Saida M. Abdi, PhD, LICSW, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. She is a trained clinician and expert in refugee trauma and resilience. She earned her PhD in Sociology and Social Work from Boston University. Dr. Abdi has worked for more than 20 years with refugee and immigrant youth and families. Her area of focus is building individual, family, and community resilience and improving mental health access and engagement among trauma-impacted refugee and immigrant children and families. Dr. Abdi is a leader in the adaptation and implementation of Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R). She is also the co-author of a recently published book, Mental Health Practice with Immigrant and Refugee Youth: A Socioecological Framework (American Psychological Association, 2020).

Bijoux Bahati is a program manager for implementation of Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees Youth Program at Jewish Family Services, a category III funded site. In this role, Ms. Bahati recruits, trains, supervises, and supports Cultural Brokers and other TST-R Program Staff in trauma-informed and strength-based care. Ms. Bahati works tirelessly to bridge the cultural and linguistic gaps. She has a great understanding of displaced youth’s acculturation experiences and ability to navigate nuanced communications with caregivers and community leaders. Ms. Bahati has worked with refugee, immigrant and asylum seekers youth and families for over 10 years. Her lived experience as a refugee adolescent brings a critical perspective to serving refugee youth in cultural transition and key service team member in equipping them with necessary skills to make a healthy adjustment and develop as leaders. Ms. Bahati holds BSW from The University of Vermont and MSW from The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Other professional trainings include business development, TST-R community outreach, skills-based groups and regulation focused phase of treatment. Outside work, Ms. Bahati is a dedicated mother of two children. She loves to learn and dance.

Sarah E. “Betsy” Bledsoe, Ph.D., MPhil, MSW, is Co-Director of the National Initiative for Trauma Education and Workforce Development. Dr. Bledsoe is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work. She is also founding principal investigator of the Health Equity for Rural Mothers and Families (HER) Lab and principal investigator of MI-PHOTOS, Community Voices and Whole Robeson Together, all community based participatory research studies in partnership with families and service providers in Robeson County, N.C. Dr. Bledsoe’s research reflects over 25 years of experience conducting community-based and national studies to strengthen the mental health of adults, adolescents, children, and families surviving poverty, discrimination and trauma and the workforce serving them. She has expertise in mental health services, intervention, implementation, and community based participatory research. She focuses primarily on health inequities associated with trauma related, mood, and anxiety disorders during the perinatal period and beyond. Her research has examined the development, implementation and dissemination of evidence-based practice and empirically supported interventions to treat psychiatric illnesses and support emotional health and wellbeing with attention to the cultural acceptability and adaptation and of these practices. A community-engaged scholar, Dr. Bledsoe is dedicated to partnering with communities to understand and address the factors that impact health inequities and the emotional health and wellbeing of children, adults, families, and communities.

Shannon Crossbear articulates her purpose as "to demonstrate and promote gentle healing." She expresses her commitment to healing through her work in the world. Her own community and family history propelled her to develop leadership to address disparities that have led to poor outcomes for friends and relatives. Shannon’s work has included facilitating and consulting with the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, Georgetown University, The National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the Surgeon Generals Conference on Children’s Mental Health. She has worked with tribal and non tribal communities in providing technical assistance to Systems of Care and Circles of Care utilizing traditional interventions and the promotion of culturally congruent and trauma informed practices. Shannon has worked in communities throughout the contiguous United States and Alaska, as well as within Canada, to address systemic change for improved out comes for children and their families. Ms. Crossbear has facilitated and supported practices and services that include the provision of culturally-cemented early childhood; parenting programs; supports for transition age youth, young adults, and families with mental health and substance abuse issue. Ms Crossbear is skilled in trauma-informed community engagement. She has worked with supporting organized stakeholder voice and representation at local and national levels through various behavioral health initiatives.

Zina Fernandez was born in Puerto Rico, and settled in Massachusetts 36 years ago. In addition to fostering many children (unrestricted and kinship), Zina has been a case worker and family resource coordinator at the Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Program at Lutheran Social Services (now known as Ascentria Care Alliance). Zina became a facilitator for the Massachusetts Approach to Partnership in Parenting where she met Taina Pabon, an administrator at the FACES Clinic, who had attended a closing session she led. Pabon then introduced Zina to Dr. Heather C. Forkey, the clinic director, who hired Zina three and half years ago as a Trauma Coach. During Zina’s work at the FACES clinic another FaCes trauma coach, Dianne Lanni introduced he to the work of the NCTSN and to Chris Foreman, a member of the NCCTS Site Integration Team who invited her to become an active member of the Partnering With Youth And Families Committee. Zina is now co-chair of that committee, and an active member of other NCTSN groups: the Latin American Children and Families, Collaborative Group and the Racial Justice Webpage and Definitions Work Group. Last, but not least, this year Zina was invited to be part of the NCTSN Steering Committee, and she is now a member of this group as well. Zina has been training and facilitating the NCTSN Resource Parent Curriculum in Spanish as well as in English for about 3 years. Dr. Rocio Chang invited Zina to Puerto Rico to do a presentation and training on the RPC to education and mental health professionals presented by Universidad Central of Puerto Rico. In addition, Zina has been collaborating in the rewrite or the RPC in both English and Spanish.

Chase Giroux, LMHC, has over 20 years of experience working in the field of community mental health and local non-profit agencies. After attaining their degree in counseling, Chase became a therapist trained in TF-CBT and ARC. They specialize working with children and families who exhibit a complex trauma response through a variety of interventions. Chase is passionate about building strong and resilient communities so that all children and families can thrive by utilizing a trauma-informed and culturally-responsive lens. After spending time in Buddhist monasteries, practicing mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, Chase was inspired to make this beautiful practice accessible to as many people as possible. Becoming trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and a certified Koru mindfulness trainer has allowed Chase to share this practice in a more secular context. Chase lives with their family in Northampton, Massachusetts, where they can be found playing and coaching sports in their community, hiking, and meditating.

Kay Jankowski, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and Director of the Dartmouth Trauma Interventions Research Center and Director of Psychology Services in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. She has focused most of her career on trying to improve the lives of at-risk and trauma-affected children, teens, and families. Kay is currently leading a number of projects including a 5-year SAMHSA sponsored grant (Project LAUNCH Upper Valley) aiming to “meet young children and families where they are” through integrating mental health services and trauma-informed care into 7 pediatric sites, as well as child care centers and businesses in a tri-county area. She is a co-principal investigator on a 5-year DHHS ACF Regional Partnership Grant implementing an evidence-based enhanced care coordination model, called Wraparound, to families with substance use disorder in her community and building infrastructure to enhance coordination between systems. She is also co-lead on a new Category III NCTSN grant called Project TIDD, improving care for children and youth in New Hampshire with trauma and intellectual and development disabilities. The project aims to improve services for trauma-affected children with autism and intellectual disabilities, as well as youth with gender diverse and transgender identities. Kay has led many research projects over the years, including developing and testing new treatment interventions, disseminating evidence-based treatments for traumatized children and youth into “real world settings” and transforming child serving systems, including NH Division for Children, Youth and Families to bring a more trauma-informed approach to care and services for children and families. Kay is a certified trainer in TF-CBT.  She also trains and supervises psychology and psychiatry trainees, and has always maintained a clinical practice within the Department of Psychiatry. Kay is also a mom to two teenage and young adult children and enjoys all the natural beauty that northern New England has to offer in her spare time.

Kelly Moore, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist licensed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She currently is the Principal Investigator and Program Manager for the Children’s Center for Resilience and Trauma Recovery (CCRTR), a SAMHSA funded, Category III Center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. This center works to provide training and consultation to mental health providers and advanced students in evidence-informed assessment and treatment of complex trauma in children ages 0-10, along with their caregivers. Kelly is also a certified instructor for Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) Suicide Prevention Training, and Youth Mental Health First Aid. She oversees the Rutgers CCRTR Mental Health Awareness Training Program, a SAMHSA funded project focused on training educators, law enforcement, clergy, and parents in QPR and Youth Mental Health First Aid. As a practitioner, her clinical expertise is in the treatment of trauma and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents with a specialty in the treatment of PTSD and OCD. Additionally, Kelly has worked in efforts to disseminate evidence-based treatments and develop trauma-focused programs in community mental health in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Her work has focused on identifying facilitators and overcoming barriers to implementation of evidence-informed practice and implementing trauma-informed care with multidisciplinary teams.

Carmen Rosa Noroña, LICSW, MSW, MS. Ed., IMH-E® Infant Mental Health Mentor-Clinical, is from Ecuador where she trained and practiced as a clinical psychologist. In the US, she obtained MA degrees in social work and early intervention. For over 25 years, Carmen Rosa has provided clinical services to young children and their families in a variety of settings including early intervention, home-based and outpatient programs. She currently is the Child Trauma Clinical Services and Training Lead at Child Witness to Violence Project and is the Associate Director of the Boston Site Early Trauma Treatment Network at Boston Medical Center. She is a Child-Parent Psychotherapy National Trainer, an expert faculty of the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood Training (DC: 0-5) and one of the developers of the Harris Professional Development Network Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants Children and Families Initiative (https://diversityinformedtenets.org) and of the Boston Medical Center Family Preparedness Plan. Her practice and research interests are on the impact of trauma on attachment; the intersection of culture, immigration, and trauma; diversity-informed reflective supervision and consultation; and on the implementation and sustainability of evidence-based practice in real world settings. She is a former co-chair of the Culture Consortium of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and has adapted and translated materials for Spanish-speaking families affected by trauma. Carmen Rosa has also contributed to the literature in infant and early childhood mental health, diversity, and immigration.

Kelly Sullivan, PhD, is a Licensed Psychologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center and has worked at the Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH) for more than 14 years. She directs their NCTSN project and a project to improve services to families impacted by domestic violence and co-directs projects that provide post-adoption support and trauma-informed training for schools. She is trained in Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and is a Level II Master trainer in PCIT. She facilitates the workshop, “Caring for Children Who Have Experienced Trauma,” for foster, kinship, and adoptive caregivers and trains facilitators of this curriculum. She has also worked with Project Broadcast, an initiative to bring trauma-informed practices to NC’s child welfare system, since it began 2011 and is dedicated to assisting all types of agencies to become more trauma-informed.

Lauren Warth, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and holds a graduate certificate in Early Childhood Leadership. Lauren is the Clinical Director for Child Specialty Programs at Aurora Mental Health & Recovery in Aurora, Colorado. Lauren provides clinical and operational leadership in one of the most diverse cities in the country, with teams providing exceptional care for children, youth, adults, and families in the specialty areas of autism/developmental disabilities, early childhood, immigrant and refugee care, and community-based prevention. Lauren has spent her career building prevention and intervention programs to help youth and families to thrive in their communities. Originally from Connecticut, Lauren managed a multi-city prevention program, connecting almost 1,400 youth to prosocial services in their communities. Since moving to Colorado in 2013, Lauren has focused her work in community mental health, doubling the size of early childhood services, building an autism evaluation and treatment program, and procuring hundreds of thousands in grant dollars to expand prevention programs. Lauren provides training and consultation in grant writing, program development, effective communication, and clinical leadership. She is currently leading a team in developing a national Center of Excellence for Refugee and Immigrant Care, working closely with stakeholders and community members to advance the strategic vision of this important work.   

Wanda Vargas-Haskins, PhD, is currently the senior psychologist at New York Presbyterian’s Family PEACE Trauma Treatment Center. She dedicates herself to improving the safety and well-being of children and caregivers who have been exposed to trauma. Wanda was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States at the young age of 3, where she was raised in the community of Washington Heights. She earned her PhD in the combined Clinical and School Psychology program at Hofstra University where she developed an interest in maternal stress and mother-child dyads. Her career began in St. Barnabas Hospital’s Safe Start program, testing the effectiveness of using Child-Parent Psychotherapy as a treatment for young children exposed to violence. In 2011, she became a clinician at New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Family PEACE Trauma Treatment Center to continue working with the underserved population of Latino/a/x young children and their parents exposed to trauma in Washington Heights and Inwood. Over the years, Wanda’s passion for working with families has grown into a dedication and commitment to affect change both directly and on a systemic level. Through her leadership at Family PEACE, she has been working on creating a trauma-informed approach to identifying at-risk young children and developing programming that is client-centered and culturally attuned to the needs of the community. She dreams of one day being able to break the intergenerational transmission of trauma for our nation’s children.