Education Grounded in Lived Experience and Real Life.
Lanita Simmons is a domestic violence educator, consultant, survivor, and founder of Compass Forward, where she develops education, resources, training, and practical support for survivors, organizations, workplaces, families, and communities.
Domestic violence conversations need more understanding and fewer assumptions.
Too many conversations about domestic violence still begin with questions like, “Why didn’t she leave?” instead of asking what made leaving difficult, dangerous, complicated, or impossible at that moment.
Compass Forward was created to help people understand the realities behind those questions and to provide education that is practical, survivor-centered, and useful beyond awareness campaigns alone.
A perspective shaped by survival, work, leadership, and real systems.
Lanita brings lived survivor experience together with more than two decades of experience working in refining and construction environments.
That professional background gives her a practical understanding of workplaces, leadership structures, employee concerns, safety culture, communication challenges, and the reality that domestic violence does not disappear when someone arrives at work.
Her work brings together:
- Lived survivor experience
- Domestic violence education
- Workplace and organizational experience
- Survivor-centered communication
- Practical resource development
- Workplace domestic violence education
- Training and workshop development
- Support that respects individual autonomy
Surviving abuse changes the way certain questions sound.
Questions that may sound simple from the outside can feel very different to someone who has experienced control, fear, isolation, financial dependence, threats, manipulation, or the gradual loss of autonomy.
Lanita’s work is rooted in helping people understand those realities without reducing survivors to statistics, stereotypes, or a single version of what domestic violence is supposed to look like.
The goal is not simply to create sympathy. It is to create better understanding, better responses, and better options.
Support should increase autonomy, not replace it.
Compass Forward is built around a few principles that shape its education, resources, coaching, and organizational work.
Survivor-Centered
Survivors are people with individual experiences, priorities, responsibilities, fears, strengths, and choices—not one universal story.
Autonomy Matters
Support should provide information, options, resources, and direction without taking decision-making away from the person receiving it.
Practical Education
Education should help people recognize what they are seeing, understand what may be happening, and know what they can actually do next.
Domestic violence is also a workplace issue.
Years spent inside demanding industrial workplaces shaped Lanita’s understanding of how employees, managers, supervisors, HR teams, safety professionals, and leaders function inside real organizations.
Compass Forward uses that perspective to help workplaces address domestic violence in a way that is practical, realistic, and appropriate to the roles people actually hold.
The goal is not to turn workplaces into domestic violence agencies. It is to help them recognize concerns, respond appropriately, connect employees with resources, and build stronger systems of support.
One mission. Multiple ways to reach people.
Survivor Education & Resources
Practical guides, workbooks, courses, tools, and educational resources designed to help survivors better understand what they are experiencing and what may come next.
Training & Workshops
Domestic violence education for workplaces, organizations, community groups, managers, employees, HR professionals, leadership teams, and other audiences.
Coaching & Navigation
Structured support for people who need help sorting through priorities, resources, transitions, and life after survival mode.
Speaking & Consulting
Survivor-centered speaking, workplace consultation, organizational education, community conversations, media participation, and customized support.
Bring a more practical domestic violence conversation to your audience.
Contact Compass Forward to discuss training, workshops, speaking, workplace domestic violence education, consulting, coaching, community events, media opportunities, or customized programming.