David Owen


Consultants
Our team of consultants is dedicated to helping young people succeed. All of our associates have over ten years of professional experience and are considered experts in their fields. Many hold graduate degrees in education, public policy, social work, and psychology.

• Debbie Almontaser
• William Bacon
• Kristina Berger
• Jeff Birdsall
• Frances Caulfield
• Helena Duch
• Julie Geisler
• Seth Ginsberg
• Eric Graig
• John Harris
• Sandra Hayes
• Louis Hernandez
• Rebecca Koladycz
• Clinton Lacey
• Nora Lapin
• Jeanette Oaks
• Robert Rodriguez
• Nancy Rosenbaum
• Nitika Tolani
• Anne Troy
• Dario Veraldi
• Emily West
• Shelly Wimpfheimer

Debbie has co-designed and developed a curriculum for Columbia University entitled Re-Embracing Diversity in NYC Public Schools: Educational Outreach for Muslim Sensitivity that engages students to develop interpersonal and intercultural understanding based on respect for ethnic and religious diversity. As with her workshops, Debbie’s curricula help students to become more culturally sensitive and aware of bias and bigotry and how to combat such behaviors.

Debbie serves as chief consultant and advisor for Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. "Muslim American" Series, and the Independent Production Fund on the Islam Project (producers of Muslims and Legacy of a Man: Prophet Muhammad PBS Productions) She was also a member of the steering committee for A Community of Many Worlds: Arab-Americans at the Museum of the City of New York. Debbie is a board member of The Dialogue Project, a board advisor for the Same Difference Interfaith Alliance, and a cofounder of Brooklyn Bridges and the September 11th Curriculum Project.
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William Bacon, Ph.D.
Bill is a psychologist and researcher with an extensive background in outcome evaluation of programs for children and adolescents. He has consulted with a variety of organizations on evaluations of youth development, mental health, and mentoring programs, and has expertise using both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies.

As Associate Vice President for Research & Evaluation at Planned Parenthood of New York City (PPNYC), he was responsible for evaluating the agency's educational and youth development programs while also helping the agency integrate evaluation into its strategic framework. He has a particular interest in systems for collecting information from younger, less literate children, developing, for example, a system of computer-based survey administration that dramatically improves participants' comprehension and interest through multi-media presentation of survey items.

Bill was previously a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for the Study of Social Work Practice, a joint program of Columbia University and the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services. He has served on the adjunct faculty of Columbia University's School of Social Work and Fordham University's College at Lincoln Center. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Johns Hopkins University in 1993. Bill has been working with Owen Consulting since 2001.
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Kris Berger, M.A.
Kris has worked in New York City's nonprofit sector for more than ten years and has extensive experience designing, implementing, and directing innovative programs that meet critical community needs. Most recently, Kris was the Director of Program Development at New York Cares, where she served as a member of the organizations senior management team and was responsible for directing efforts to mobilize more than 2500 volunteers each month on meaningful and impactful community service projects. Prior to joining New York Cares, Kris was the Assistant Director of Education at the New York Academy of Sciences, where her projects included a successful summer science research internship and academic enrichment program for New York City high school students.

She has developed and written many successful grant proposals; worked with public schools and community based organizations to identify and assess resource needs and to create programs that meet these needs; built sustainable public-private partnerships; designed and managed large-scale (500+ individuals) corporate volunteer events; and managed strategic planning processes.

In addition, Kris has considerable expertise in the area of volunteer program design, development, and implementation, and has worked with schools and nonprofit organizations to identify appropriate volunteer needs and develop strategies to meet these needs as well as with corporations who wish to mobilize employees to "give back" on short- or long-term projects.

In 1998, while the Director of Program Development at New York Cares, Kris created and launched the Partners in Technology Program (PITP), one of the first initiatives in New York City to address Digital Divide issues in the nonprofit and education community. During the programs first two years of operation, volunteers with technology expertise shared their knowledge and skills with more than 50 nonprofit organizations and schools to build computer labs; install computer networks; train staff and clients; and create state-of-the-art websites and databases. In 2001, the PITP was nationally replicated to six additional cities.

Kris holds a Masters Degree in Sociology of Education and Education Policy (1995) from Columbia Universitys Teachers College, and BA degrees in History and Political Science (1990) from Northwestern University.
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Jeff Birdsall, M.A.
Jeff is a consultant, educator and trainer in the areas of leadership development, non-profit management, youth programs, service-learning and residential environmental and outdoor education programs. He has led trainings, workshops and provided keynote presentations for national service programs, state commissions and non-profits throughout the country. Jeff strives to facilitate volunteers, staff and students’ personal, intellectual and spiritual development in their journeys to become effective, caring and responsible citizens and leaders in their communities. Jeff resides in Seattle, Washington and in addition to his on-going training and consulting work, currently serves as an adjunct instructor in Brown University’s Leadership Institute.

Over the past seventeen years Jeff has worked as an experiential educator and program director in a variety of learning communities including environmental education centers, outdoor leadership programs, community-based urban service-learning programs, rural residential programs, higher education institutions, and AmeriCorps projects. Recently, he directed two AmeriCorps programs, The Northwest Service Academy and The Youth Volunteer Corps, as well as co-founded a youth service program, The Wilderness Volunteer Corps.

Jeff holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies: Service-Learning from Naropa University (2003), where he helped to create a new service-learning center, and a B.S. in Environmental Education from Lesley University/Audubon Expedition Institute (1989).
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Frances Caulfield, M.S.
For over a decade, Fran has provided professional development to the New York City public school community through curriculum design and instruction, leadership training, and comprehensive educational plan development and implementation.

Fran has served in numerous capacities within the New York City Department of Education as a teacher, Assistant high school Director, and Project Coordinator for the Manhattan High School Superintendent’s office. As an educational consultant, Fran has worked to build and sustain effective school partnerships and programs supporting administrators, teachers, and students.

Her expertise and experience includes:

• Assessing professional development needs, both department-specific and school-wide; for teachers, support staff and principals/assistant principals
• Designing programs and writing curricula that support integration, and interdisciplinary instruction
• Working with New York City high schools on the development and implementation of Comprehensive Educational Plans
• Partnership building between schools and external partners
• Facilitating cabinet initiatives such as school-wide professional development plans, school tone and culture initiatives, redesigning faculty conference formats
• Personal coaching for principals, assistant principals and district personnel
• Program design
• Project management

Helena is a child psychologist with over 10 years of experience nationally and internationally in the areas of childhood education and mental health. Her areas of expertise include early childhood policy, mental health and educational consultation, curriculum development, teacher training and program evaluation.

Helena has extensive experience working with Head Start and Early Head Start programs, in center-based and home-based settings as part of her appointment with the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She has coordinated and supervised mental health services for pregnant women, infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families at Columbia University Head Start and Early Head Start for almost 8 years. She also trains Columbia University public health students and family medicine residents as part of their child development training.  In 2000, Helena received a grant from the Federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families to conduct a two-year research study on the mental health of Hispanic Head Start Children and their families.

Internationally, Helena has worked for UNICEF in South Asia and for their Child Friendly Schools Project around the world, the World Bank in Russia, Childhope in Brazil and in Sri Lanka as a part of a task force from Mount Sinai Hospital training first responders in trauma interventions for young children affected by the Tsunami
Helena is currently involved in the evaluation of Getting Ready for School, a parent-child literacy and numeracy curriculum designed for parents of children 4-7 years old. Developed by Open Society Institute and the Step by Step Association, Getting Ready for School has been implemented in over 20 countries in central Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. In the US, it is being pioneered at Columbia University Head Start.

Nationally, Helena has worked in New York City Public schools, foster care agencies, early intervention settings , Bellevue Hospital and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, providing direct services to children and families. She has expertise in the areas of psychological, neuropsychological and educational assessment, consultation and direct intervention with children in group, individual and family therapy.

Helena has extensive background in program evaluation and research and works as senior evaluation consultant for Owen Consulting Inc., leading multi-site evaluations of 21st CCLC funded after-school programs in New York City Public schools amongst other projects.

Helena holds a Master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Teacher’s College – Columbia University (1998), a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from New York University (2000) and completed her doctoral degree in Child/School Psychology at New York University in June 2005. She is a native Spanish speaker, and is fluent in English, French, and Italian.
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Julie Geisler
Julie brings over fourteen years of professional development and non-profit management experience to Owen Consulting. Her expertise includes program and fiscal oversight, training and technical assistance, youth job training and workforce development programs, community service management, and team building and leadership development for corporate and non-profit professionals.

Julie’s clients have included AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, the National Senior Service Corps, the Central Park Conservancy, Studio in a School, Chelsea Piers, Youth Service Opportunities Project, the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, and ETR Associates. She has conducted training sessions in topic areas such as program planning and management, staff training, time management, recruitment and retention, leadership, teambuilding, and communication. Julie has developed training manuals and evaluation resources for numerous organizations and coordinated conferences, workshops, and events nationwide.
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Seth Ginsberg
Seth is a teaching artist and curriculum developer, with over ten years of experience leading music and arts education programs for New York City public schools and community based organizations.

Seth specializes in interactive "learning through arts" projects, combining customized hands-on music programs with school curriculum to engage students with academic subjects. He also works with non-profit clients to design and lead arts programming that supports intervention, prevention, and after school services.

As a Program Manager and new teacher Mentor for LEAP (Learning through an Expanded Arts Program) Seth has created and led experiential music programs for the 92nd St. YMCA, the Central Park Conservancy, and numerous New York City public schools. He frequently runs teacher and parent workshops for the NYC Department of Education, providing curricula and techniques that foster creative and supportive interaction between adults and children through the arts.

Seth designed and led diversity workshops as part of Owen Consulting’s contract to support Mentoring USA’s B.R.A.V.E. Juliana program. The workshops employed biographical songwriting methods that helped to improve communication and build stronger mentoring relationships between pairs at program sites throughout New York City.
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Eric Graig, Ph.D.
Eric holds a Doctorate in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York Graduate Center. With over ten years of experience designing, managing, and implementing a wide range of research studies, he brings clients an approach to evaluation that is both practical and informed by the needs of nonprofit organizations seeking to improve their effectiveness and achieve their strategic goals.

Prior to his association with Owen Consulting, Eric was the Director of Research at the Beacon of Hope House, an agency that provides residential services to people recovering from mental illness. In that capacity he led research studies on topics ranging from client outcomes to internal employee retention and satisfaction. In all this work, his focus was strategic and oriented towards developing actionable knowledge necessary for long term organizational improvement.

Prior to joining Beacon, Eric managed a range of research projects within the City University of New York system and taught research and evaluation in the Graduate Program in Applied Social Research at Queens College.
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John Harris, Ed.M.
John brings more than 15 years of evaluation and research experience to his work with Owen Consulting, primarily in the areas of mentoring and violence prevention. His experience as a teacher and counselor serving urban and rural at-risk youth strongly influences his approach to research. John specializes in action research, instrument development, and the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods to provide the most robust insight on the programs he studies.

John has consulted to a variety of school- and community-based programs but maintains a primary research focus on mentoring. His mentoring research centers on relationship quality, how it varies across mentoring models, and how it influences psychosocial and academic outcomes. He is enthusiastically pursuing an initiative to extend rigorous evaluation to programs that are currently underrepresented in existing research. His vision for mentoring research, already realized in part through development of nationally respected measures of relationship quality, is to develop measurable standards of mentoring relationship quality that may be applied across mentoring programs and approaches.

John holds s a master’s in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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Sandra Hayes, M.A.
Sandra is an organizational development consultant who specializes in adult learning strategies, collaborative conflict negotiation, and leadership development. Her experience includes designing, conducting and facilitating meetings and training workshops for a list of clients including the United Nations, Unicef, Reuters, Praxair, American Express, Columbia Business School, NYC Health and Hospital Corporation, Citibank, Lucent Technologies, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Pace University, New York University Metro Center, the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City Board of Education, Educators for Social Responsibility, In Motion Legal Services, the United Parents Association, the New York State Nurses Association, and a host of independent schools and nonprofit organizations.

Through the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) at Teachers College, Sandra is a collaborative conflict negotiation and mediation instructor. Recently, she was a member of a team whose task was to update and redesign the Basic Practicum in Conflict Resolution. Sandra also helped design and teach two advanced courses in conflict resolution through the ICCCR. She also teaches collaborative conflict resolution through the Fairleigh Dickinson University School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management.

In association with the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, Sandra facilitates leadership research activities with Ford Foundation and Advocacy Institute Leadership for Changing World awardees. She also recently designed and facilitated a Leadership Development Program for nonprofit executives as a consultant to the National Executive Service Corps (NESC). Sandra is also a certified trainer of a course entitled “The Human Element.” This human relations seminar allows individuals and teams to focus on the underlying causes of behavior that block successful performance.

Sandra’s background in training and facilitation is enhanced by extensive experience in both the corporate and nonprofit arenas. For ten years, Sandra was a human resources professional for such companies as Westinghouse Broadcasting and Cable, American Health Partners (publishers of American Health, Psychology Today, Mother Earth News, and Smart magazines), and Reader’s Digest. She also spent seven years as a coordinator and director of educational and vocational programs for the US Department of Labor’s Job Corps and for Prep for Prep (a program serving more than 2,000 talented and gifted youth). In these capacities, she conducted large individual and group sessions counseling program participants on their academic and professional options.

Sandra is an Adult Learning and Leadership doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in Organizational Psychology.
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Louis Hernandez, M. Ed.
Louis has been working with at risk adolescents and their families for over twenty-five years. He has worked in a broad range of educational, counseling, and youth development settings, including the New York City public school system, Bellevue Hospital, and the New York City Outward Bound Center.

For the past thirteen years, Louis has served as a building-wide school guidance counselor in NYC public schools, where he works with at-risk adolescents and their families. He provides individual, group, and family counseling, networks with community resources, facilitates workshops for parents and teachers, conducts after school programs, and manages extensive crisis intervention services.

Louis has an extensive background in adventure-based and experiential youth programming. Over the years he has designed, coordinated and led numerous adventure education programs for inner-city at-risk adolescents, including ten-day bicycle tours in Massachusetts and the Delaware Water Gap. He incorporates his counseling/teaching skills in an after school rock-climbing program, as well as "Healthy Options," a martial-arts-based youth development program. Louis has also trained teachers in experiential education as part of an Outward Bound/UFT professional development program. In addition to experience-based learning, Hernandez's teaching and therapeutic methodology incorporates diagnostic, holistic, and behavioral approaches.

Hernandez's credentials include training in RET, behavior modification, 12 Step, conflict mediation, trauma counseling, family systems, and experiential education. He holds a Masters in Bilingual Special Education from Fordham University with a focus in teaching emotionally handicapped, socially maladjusted and learning disabled students. He attained a second Masters in Educational Guidance and a post degree in Marriage and Family Counseling with a concentration in alcoholism and chemical dependency. Louis is currently completing a doctoral dissertation in group counseling.
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Rebecca Koladycz, MA
Rebecca is an evaluation consultant with over ten years of experience conducting evaluations and carrying out social research. She has considerable experience training staff in designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation plans, as well as experience writing and editing evaluation reports and presenting findings to various stakeholders. Her expertise is in qualitative and quantitative research methods, including designing evaluations, developing surveys, conducting observations and individual and focus group interviews, and performing statistical analyses. She is a strong advocate of a participatory, utilization-focused approach to program evaluation.

Rebecca has extensive knowledge of international adolescent sexual and reproductive health programs, youth development issues, teen pregnancy prevention programs, and national education initiatives. She currently serves as Senior Evaluation Officer at International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, where she provides evaluation technical assistance in sexual and reproductive health programs throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

As a Research Associate with Metis Associates, she was the project manager and principal evaluator of numerous grant-funded programs in public elementary and middle schools, including family literacy, conflict resolution and violence prevention, bilingual education, parent involvement, arts education, and after school youth development programs in New York City and nationally. Prior to that, she was the Evaluation Manager for the Monroe Council on Teen Pregnancy, where she developed and initiated procedures for evaluating local teen pregnancy prevention programs in Rochester, New York, and coordinated efforts of Council members, evaluation consultants, pregnancy prevention staff, Community Organizers, and others on research issues. She has also conducted research in Tamil Nadu, India, on marriage patterns, household composition and the changing nature of the caste system.

Rebecca holds a master of arts in social anthropology from the University of Rochester and is fluent in Spanish.
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Clinton Lacey
Clinton has worked as a program director, teacher, trainer and facilitator for young people and their families for over twelve years. Since 1992, Clinton has concentrated his efforts on the creation, development and supervision of programming and services for youth in crisis.

As the Associate Executive Director of Friends of Island Academy, a transitional/aftercare program for youth exiting the criminal and juvenile justice system, Clinton focuses his efforts on programmatic design and management of such service areas as employment, education, counseling, mentoring, conflict resolution, and youth/peer leadership training.

Clinton has served as a presenter at numerous conferences including Fordham University's Annual Manhattan Child and Adolescent Services Committee Conference, the Mentoring Symposium 2000, and the Youth Leadership Forum. He has served as a guest lecturer at several educational institutions, including Hunter College, Pace University and New York University. He has also facilitated training workshops for numerous community-based organizations such as The Door, Urban Youth Alliance and Covenant House. Clinton is also a graduate of the Columbia University Business School Institute for Not-for-Profit Management.
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Nora Lapin, M.A.
Nora has over15 years of experience as a fundraising consultant to non-profit organizations with a major emphasis on writing grant proposals and responses to government RFPs for key community issues including youth services, pregnancy prevention, parenting assistance, education, health and mental health care, domestic violence, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and senior services; employment, hunger, and housing programs.  She has a proven track record in innovative program development, researching and identifying viable funding sources, and writing successful grant applications to federal, state, local, and foundation funders. 

Nora has secured over $100 million in annual funding for clients from the federal, New York State, and New York City governments through the successful responses to RFPs that she has developed and written.  She has written numerous successful proposals in response to DYCD OST and New York State Department of Education RFPs for 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) throughout New York City.

Nora has also researched appropriate foundation and corporate funding for many clients and secured numerous grants from New York Community Trust, Tiger Foundation, Kenworthy Swift Foundation, New York Foundation, Catalog for Giving, and many more.

Nora has excellent communication and presentation skills and has written books, articles, speeches, and newsletters and made presentations at the New York City Foundation Center and Nonprofit Connection about how to win government grants and work with a fundraising consultant.  Nora holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
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Robert Rodriguez
Robert is a dynamic presenter, public speaking trainer, and coach.  As a longstanding member of Toastmasters International, a renowned worldwide public speaking organization, Robert has presented speeches to audiences of over 250 people.  

Robert thoroughly enjoys working with teens and adults to overcome their fear of public speaking.  His unique approach combines confidence-building feedback with core communication exercises.   Since 1996, he has been developing and facilitating workshops on public speaking, effective listening skills, overcoming objections, and goal setting for the following organizations: NAF New York City Academies, Asian Professional Extension (APEX), Working in Support of Education (W!SE), New York Public Library, United Way of New York City, Queensboro Council for Social Welfare, Public Allies of New York, the Global Other and Phi Iota Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Robert holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Binghamton University.
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Nancy Rosenbaum, Ed.M.
Nancy is a consultant who has over ten years of combined experience in educational program design, research and evaluation planning, curriculum development, as well as educational counseling. She currently works part-time as a Counselor and Lecturer at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY) where she provides a variety of support services to academically at-risk students.

Most recently, Nancy served as the Director of Research, Evaluation, and Curriculum for the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship—an international youth organization that uses entrepreneurship education to empower low-income youth. Under her stewardship, NFTE launched a multi-year evaluation study with Harvard University to assess the educational impacts of NFTE program participation. She also led NFTE through a comprehensive “Theory of Change” planning process to help the organization clarify its goals and program models. As well, she managed the revision and redesign of NFTE’s core curriculum materials, which resulted in NFTE being recognized by the Association for Educational Publishers with a 2002 Golden Lamp Award in the Books category.

Nancy has worked locally and internationally on a variety of youth development initiatives. From 1998-1999 she oversaw the management of a New York Citywide summer internship program that connected local high school and college students with paid internships at new media firms. In 1998, she had the opportunity to travel to Croatia where she served as a counselor at an international peace camp for Balkan children. She also worked as a Group Leader with World Learning’s Summer Abroad program in France for American high school students.

Nancy began her career in documentary video production. She served as an Associate Producer on the PBS series, Vote for Me: Politics in America, which received numerous awards including an Emmy, a Peabody, as well as an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for broadcast journalism.

In June 2000, Nancy earned a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University where she concentrated in Adolescent Risk and Prevention studies. She graduated from Haverford College in 1993 with a Bachelor’s degree in English literature (honors). She is a graduate of the Coro Leadership New York program for mid-career professionals and has completed professional development training with the New York City Outward Bound Center. In all of her work, Nancy has maintained a commitment to helping people connect to resources, ideas, and opportunities that can positively affect their sense of hope and possibility for the future.
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Nitika Tolani, Ph.D
Nitika holds a B.A. in English and a B.S. in Psychology from Santa Clara University, as well as an M.A. in Applied Psychology from Columbia University, where her research and training focused on the critical role of public policy in shaping the lives of low-income families. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology (with a concentration in International Education Policy) from Columbia University in 2007. In addition to her doctoral work, Nitika was a Graduate Research Fellow at the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF), co-directed by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D. and Sharon Lynn Kagan, Ed.D.

Over the past 10 years, Nitika has participated in large-scale qualitative and quantitative studies at every level, including grantwriting and budget development, research design and implementation, management of data collection activities, and synthesis and publication of results. She has taken numerous classes in advanced research methods and statistics, including psychological assessment, applied econometrics (e.g. cost -benefit analyses), latent structure analysis and hierarchical linear modeling, in order to learn to investigate the complex processes of child development through empirical research. In addition, her professional experiences at The World Bank, UNICEF-India and Metis Associates, an independent educational consulting organization, have provided her with significant project management and supervisory experience.

Trained by Project Adventure, Dario's professional experience has included program and facility management, consulting, professional development, course design and instruction, and years of direct service work with youth from under-served communities. Dario is also a certified Wilderness First Responder and New York State Licensed Rock Climbing Guide. A native Argentine, Dario is bilingual, and has climbed extensively in Patagonia as well as the North Eastern United States.
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Anne Troy
Bio coming soon.
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Emily West, Ph.D.
Emily is a senior evaluation consultant with over 10 years of research and evaluation experience within the social service and educational sectors. Emily has extensive experience with survey design, conducting focus groups & administering surveys, performing advanced data analysis, writing reports & presenting findings, as well as providing needs assessments to clients regarding how best to organize, collect and present program and participant data.

Emily’s professional and academic background covers a broad array of research areas including youth development (teen pregnancy prevention and juvenile delinquency), education (after-school programs, evaluation of summer school in the New York City public school system, use of technology in the classroom, etc.) and crime policy (prisoner re-entry, reducing recidivism, restorative justice, and crime prevention). Emily has worked for Owen Consulting on numerous evaluation projects for educational, mentoring, and social service youth programs operating at public schools and community-based organizations.

Emily holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in sociology and criminology, with a focus on sociology of the family and juvenile delinquency. Her dissertation examined how key family, peer, and school factors influence youths’ involvement in the criminal justice system.
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Shelly Wimpfheimer, DSW
With more than three decades of executive experience in both the public and private sectors, Dr. Shelly Wimpfheimer is intimately acquainted with all aspects of managing both large and small organizations. 

Most recently Shelly served as the Executive Director of PASE, the Partnership for After School Education, a professional development and technical assistance agency based in NYC and serving the afterschool community.  She joined PASE in September of 2007 after having served as the Vice President of Youth and Family Services of the YMCA of Greater New York, the largest YMCA in the country.  In that position, which she held for 11 years, she designed, implemented and evaluated numerous programs throughout YMCAs in New York City.  In addition, she served as a consultant to the YMCA of the USA, assisting in the conceptualization and development of youth and family programs nationally. 

Prior to joining the YMCA Shelly served as the Executive Director of the Division of Family Guidance, in Bergen County, New Jersey, for 16 years. This public multi-service agency served young people and families with special needs through 20 different programs, ranging from secure detention, to substance abuse, to sex offender treatment.  During this period Shelly served on numerous statewide committees and task forces dealing with youth and family issues throughout New Jersey. 

Shelly has taught on the undergraduate and graduate levels and has conducted numerous staff development programs for personnel from many nonprofit agencies.  In recent years she has served as an instructor and mentor to agency directors and program managers in various agency settings.  Among her areas of interest are:  leadership development, emotional intelligence in the workplace, addressing the social and emotional climate in nonprofit agencies, board development, senior executive consultation and other topics associated with the sensitive and efficient management of agencies.  She is currently an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Social Work where she is teaching in the Social Enterprise Administration sequence.

Shelly has served in many leadership positions in professional organizations. She was president of the National Network for Social Work Managers, a national board member of the National Association of Social Workers and the state president of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

As a community volunteer she has served as a board member of Bergen Family Center, a local family service agency in New Jersey, the Association for Children of New Jersey, former president of the Hackensack Ridgewood Zonta Club and various other local organizations.

Shelly has a DSW from Hunter College School of Social Work in Program Design and Administration, an MSS from Bryn Mawr School of Social Work and Social Research in Social Work Administration and Planning and a BA from Penn State University in Liberal Arts.  She also completed institute training in family therapy at the Center for Family Learning in New Rochelle, New York.
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