About Scheherazade

Scheherazade Tillet is one of the rising feminist activists and leaders of her generation. Since 1998, she has been committed to creating a national platform that speaks out against sexual violence against women and girls. Upon graduating from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2000, Scheherazade began a Story of a Rape Survivor (SOARS), an award- winning and innovative multimedia performance which intimately examines her sister’s healing from sexual assault.   In 2003, SOARS became the flagship program for A Long Walk Home, Inc., the non-profit she co-founded with her sister that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against girls and women.   Scheherazade’s SOARS photographs are featured in two award-winning human rights documentaries, “NO! The Rape Documentary” and “Rape Is…”   After earning her Masters in Art Therapy from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003, she began working as an art therapist at Chicago’s leading organization to end sexual violence, the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago. Scheherazade was the only rape crisis counselor in the Westside of Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhoods, serving communities that have the third highest sexual assaults and homicide rates in Illinois. As Executive Director of A Long Walk Home, she also co-created the Girl/Friends Leadership Institutes, arts-based programs that empower adolescent girls in Chicago to advocate for themselves and end violence against girls and women in their schools and communities. Scheherazade’s innovative work as an activist and art therapist earned her the  Moxie Award for Excellence and Creativity from Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) in 2007. In 2010, Scheherazade was nominated for Glamour Magazine’s “Woman of the Year Award” for her work to end to violence against girls and women.   Currently, Scheherazade is a board member of Prevention Forces, an HIV prevention organization in Chicago, and is the Chair of Community Outreach for the Illinois Art Therapy Association.  She is working on two photography projects, “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” and “Cabrini-Green” a social documentary project on gentrification and the Cabrini-Green public housing development in Chicago.