The SCRR project staff is comprised of team members from a partnership between CARS and T2.
We are excited and grateful for the opportunity to support school communities in the critical work of school community recovery and renewal through and after a crisis.
Collectively, we bring expertise in trauma-informed services and systems change, grief and bereavement, school mental health crisis leadership, healing-centered systems work, and much more.
We are an interdisciplinary team of educators, therapists, physicians, public health workers, school mental health practitioners, youth advocates, and many others. We are committed to learning the needs of the field and translating these needs into responsive support through trainings, technical assistance, and resources.
Staff (in alphabetical order by first name)
Anh Ta (anh/them/anh's), LMFT, MA
SCRR Field Coach
Trauma Transformed
Anh (pronounced “Ang” like Ang Lee) is a licensed MFT. During adolescence Anh experienced a mental health crisis that would carry onto Anh’s mid-20’s. Because of how various educators embodied a supportive and healing environment, Anh was able to graduate and pay the work forward of supporting students in educational settings through after-school program development, youth workforce development, and youth ministries across the California Bay Area. Before joining the Trauma Transformed team, Anh worked as the senior clinician for school-based mental health services with youth in East Oakland alternative education where Anh co-developed the Trauma Awareness Group with students and fellow clinicians to provide support and healing for African American youth in urban school settings.
As a consumer provider, Anh does not “think outside the box” but instead has a “think as if there is no box and build that box as legally and ethically necessary to meet the need of design and implementation” type of approach to work. Anh now serves as the Assistant Director of Trauma Transformed and holds the voices of those most impacted at the center of Anh’s work.
Antoine Moore (he/him/his), MA, MPP
SCRR Field Coach
Trauma Transformed
Antoine is at heart a catalyst for learning and development, having done some form of individual or organizational capacity building for 20 years. In the past, he worked as a life coach, nonprofit consultant, facilitator, manager, and creative arts therapist. Antoine has great passion for helping others create trauma-informed systems and education settings. His perpetual question is how to set up creative, responsive contexts where people can bring forth their best thinking and being. Antoine loves language and culture and has a goal to become conversant in seven languages before he retires.
Brianna Young (she/hers), M.Ed
Field Coach
Trauma Transformed
Brianna Young is a Midwest native, currently based in the Bay Area. Her role is a Lead Trainer and Project Specialist with Trauma Transformed, and serves as a Field Coach for the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal project. Having started her professional career as a middle school teacher an instructional coach, Brianna has a particular heart for schools and all the potential they hold. She obtained her Masters of Education from Concordia University, emphasizing Trauma and Resilience in Educational Settings.
Brianna dedicates this work to teachers who view their classrooms as healing spaces, and to the students who walk through those doors.
Darryn Green (he/him/his)
SCRR Field Coach
Trauma Transformed
Darryn is an Independent Training Consultant and Coach with a history of working in collaboration with child welfare professionals and other youth-serving professionals in the non-profit sector, providing training, facilitation, youth involved curricula development, in addition to technical assistance with program development, evaluation, strategic planning, administrative systems development, and volunteer management.
Francesca Osuna (she/hers), MSW/MPH, PPSC (ASW #59699)
SCRR Field Coach
Trauma Transformed
Francesca is a Northern California native who serves as the Trauma Informed Systems Implementation Coordinator. Francesca has worked at East Bay Agency for Children since 2013 and has experience in school-based settings with children, adolescents, and families. She understands what it means to be on the front lines of this work, and her perspective informs her approach to training and evaluation.
Francesca believes that healing happens best in community and is committed to supporting students and school staff to identify and share their healing strategies through the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project.
Jen Leland (she/hers), MFT
SCRR Field Director
Trauma Transformed
Jen is a licensed MFT with an extensive background in community mental health and education programs, including leading trauma-informed special education and residential treatment and youth justice programs and directing multiple non-profit and county public health programs. In 2015, Jen had great honor to become founding Director of Trauma Transformed Center. Having her own lived experiences in systems and more than 15 years in the public health field, she is humbled and driven by the vision that school communities can recover from crisis, structural and collective trauma in ways that lead to even more healing, loving, and just school communities for all students.
“I’m driven to honor the legacies of educators who believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself. When I was 17 years old, I was in a residential treatment center and had only 15 credits. A teacher pushed me to take the GED and SAT and apply for early entrance to college. He opened doors for me I didn’t even know existed. His legacy drives my work toward the vision where all students feel seen, loved, and valued.”
Kristi Silva (she/hers), MA, MS
SCRR Evaluation Coordinator
CARS
Kristi Silva is a Senior Research Associate at CARS, where she serves as a field specialist and program evaluator. In her role as evaluator, Kristi is interested in how culturally responsive evaluation practices can support the vision of schools as a place of recovery and renewal for all.
As a professional who now serves communities like her own, Kristi brings a critical lived experience to the work. Her work in school crisis recovery and renewal is motivated by and dedicated to the memory of Eliseo Montano.
Leora Wolf-Prusan (she/hers), EdD
SCRR Project Director
CARS
Leora Wolf-Prusan serves as the Project Director for the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project and as the School Mental Health field director for the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC), in addition to many other facilitation projects. Previous roles include a national field director of a SAMHSA initiative (ReCAST) and technical assistance for the Student Mental Health Program for California’s Community Colleges, CalWORKs, and more. With years of training and facilitating learning and community building in schools p-16, Wolf-Prusan is skilled in facilitation, human learning design, training, and coaching. Wolf-Prusan is dedicated to work focused on educator mental health, wellness, and trauma-informed approaches to education and operates through a framework in which public health, social work, and education intersect. Her research examined the impact of student death on teachers, what factors contribute to teachers building resiliency, and what supports teachers need from the school system in the event of a student homicide or other traumas. She received a BA in international relations and a BA in Spanish with a minor in Social & Ethnic Relations from the University of California, Davis; a teaching credential from Mills College; and an EdD in educational leadership from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Her work in school crisis recovery and renewal is motivated by and dedicated to educators and youth who envision schools as a platform for community and connection.
Livia Rojas (she/they), MSSW
SCRR Project Manager
CARS
Livia Rojas is the Project Manager for the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project and for the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC). Livia’s work is at the intersection of public health, education, and technology. In previous roles, Livia supported national projects focused on digital skills building among adults, youth media arts education, and capacity building among public health practitioners. Years of designing training and distance learning opportunities for adults has strengthened Livia’s expertise in accessibility, communication design, project management, and community building.
Livia is committed to supporting students and school staff as they navigate healing strategies through the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project. Livia’s school crisis recovery and renewal work is dedicated to Michelle Mignott.
Oriana Ides (she/hers), MA, LPCCI, PPS
SCRR Field Coach
CARS
Oriana Ides is the School Mental Health Training Specialist at CARS, who approaches healing the wounds of trauma and oppression as core elements of social justice. She has worked with young people across life course from elementary school to college, and has served as teacher-leader, school counselor, classroom educator and program director. She is committed to generating equity within school structures and policies by focusing on evidence-based mental health techniques and institutional design.
Her work to forge a more just world is motivated by and dedicated to Amilca Ysabel Mouton Fuentes.
Alica Forneret is the SCRR Pedagogy of Grief program lead, steering and guiding our training, events, and partnerships to ensure a grief attuned focus to our school crisis recovery & renewal work.
Alica is an educator, speaker, and consultant dedicated to creating new spaces for people to explore grief and grieving.
We are grateful to be guided by community leaders, scholars, researchers, and thought leaders across the country who have dedicated work not only to school crisis readiness and response, but also recovery and renewal.
Alica facilitates for teams at organizations including Google, Culture Amp, Nielsen, and The California Department of Education. She has partnered with the likes of The Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, Columbia University, and Lululemon. And she consults on product development and systems change to help companies create resources and tools for grieving communities.
Alica’s writing about grief, work, and race have been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, Huffington Post, GQ, and more. Alica is the founding Lab Director of the “Starlight End of Life Lab”, Program Lead for School Crisis Recovery & Renewal’s “Pedagogy of Grief” project, an associate board member for Our House, and an inaugural member of the BC Women’s Health Foundation Young Women’s Council.
The SCRR Project partners with Dr. David Schonfeld, director of the National Center for School Crisis Bereavement + Grief Sensitive Schools, as the project’s Senior Advisor.
Dr. Schonfeld is available for consultation and coaching, and he is a contributor to the project’s programming and approach.
David J Schonfeld, MD, FAAP, established and directs the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement (www.schoolcrisiscenter.org), located at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. He is Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Keck School of Medicine. Prior faculty positions have been in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine; Head of the Section of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center; and Pediatrician-in-Chief at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and Chair of Pediatrics at Drexel University School of Medicine.
For over 30 years, he has provided consultation and training to schools on supporting students and staff at times of crisis and loss in the aftermath of numerous school crisis events and disasters within the United States and abroad, including the COVID-19 pandemic (2020); terrorist attacks of the World Trade Center (2001); school and community shootings and stabbings in Santa Clarita, CA (2019), Parkland, FL (2018), Newtown, CT (2012), Benton, KY (2018), Las Vegas, NV (2017), Thousand Oaks, CA (2018), Floresville, TX (Sutherland Springs church) (2017), Marysville, WA (2014), Osaka, Japan (2001), Corning, CA (2017), Aurora, CO (2012), Platte Canyon, CO (2006), Chardon, OH (2012), and Townville, South Carolina (2016); flooding from hurricanes Maria in San Juan (2017), Sandy in NY and NJ (2012), Katrina in New Orleans (2005), and Ike in Galveston, Texas (2008); tornadoes in Joplin, MO (2011) and AL (2011); wildfires in Butte County, CA (2018), Sonoma County, CA (2017), and in the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevierville, TN (2016); and the 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan, China (2008).
Dr. Schonfeld frequently speaks (with over 1,000 presentations) on the topics of crisis and loss and has authored more than 150 scholarly articles, book chapters, and books. He has conducted school-based research (funded by NICHD, NIMH, NIDA, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, William T Grant Foundation, and other foundations) involving children’s understanding of and adjustment to serious illness and death and school-based interventions to promote adjustment and risk prevention. Dr. Schonfeld is a member of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Disaster Preparedness and Recovery (formerly Disaster Preparedness Advisory Council) and the National Biodefense Science Board. He served as a Commissioner for both the National Commission on Children and Disasters and the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission in CT. He served as President of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics from 2006-7.
School Crisis Recovery & Renewal Coaching Network
The School Crisis Recovery & Renewal Coaching Network is a constellation of scholars, leaders, and thought partners who steward this project.
- Meagan O’Malley, California State University, Sacramento
- Kristin Thorp and Johanna Bergan, Youth Move National
- Joyce Sebian, Federal / National School Mental Health Partnership (with support from the Bainum Family Foundation)
- Darrick Smith, University of San Francisco
- Joyce Dorado, University of California at San Francisco HEARTS
- Molly Lopez, University of Texas Austin
- Nkem Ndefo, Lumos Transforms
- Anthony Petrosino, WestEd
- Laurel Kiser, University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Medicine
- Stephen Brock, California State University, Sacramento
- Paulina Almarosa, Latinx Grief
- Lara Kain, PACES Connection
- Candice Valenzuela, Trainer and Consultant
- Meaning Makers Collective
- The Dinner Party
- Tori Stuart-Cassel, EMT Associates, Inc.
Interested in joining the SCRR Coaching Network?
Email the project director, Leora Wolf-Prusan: Lwolf@cars-rp.org
PARTNER NETWORK
