Nonprofit works with Apparo to protect curriculum they built to help expand support for survivors of sexual abuse
Brave Step empowers individuals who have been impacted by sexual abuse. To shape a strong, supportive community, they:
- Provide personalized services that help adults impacted by sexual abuse reclaim the life they deserve;
- Foster brave public conversations about sexual abuse; and
- Cultivate courageous changemakers.
We met with Crystal Emerick, Founder and Executive Director of Brave Step to learn about her recent work with Apparo’s Tech Therapy team.

Crystal explained, “We want to be able to grow our programming by training mental health professionals from other organizations to deliver our curriculum. To do this, we are working on a portal for Loved Ones program facilitators with the tools they need to deliver a curriculum that we designed from the ground up. We want to be sure that we are protecting our valuable, one of a kind intellectual property.
“Before coming to Apparo, I spent hours trying to figure out on my own how to implement something like this. Todd (Reavis, Apparo Technical Lead) helped me understand that first I needed to create a policy around sensitivity labels, spelling out how we want to use and protect our information. Todd gave me a lot of great guidance and useful resources. He brought my blood pressure down on more than one occasion. When this is fully implemented, we’ll be able to protect what we built and work towards are goals of expanding the reach of our work.
“Based on our recent tech related challenges, Apparo was that safe place to turn to, where we knew we would get solid, strategic counsel. Continuously, I get sound advice and support. Honestly, I don’t know where else we would go to get it.”