Residing on the Lands of the Chitimacha, Coushatta, and Choctaw Peoples – Louisiana
Renee serves as Senior Policy Associate for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health through the Georgetown University Center for Human and Child Development. Her primary function is to provide technical assistance for mental health, grant compliance, and workforce training to states, tribal nations, and US territories.
Renee also serves as co-lead for equity. She provides training to enhance grantee capacity and quality improvement for equity and social determinants of health within early childhood systems of care. Her recent accolades include serving as State Director for Maternal Infant Health and Women's Policy in Louisiana. Managing the Federal Healthy Start Program and Health Equity Coalition in Oregon. Hosting national trainings on racial equity, perinatal health, and child development.
Renee’s roots are embedded in Louisiana where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Louisiana State University. Her graduate research continued to the University of Iowa in epigenetics as a McNair Scholar and culminated at the University of Virginia in Developmental Psychology where she published studies on executive function and cognition in children.
Residing on the Lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank Peoples – Washington, D.C.
Jacquelyn is the Program Assistant for the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) Technical Assistance Center at Georgetown University. In this role, Jacquelyn is responsible for maintaining the TA Center’s email account, communication to grantees, coordinating meetings, internal and external documentation maintenance and dissemination, resources sharing, and providing any technical assistance to staff when needed. In previous roles, Jacquelyn has worked in an emergency room setting to provide case management and care coordination to low acuity patients with the goal of connecting them back to primary care and specialty care when needed to prevent future visits. She has also worked closely with DC Medicaid and SSI eligible children and young adults to provide meaningful programs, information, services, and resources to ensure a smooth transition through school, different medical systems, and ultimately into adulthood.
Jacquelyn is very passionate about the health and wellbeing of children and works to provide support to different initiatives and projects when children can thrive and benefit the most. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from UNC Charlotte and a Master of Science in Healthcare Administration from the University of Maryland Global Campus.
Residing on the Lands of the Monacan Indian Nation – Virginia
At ZERO TO THREE, Catherine Bodkin has provided technical assistance to communities, territories, and states on federal and foundation projects, including MIECHV, Healthy Start, Project LAUNCH, Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems, Building Strong Foundations for Families and Aligning Early Childhood with Medicaid and Infant Early Childhood Mental Health Technical Assistance Center, re-designed a mentoring program and collaborated on the development of a leadership academy. Previously she served as executive director of a multi-service, non-profit community agency which provided family counseling, parent education, USDA food program, runaway shelter, problem pregnancy counseling, childcare resource and referral, a parent drop-in center and a volunteer crisis response network. As the Virginia Department of Health’s program manager of four home visiting programs, she facilitated the establishment of the Virginia Home Visiting Consortium which standardized screening protocols and common professional development modules across models. In addition, she led the integration of the Bright Futures Guidelines into the procedures of the state departments of health, education, mental health, early intervention, childcare, and Medicaid; initiated home visiting with fathers and promoted including community health workers in service delivery systems. For 23 years, as a LCSW, she counseled families in the University of Virginia Medical Center Emergency Department on weekends, provided training on crisis management and served as medical school adjunct faculty. She is currently a candidate for endorsement in Virginia as an Infant Mental Health Mentor IV-Policy.
Residing on the Lands of the O’odham Jewed, Akimel O’odham and Hohokam Peoples – Arizona
Julie Cohen is Associate Director of the ZERO TO THREE Policy Center. During her more than 23-year career at ZERO TO THREE, she has worked on a wide range of policy issues impacting infants and toddlers including infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) and child welfare. She was a member of the international expert workgroup that wrote DC:0–5™: Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood. She is the author of numerous publications. First trained as a clinical social worker where she worked with children and families in New York City, Ms. Cohen expanded her studies to the field of child and family policy. Throughout her professional career, Ms. Cohen has been a passionate advocate for supporting the healthy development of very young children and their families. She previously worked at the National Association of Child Advocates where she focused on child welfare and early care and education. She also served as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) working with children in the New York City child welfare system. She received her BA from American University in Washington, DC, her MSW from Columbia University, and completed the two-year Infant/Family Clinical Practice program with the Harris Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Training Institute in 2021.
Residing on the Lands of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians – Tennessee
Jennifer is the Project Director of the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) Technical Assistance Center at Georgetown University. Sitting on multiple state and national committees, Jennifer has helped lead and shape macro-level initiatives and policies to promote healthy child development, advance Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) efforts, prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and support community resilience. Jennifer currently oversees the strategy and operations of the IECMH Technical Assistance Center which supports SAMHSA-funded grantees across the United States in their efforts to advance policies, programs, and practices for very young children.
Jennifer was a founding member of All Children Excel (ACE) Nashville, a 400-member collective impact initiative seeking to reduce ACEs and promote resilience at the population level using a public health approach. She also led the development of the Building Strong Brains Tennessee “training for trainers” curriculum focused on brain development, ACEs, and strategies to foster resilience which reached more than 80,000 people.
Jennifer holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Berry College, a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Tennessee, received Endorsement® as both an Infant Mental Health Mentor and an Early Childhood Mental Health Mentor in Policy, and has expertise in infant and early childhood mental health, child development, child trauma, and child abuse prevention. Jennifer was a member of the 2017 Nashville Emerging Leaders Class, received the 2017 Nashville Emerging Leaders Award for the Government and Public Affairs Category, and was named one of the University of Tennessee’s “40 under 40” in 2021. Jennifer’s personal and professional passion is to partner with communities and systems in advancing policies and practices which support all children to thrive.
Residing on the Lands of the Piscataway and Doeg Peoples - Virginia
Lisa Hepburn, MPH PhD serves as the Lead Evaluator for the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development. With over 20 years of research experience focused on health behavior and education and health policy, Dr. Hepburn utilizes a public health lens to designing and implementing evaluation strategies incorporating mixed-methods and theory-based approaches. For over 15 years, she served as a researcher at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and Center for Youth Violence Prevention focused on evaluating policies related to firearm and interpersonal violence. Until recently, Dr. Hepburn was at the MedStar Research Institute, where she was responsible for designing and evaluating youth injury prevention and health education programs. Dr. Hepburn approaches evaluation with a stakeholder-first mindset and believes community participation enhances all levels of research.
Residing on the Lands of the Calusa, Seminole, Miccosukee, and Mascogo Peoples – Florida
Dr. Neal Horen is a clinical psychologist who has focused on early childhood mental health for the last twenty years. He is Director of the Early Childhood Division for the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human. Dr. Horen has worked closely with all 50 states, numerous tribes, territories and communities in supporting their development of systems of care for young children and their families. He is the co-Director of the Head Start National Center on Health, Behavioral Health and Safety, Director of the Center of Excellence for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation, the Infant Early Childhood Mental Health TA Center, co-Director of the National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health and Georgetown lead for the MIECHV TA Center, the HRSA Evidence to Impact Center, the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems TA Center and the Early Intervention Personnel Center. In that capacity he has delivered hundreds of trainings across the country and has co-led development of nationally recognized materials materials. He leads Georgetown’s Early Childhood Mental Health Certificate programs and has helped to developed innumerable materials related to infant and early childhood mental health consultation including books, training guides, evaluation guides, monographs and he also continues to be active in providing mental health consultation as part of his clinical practice. In addition, Dr. Horen’s primary interest is in early childhood mental health and he has lectured extensively on infant and early childhood mental health, challenging behaviors in young children, social skills development, as well as the impact of trauma on child development.
Residing on the Lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank Peoples – Maryland
Andy is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. He retired at the rank of Captain from U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in 2021 after 30 years of active-duty service. Throughout his career, Andy was focused on being an agent of change and advocate for American Indian/Alaska Native people while acting as a bridge between Native and Non-Native people, and programs. He is acknowledged as a thought leader in the field of cultural competence and topics related to tribal mental health and systems of care. Andy draws on three decades of government and tribal community-based experience to help his clients meet their goals.
Andy’s Commissioned Corps career began with the Indian Health Service from 1991-2006 where he worked at the Coquille Indian Tribe, Seattle Indian Health Board, Puyallup Tribal Health Authority, and the National Indian Child Welfare Association. He held positions as human services director, mental health counselor, mental health program director, community development specialist (technical assistance provider) and community development director. From 2006-2019 he was at Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) where worked as the Government Project Officer for the Systems of Care, Circles of Care, and Health Transitions Initiative programs. Andy finished his career at IHS as the Acting Deputy Director of the Division of Behavioral Health at IHS headquarters from 2019-2021.
Residing on the Lands of the Susquehannock & Piscataway Peoples – Maryland
Ashley is the Program Manager for the Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) Technical Assistance Center at Georgetown University. She earned her Bachelor's Degree from Delaware State University in Psychology and her Masters of Science from Walden University in Forensic Psychology. She has worked in all sectors of mental health over the last 9 years including inpatient/partial hospitalization, residential treatment facilities, child welfare, crisis stabilization in the ER, community integrated recovery centers and community behavioral health.
Most recently, she was the Program Manager at a nonprofit where she oversaw both the clinical and operational aspect of the family-based therapy department. Her primary responsibilities were developing best practices and evaluating policy/procedure in order to help clinicians deliver treatment to high risk families in Philadelphia, to reduce the need for out of home placement. She is trained in Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy where second order change, lasting change, is seen by changing core survival interactional patterns in which the system operates. A Lot of the work she has done has been to train clinicians and case managers on how to repair attachment and empower caregivers so they feel capable, competent and able to keep their children safe.
Ashley sits on the board of a growing nonprofit called Alternative Approaches to Mental Health Crisis Center in Baltimore, Maryland where the goal is to serve people in crisis to reduce the need of interacting with the criminal justice system/ emergency room. She is responsible for the organizational development.
Residing on the Lands of the Sauk, Peoria, Mississauga, and Anishinabewaki Peoples – Michigan
Meghan serves as Senior Policy Analyst of the Infant Early Childhood Mental Health Policy Team at ZERO TO THREE. Meghan joined ZTT in October 2020. Previously, she was the IECMH Coordinator for the State of Michigan in the Behavioral Health Division of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, supporting the state’s IECMH Consultation team. Meghan began her career as an infant mental health home-based clinician and worked mostly with families in the child welfare system. Three of her proudest accomplishments are supporting the reunification of a number of families within the Baby Court system in Flint, Michigan; reviving and sustaining Michigan’s IECMH Consultation work, and providing Reflective Supervision/Consultation to both individual clinicians working toward their endorsement, and leaders in the IECMH policy systems world.
Residing on the Lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank Peoples – Maryland
Ms. Usry guides ZERO TO THREE’s policy agenda on infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) and leads related technical assistance projects and collaborations, working at the state and federal levels to increase access to and utilization of high-quality mental health services for young children and their caregivers. She formerly served as Director of Special Projects for the Institute of IECMH at Tulane University School of Medicine, where she is on faculty. She also served as the Louisiana Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Coordinator for the LA Department of Health and Hospitals, Office of Public Health. Her work has focused primarily on the translation and dissemination of research on IECMH and development to inform policy and programming decisions.
Ms. Usry received her BS in Neuroscience from the College of William and Mary and her Master of Public Health from Tulane University. She is a member of the board of the Maryland-DC Association of Infant Mental Health, and formerly sat on the Louisiana Governor’s Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board. She has previously worked with the U.S. Government Secretariat for Children in Adversity at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as The World Bank. She has worked on international and domestic public health initiatives and also taught elementary special education.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GRANT SUPPORT AND DISCLAIMER
The project described was supported by Grant Number 1H79SM082070-01 from SAMHSA.
Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of SAMHSA.
