Desautels has worked for 8th Day Center for Justice in Chicago, Illinois for over 25 years, focusing on issues of human rights, women in the church, institutional power, and peace.
[1] Previously she ministered as an elementary school teacher, a prison chaplain and a pastoral associate.
[2] Desautels attended Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College[3] and went on to receive a Masters in religious studies from La Salle University.
[2] For her work as a prominent activist, Desautels has been profiled by Rolling Stone[4] and the Chicago Tribune,[5] among others.
[7][8] In November 2001 Desautels, dressed in a funeral shroud and carrying a symbolic foam coffin,[9] trespassed onto federal property at Fort Benning outside Columbus, Georgia as part of a protest against the US Army School of the Americas.