshire, and lived in New York City for 11 years.
Follow Alison on Twitter: @alisonturkos.