Courtney Underwood was born and raised in Dallas and graduated in the top 1% of her class at Southern Methodist University. During her freshman year at SMU, Courtney learned that Parkland was the only hospital in Dallas County performing rape kits. Dallas was also the largest city in the country without a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program and the largest city in the country without an independent rape crisis center. Courtney’s fierce determination to create change has grown into a twenty year campaign to improve sexual assault services across North Texas. The Dallas Morning News has deemed Courtney “the Dallas area’s most prominent advocate for sex crime victims.” 

          Courtney continues to lead the charge in ensuring that victims of sexual violence in North Texas will never again search for help only to find none, as she did when she was a teenage victim in Dallas. She has designed, developed and funded multiple SANE Programs across North Texas and has raised millions of dollars in support these programs. From bringing rape kits and counseling services to Southern Dallas for the first time in Dallas history, to assisting in the funding and opening of Courtney’s SAFE Place, the first and only forensic clinic in North Texas providing survivors with the opportunity to receive care outside of an ER setting, to helping support the only fully certified pediatric SANE Program in North Texas exclusively serving Children’s Dallas and Plano, her work, expertise and experience have helped ensure that survivors across North Texas receive the best in care as well as the most advanced forensic services available. At Courtney’s SAFE Place survivors receive trauma-informed care, advocacy services and medications all at no charge; in addition to providing a calmer clinical setting preferred by law enforcement and survivors alike, Courtney’s SAFE Place played an even more important role during the COVID pandemic; the clinic remained open 24/7 and provided an opportunity for all emergency rooms to transfer out non-critical patients to prevent possible exposure to COVID in the hospital.

          Courtney continues to blaze a trail for survivors to find hope, healing and justice. Courtney was a part of Gerald Turner’s President’s Task Force on Sexual Misconduct and played in an integral role in the authoring and passing of Senate Bill 1191, which requires every emergency room in Texas to provide and perform rape kits at a time when over 89% of ERs were not providing these services. Serving on multiple task forces and county teams over the years, she’s also the current Chairman of Safer Dallas Better Dallas, The Turning Point Rape Crisis Center, and the Dallas SART (Sexual Assault Response Team) SANE Oversight Committee. As the first woman to ever serve as Chairman of the Rotary Club of Dallas Foundation Board, Courtney received an award for her leadership as well as her work revamping the policies, procedures and governing practices of the multimillion dollar foundation. Her philanthropic work has been recognized and lauded in multiple new stories, investigative reports and local and regional publications, with her most recent award being the inaugural Chief’s Citizen Award presented by Chief Garcia to Courtney for her extensive work with the Dallas Police Department over the last 18 years and more particularly personally leading the charge these last two years of Chief’s Garcia’s Seeding Initiative and working with at risk kids in the Dallas community to create positive experiences with officers in uniform. In addition to all her philanthropic work, she is also the Owner of Underwood Financial and CEO of Underwood Commercial Properties, multimillion dollar portfolios that span retail properties as well as large scale land holdings. While she has received dozens of awards, Courtney credits her greatest accomplishment as knowing that survivors across North Texas now have dozens of options of where to go for help and services, when just fourteen years ago there was only one option in Dallas County.