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BRTRC Staff:

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Adam

Adam Edwards - PFA Trainer

Adam Edwards is the Training and Instructional Design Specialist for JRI. He received his Bachelor’s in Nonprofit and Arts Administration from UMASS Amherst and his MPA from Anna Maria College. Adam has worked in classroom and training environments for over 15 years in the public and private sectors across various settings from Early Intervention programs through work with adult learners, with a particular focus on adaptive curriculum development and behavioral support. He currently serves as the LMS administrator for JRI, and is focused on engaging learners with new and innovative content. He is a member of the JRI Trauma Response Network, and is an Instructor certified by the American Red Cross and the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center. Adam remains committed to utilizing art as a tool of Social Justice, and raising awareness of Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and Stigma.

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Amy

Amy Kreidemaker - BCC Trainer

Amy Kreidemaker is the Division Director of JRI CT. She is responsible for the oversight of all CT programs. Amy started her career with Justice Resource Institute 15 years ago as a clinician in the Department of Youth Services. She went on to become a clinician at the Susan Wayne Center Residential Treatment Center and with focus and determination, transitioned into an administrative role. She has held positions of Clinician, the Assistant Clinical Director and Director at SWCE and River Run Academy and holds a clinical counselor license in CT. She received her bachelor's degree from Bridgewater State University and her master's degree from Antioch New England University. Amy is a master trainer for Building Communities of Care and has presented on trauma informed care at many regional conferences. Amy has dedicated her career to making sure that individuals in need receive quality care.

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Corey

Corey Meurer - Lead BCC Trainer

Corey Meurer is currently the Building Communities of Care (BCC) Director of Operations. Corey is responsible for the oversight and implementation of the BCC curriculum across all JRI sites, which currently consists of over 85 trainers, as well as external training and consultation. Corey has been with JRI for over eleven years, working in various administrative and leadership roles across multiple residential schools, as well as the Director of the JRI Covid Isolation Unit. As an administrator in the residential settings, Corey focused on the training and development of staff to provide a safe and trauma-informed environment of care. Corey represents BCC at national conferences and he has led multiple training initiatives and implementation teams to establish high standards of trauma-informed treatment within programs, both internally and through his role as a consultant.

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Deb

Deborah Jackson - PFA Trainer

Deborah Jackson is the Clinical Training and Development Specialist for JRI. She received her Masters in Social Work from the University of Michigan and has an LICSW. Ms. Jackson started as a clinician at ICS, a JRI program in Rhode Island, and over the course of 13 years rose to the Program Director position before joining the corporate training department. Ms. Jackson is intensively trained in DBT and the Skills System. She has extensive knowledge in working with adolescents and adults with sexually inappropriate/offending histories and individuals with Intellectual Disabilities. Ms. Jackson also holds an adjunct faculty position at Simmons University and a lecturer position at University of Rhode Island.

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Elise

Elizabeth Hooper - Trauma Foundations TA

Elizabeth Hopper, Ph.D., is the Trauma Foundations TA and a licensed clinical psychologist with a specialization in traumatic stress. She completed a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at St. Louis University and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Trauma Center in Boston. Dr. Hopper is a Program Director at Justice Resource Institute (JRI), serving as an administrator, supervisor, clinician, and trainer. She holds leadership positions in two National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) centers focused on the dissemination of evidenced-based practices for trauma-impacted children, youth, and families. Dr. Hopper is Project Director of the Metropolitan Boston Complex Trauma Treatment Initiative, a mobile service network delivering evidence-based trauma interventions to high-risk and underserved complex trauma-exposed children and youth and families. She is Co-Director of the National Center on Child Trafficking (NCCT), a SAMHSA-funded resource center whose goal is to establish a collaborative, consistent, and integrated mental health response for youth and families who have been impacted by commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. Dr. Hopper is also Co-Chair of the Mental Health Council for HEAL Trafficking, a national network of health and public health professionals. She has been involved in anti-trafficking work for two decades, including her work as the Director of Project REACH, a national direct services and T/TA program that provided mental health services to survivors of human trafficking and her role as director of the New England Coalition Against Trafficking (NECAT), a regional network of cross-discipline professionals engaged in anti-trafficking work. Dr. Hopper has collaborated with numerous agencies and organizations in developing trauma-informed care systems. She is co-author of two books that address body-oriented intervention, including Treating Adult Survivors of Childhood Emotional Abuse and Neglect: Component-Based Psychotherapy, which presents a complex trauma treatment framework for adults, and Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body, a book that introduces yoga as a body-based intervention for trauma. She has written numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on complex trauma, trauma-informed care, homelessness, and human trafficking and has particular interests in the impact of early developmental trauma and human trafficking and integrative models of healing.

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Gabriel

Gabriel Corens - Associate Director & BCC Trainer

Gabriel Corens, LICSW is the Associate Director of Building Resilience Through Residential Communities (BRTRC) and also works as a clinician on the NCTSN-funded Metro-Boston Complex Trauma Treatment Initiative. He completed his masters in social work from the Smith College School for Social Work and a post-graduate training fellowship at the Trauma Center in Brookline, MA. Mr. Corens has clinical experience in residential and community-based mental health and has worked with children, adolescents, and adults in English and Spanish and is trained in ARC, TF-CBT, SMART, EMDR, and PCIT. He has also worked in the fields of contemplative and experiential education in the United States and internationally. Mr. Corens has interests in supporting individuals and families impacted by complex trauma through attachment, relational, and play therapies as well as neurofeedback.

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Hilary

Hilary Hodgdon - Principal Investigator & Co-Director

Dr. Hodgdon is the Principal Investigator and the Co-Director of the BRTRC project. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, trainer and researcher specializing in the study and treatment of traumatic stress. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Temple University in 2009. Dr. Hodgdon is the Research Director of Justice Resource Institute (JRI) and serves as the Principal Investigator of several National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) centers focused on dissemination of evidenced based practices for trauma-impacted children, youth, and families both locally and nationally. Through her role as JRI’s Research Director, Dr. Hodgdon conducts treatment outcome and basic science research with trauma-impacted populations, co-chairs the Institutional Review Board, oversees several federally funded treatment dissemination initiatives, and manages academic collaborations. She is the Principal Investigator of both the Building Resilience through Residential Communities (BRTRC) and the Metropolitan Boston Complex Trauma Treatment Initiative (MB-CTTI), SAMSHA funded National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) centers focused on trauma informed systems change and implementation of evidenced based practices for trauma with professionals, agencies and broader systems that interface with children, youth and families impacted by child maltreatment and trauma. She is a certified trainer in the Child Welfare Toolkit and Resource Parent Curriculums of the NCTSN and the Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC) treatment framework for children with complex trauma. Dr. Hodgdon provides training on the neurobiology and developmental impact of complex trauma and evidenced based interventions for traumatic stress to a variety of provider groups including social workers, mental health practitioners, and administrative, milieu and nursing staff at outpatient, residential, inpatient and community mental health settings. Her research interests center on deepening understanding of the etiology and sequelae of childhood trauma, elucidating mechanisms that convey risk for psychopathology among vulnerable populations, and development and evaluation of trauma-informed treatment approaches. She has co-authored over a dozen peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters and presents regularly at scientific conferences, including ISTSS and APA. Dr. Hodgdon has extensive experiencing mentoring and supervising graduate students, clinical and research staff, interns and volunteers, and predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows in psychology.

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JD

James Falvey - BCC Trainer

James Falvey is a BCC Trainer and the Director at Meadowridge Academy, a program of Justice Resource Institute, in Swansea, MA. Mr. Falvey began his career at Justice Resource Institute in 2008, as a residential staff member at the Walden St. School in Concord. MA. Mr. Falvey earned his Master’s Degree in Education in 2021 from Framingham State University. Mr. Falvey became a trainer of Building Communities of Care in 2013, responsible for training staff and trainers in JRI, and has recently taken on a training role with BRTRC.

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Jessica

Jessica Griffin - Lead TF-CBT Trainer

Jessica L. Griffin, Psy.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), where she has been a faculty member since 2006. Dr. Griffin is an internationally known relationship expert, sought after public speaker, and national expert in Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), trauma, and relationships. She has trained and provided consultation for thousands of clinicians and therapists across the United States and has led wide-scale TF-CBT dissemination efforts and pilot projects, informed by implementation science and focused on multiple settings and populations (e.g., in-home therapy, court-involved youth, transition-age youth). With funding from SAMHSA/NCTSN in 2012, as Principal Investigator and Executive Director, she developed the UMMS Child Trauma Training Center, with a focus on training, treatment, and resolving access issues youth who have experienced trauma. Within this initiative, Dr. Griffin created and piloted a highly innovative centralized referral system, LINK-KID, targeted at decreasing wait-times for youth and families to trauma-focused evidence-based treatments. Due to LINK-KID’s early successes, she and her team expanded LINK-KID to what is now a statewide capacity, serving trauma victims throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To date, under her direction, the center has trained over 100,000 professionals in trauma-informed care and trauma-responsive practices and successfully referred over 6000 youth into evidence-based treatment models. In 2020, Dr. Griffin was awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant to develop the national Resilience through Relationships Center, housed at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. In 2021, Dr. Griffin became the Executive Director of Lifeline For Kids within the division of Lifeline For Families in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Griffin is a clinical and forensic psychologist with a specialty in trauma and relationships. She has extensive expertise in childhood maltreatment, attachment and relationships, psychological evaluation, and divorce and custody matters. She presents regularly at local, national and international level on topics related to childhood trauma, relationships, TF-CBT, and forensic evaluation of children and families and has published journal articles and book chapters on a variety of topics related to trauma and relationships. She is a co-author on a newly released book by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Childhood Trauma and Resilience, A Practical Guide, a go-to resource on childhood trauma for pediatrics. Recently, Dr. Griffin also authored a book for couples, Relationship Rx: Prescriptions for Lasting Love and Deeper Connection (Rowan and Littlefield Press, for release in January of 2023) which addresses common problems plaguing couples with evidence-based, science-backed techniques and exercises to solve them. Dr. Griffin has received numerous awards for her work and has been featured on NPR, BBC, US News and World Report, Fox News, the Insider, Sirius XM Doctor Radio, Washington Post, New York Times, People Magazine, Readers’ Digest, iHeartRadio, New York Post, MedScape, the Daily Mail, and other news and media outlets. Dr. Griffin has appeared on numerous television programs, serving as an expert and consultant on several television docuseries about relationships, marriage and divorce on A&E’s Lifetime Television network. She has a private consulting and coaching business and is the CEO of LoveBuilder, a relationship company, which provides educational online courses to couples, singles, and parents.

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Kelli

Kelli Jones - BCC Trainer

Kelli Jones is the Director of Training and Wellness at Glenhaven Academy. Kelli started her career with Justice Resource Institute 19 years ago as a direct care staff at Glenhaven Academy. Since then she has held many positions in the Residential and Nursing Departments. Currently she is a Senior Administrator and helps oversee all aspects of Glenhaven Academy. In this role she trains and supports all program staff to help them understand and embrace their role as a trauma informed care provider. Kelli is a master trainer for Building Communities of Care and is passionate to continue to work across the agency to support programs with restraint reduction.

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Kristine

Kristine Kinniburgh - Co-Director

Kristine Kinniburgh is the Co-Director and is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) with a specialty in the field of traumatic stress. She is currently the Director of Trauma Services for JRI Connecticut, Project Co-Director for the Building Resilience through Residential Communities project, National Trainer and Consultant for the Center for Trauma Training. In each of these roles, her primary focus is ensuring that trauma affected individuals and their families receive quality care that emphasizes the promotion of resilient outcomes. Mrs. Kinniburgh is co-developer of the Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) treatment framework (Kinniburgh & Blaustein, 2005), and co-author of the text, Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Fostering Resilience through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competence (Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2018; 2010), the foster parent curriculum ARC Reflections (Annie E Casey Foundation, 2017) and the caregiver skill building curriculum, ARC Grow (Kinniburgh & Blaustein, 2016). Mrs. Kinniburgh has had the honor of learning from and collaborating with countless individuals, programs and organizations in the US and abroad that share her passion for and commitment to supporting individuals who experience and are impacted by chronic adversity.

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Lia

Lia Martin - Evaluation Administrator

Dr. Lia is the Evaluation Administrator and since 2004 Dr. Martin has been involved in a range of research projects exploring the various psychological sequelae of trauma exposure across the lifespan. These experiences include working as a project coordinator on studies examining the impact of trauma on children’s memory; on cortisol functioning and stress response; on self-regulation and co-regulation processes with caregivers; on disordered eating behavior and on executive functioning. She has acted as a principal investigator on a study examining the associations between adrenocortical attunement and behavior attunement in mother-child dyads exposed to domestic violence, funded through a grant awarded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. In more recent years she has worked in the role of Associate Director of Quality Management for JRI, where she is responsible for the development, implementation and maintenance of a large behavioral and mental health outcomes database (CATS: Client Assessment Tracking System). The CATS system includes clinical symptom and functional outcomes data for over 7,000 clients across the continuum of care (ranging from juvenile justice facilities and intensive residential treatment to community-based services). Dr. Martin is responsible for training all agency clinicians on administration and interpretation of clinical assessment measures for formulation, diagnosis and making trauma-informed treatment decisions. She is also responsible for pulling and cleaning data sets and analyzing CATS data for internal quality improvement and benchmarking efforts, as well as for various internal and external research projects. Examples of research projects utilizing CATS data include understanding the impact of clinical services and identifying potential health disparities for JRI’s most vulnerable and marginalized client populations, and examining the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on JRI clients, with an effort to identify predictors of successful engagement in telehealth services. Dr. Martin also coordinates the implementation of the CATS system for other local behavioral health agencies who are leveraging CATS for continuous quality improvement. Dr. Martin also collaborates in data sharing initiatives with the Massachusetts Permanency Practice Alliance (MPPA), and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She serves as chair of the JRI Institutional Review Board (IRB), is a sitting member of the Suffolk University IRB, and is a member of Transition Age Youth Coalition of Children’s League Education Fund, an interagency workgroup that addresses the needs of Massachusetts emerging adults aging out of DCF services through legislative action and state and agency-level policy change.

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Mandy

Mandy Habib - Lead SPARCS Trainer

Dr. Mandy Habib is the lead SPARCS trainer and the Co-Director of the Institute for Adolescent Trauma Training & Treatment at Adelphi University’s School of Social Work. The Institute, a SAMHSA-funded center within the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), is focused on improving the provision of trauma-informed services to children and adolescents through training and workforce development. Dr. Habib has many years of research, supervisory, and clinical experience working in the field of traumatic stress and serves as Co-Chair of the NCTSN’s Complex Trauma Work Group. In her role as a treatment developer and primary national trainer for Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS), Dr. Habib has provided in-depth trauma-focused training and supervision to more than 1,000 clinicians across the country and continues to provide local and national training and consultation on a range of topics, including the impact, assessment, and treatment of complex trauma in children and adults. Dr. Habib has additionally collaborated extensively with school systems and departments of juvenile justice in several states as they work toward implementing trauma-informed services for youth. Dr. Habib is also the current Director of the NCTSN Complex Trauma Treatment Network.

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Margaret

Margaret Blaustein - Lead ARC Trainer

Margaret Blaustein is the lead ARC trainer and is a practicing clinical psychologist whose career has focused on the understanding and treatment of complex childhood trauma and its sequelae. With an emphasis on the importance of understanding the child-, the family-, and the provider-in-context, her work has focused on identification and translation of key principles of intervention across treatment settings, building from the foundational theories of childhood development, attachment, and traumatic stress. With Kristine Kinniburgh, Dr. Blaustein is co-developer of the Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) treatment framework (Kinniburgh & Blaustein, 2005), and co-author of the text, Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Fostering Resilience through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competence (Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2018 (2nd Ed.), 2010). She has provided extensive training and consultation to providers and organizations within the US and abroad. Dr. Blaustein is currently Director of the Center for Trauma Training in Needham, MA, and is past Division Director for Trauma Training and Education at The Trauma Center at JRI. She is actively involved in local, regional, and national collaborative groups dedicated to the empathic, respectful, and effective provision of services to this population.

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Melissa

Melissa Brymer - PFA Consultant

Melissa Brymer, Ph.D, Psy.D. is Director of the Terrorism and Disaster Program of the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress and its National Child Traumatic Stress Network. In this capacity, Dr. Brymer been involved with the development of acute interventions, assessment, and educational materials in the area of terrorism, disasters, mass violence, public health emergencies, and school crises. She is one of the primary authors of NCTSN/NCPTSD Psychological First Aid and Skills for Psychological Recovery and has served as a consultant for many Federal, state, and local agencies across the country and internationally after disasters, terrorism, school shootings, and other mass emergencies. Dr. Brymer was the lead advisor to the Newtown Public Schools Recovery Program and was the PI for an NIJ Project examining the short and long-term impact of mass violence on communities. Dr. Brymer is a Researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

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Robert

Robert Gervais - BCC Trainer

Robert is a trainer here and joined JRI in 1997 and since this time, he performed in escalating leadership capacities across an array of congregate treatment models. Robert’s role changed in 2018 when he was promoted into the organizational-wide position of Vice President of Operations in which he currently works closely with the JRI senior executive team in developing, holding, and supporting numerous organizational systems and operations. Robert also continues to directly oversee a diverse portfolio of programs and divisions. Robert earned a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from Suffolk University, a Master’s degree in business with a concentration in management, project management, and operations from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as completed both the Executive and Performance leadership programs from Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business.

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Ruth

Ruth Bodian - RPC Consultant

Ruth Bodian is the RPC Consultant and received her MSW from Boston University. She was the Project Manager for the Massachusetts Child Trauma Project, a federal grant focused on enhancing trauma-informed policies and practices throughout the Department of Children and Families. Currently, Ruth is a Permanency Mediator for families involved with the Child Welfare System and is the Secretary for the Massachusetts Coalition of Permanency for Children (MCPC). She Is also a Social Services Expert contracted by the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS). Ruth has extensive experience training on the NCTSN Child Welfare Toolkit and Resource Parent Curriculum. Her personal experience as an adoptive mother of an older youth has informed her perspective of promoting resilience and growth through trauma responsive and healing centered approaches.

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Ryan

Ryan Gagne - BCC Trainer

Ryan Gagne is a BCC trainer and is currently the Director of the Susan Wayne Center of Excellence and River Run Academy with JRI CT. During Ryan's 12 years with JRI, he has held many positions, starting as a Residential Counselor, and has held other roles such as a Supervisor, Director of Residential Administration, and most recently the Director of Operations. Early in his career, Ryan worked internationally with medically compromised youth and their caregivers. Ryan is a Master trainer for Building Communities of Care.

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Skyler

Skyler McComas - Program Evaluation Associate

Skyler McComas is the Program Evaluation Associate here at JRI and recently graduated from The University of New England with a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience. She just joined the JRI community this summer and works as a Program Evaluation Associate, primarily assisting Hilary Hodgdon, Lia Martin, and Gabriel Corens. Skyler’s responsibilities include data coding and organizing, CATS help, and BRTRC website management.

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Tara

Tara Sagor - Lead PFA Trainer

Tara Sagor is the Director of Training and Trauma Response for Justice Resource Institute. She received her Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Counseling Psychology from Lesley University where she is currently an adjunct professor in their graduate department. She has 14 years of experience within residential programs in various roles across departments including educationally, clinically and within the residential milieu. She has spent the majority of her professional career working with adolescents and their caregivers at Glenhaven Academy, a facility specializing in the treatment of complex trauma. She has also worked within inpatient settings and for child advocacy centers. She is trained in Sensory-Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART), Neurofeedback and Trauma-focused CBT. She has led multiple training initiatives and implementation teams to establish high standards of trauma-informed treatment within programs both internally and through her role as a consultant.

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Mike Zucarelli - BCC Trainer

Mike Zucarelli is a BCC Trainer and the Director of Operations at Meadowridge Academy in Swansea, MA. Mr. Zucarelli began his career at Justice Resource Institute in 2014 as a Teacher at Meadowridge Academy. He completed his undergraduate education at Rhode Island College and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Special Education at Framingham State University. Mr. Zucarelli joined the Meadowridge Academy training team in 2014 and currently acts as the lead for Building Communities of Care and American Red Cross trainings on-site. He has recently joined the BRTRC team in a training role.

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Ashley Mazuroski - BCC Trainer

Ashley Mazuroski is the Director of the Rediscovery Group Home and current BCC Master Trainer. Ashley started her career with JRI in 2010 as a Residential Counselor at the GRIP Program in Lowell, MA, and gained experience in several roles with in the agency ultimately becoming a Director in 2018. As a Director, Ashley is oversees all aspects of the program including treatment for youth in addition to staff training and development. Ashley specializes in working with Transition Age Youth preparing to leave the state foster care system. Ashley became a BCC trainer in 2013 and the BRTRC training team in 2023.

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