|Dedicated to working with compassionate leaders|
|Supporting those who are wounded to heal and serve as an instrument of change|
|Advocate for hope, truth, racial healing, and transformation as a path towards justice|
| Transforming Public Health Through Strategic Leadership and Fundraising Excellence |
For over two decades, I’ve worked at the intersection of public health, ethics, and narrative strategy. I’ve been the Executive Director of the Coalition for Supportive Care of Kidney Patients at George Washington University. I’ve directed the New York State Center for Best Practices to Prevent Childhood Obesity, evaluated the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s school wellness programs, and was the lead evaluator for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.
I have traveled the world to follow stories of healing and harm—from trauma workshops in New Zealand to arbovirology labs in Colombia to memoir research in Albania to program development in Estonia and consulting work in almost every state in the U.S. My carry-on is filled with research notebooks, grant proposals, family photographs, and fragments of memory that continue to shape how I write, serve, and witness.
I choose my partnerships carefully, working each year with a handful of nonprofits whose missions echo what I believe matters most: compassion, fairness, dignity, and repair.
I hold degrees from Columbia University (BA), SUNY Albany (MPH), and Albany Medical College (MS in Bioethics), and am represented by Barbara Jones at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency.
Proposal Development Story: The Promise
It began, as these things often do, with a promise. Not just to write a grant, or to meet a deadline, or to impress a funder. But to help a community with a devastating history of child sexual abuse. This was the spirit behind the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation application: part dream, part logistics, part late-night panic. Working across hemispheres meant someone was always groggy. Someone was always apologizing for sending emails from a locked toilet, hiding from children or vacation obligations. Someone (usually me) was always trying to keep the whole thing stitched together with grace, urgency, and caffeine.
The stakes were high, not because we wanted a win, but because we had already made a quiet commitment: that this time, the community would not be an afterthought. We were not building something for them. We were building it with them, and in many ways, under their direction. We became the kind of team that knows when to press and when to wait, when to soften an email and when to escalate. We learned to code-switch across sectors: funder-speak, academic-speak, survivor-speak, and the language of the Marae.
The proposal itself became a kind of manuscript, each edit reflecting both our hopes and our limitations. We weren’t just asking for support—we were trying to reframe the entire problem. This wasn’t about measuring trauma with a one-size-fits-all test. It was about acknowledging colonization, community wisdom, and the need for relational, culturally grounded healing. That meant letting go of control. That meant letting the community lead.
That, too, was part of the promise.
The first story I wrote was about a group of girls deciding who would go first. I didn’t know then that was the story I’d keep writing.
There were no parents in the play, no adults to intervene. Just children negotiating power with language—earnest, hungry for belonging, uncertain about the rules. I wrote it in pencil on lined paper, acted it out in the basement with friends. I still have it, folded in a drawer somewhere. It was my first attempt at making sense of a world where order had to be imagined because it wasn’t guaranteed.
That instinct—to narrate the unspeakable into shape—stayed with me. Writing became my form of survival, then witness, then return. I have written through trauma, policy, research, grief, and memory. Each piece an answer to the quiet question beneath everything: Now that you know, what will you do with it?
My creative work includes the novel Howard Be Thy Name and my memoir-in-progress Hope Was the Work: A memoir of survival, public reckoning, and radical repair weaves personal narrative with public health work, cultural analysis, and the slow construction of hope. My plays—Little Red Wagon, We Are at the Well, Confession— explore maternal complicity, spiritual terror, and relational survival. My essays have appeared in The Guardian, P.S. I Love You, Arts & Understanding, and The Writer.
My essay “How Do You Forgive the Unforgivable?” was nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and Best American Essayin 2025. Another personal essay, “This Is About My Mother”, appeared in The Guardian and explores silence, complicity, and the limits of maternal love.
I write two Substack newsletters—The Second Silence, which offers cultural critique through the lens of survivor experience, and Dream Alibis, which blends poetry, photography, and memory work.
I am also the author of Worthy: Raising Body Positive Children with the Power of Kindness and the long-running Children at the Table blog for Child Psychology Today, where I’ve written about childhood trauma, bullying, obesity, and the ethics of pediatric care.
Much of my writing is informed by my parallel life as a public health strategist. For over two decades, I’ve worked at the intersection of narrative, trauma recovery, and children’s wellbeing. I continue to develop programming that integrates storytelling, ethics, and systems change.
I return to the same questions: Who is at the table, and who isn’t? When should I speak, and when should I listen? How do we enter a space with grace and humility? When is it time to lead, and when is it time to step aside? Writing doesn’t give me answers. It gives me better questions. It keeps asking: What else? Who else? Where else?
Writing helps me remember. Writing gives me a way to begin again.
In the Dream House
Created by Sarah Blesener and JoAnn Stevelos
In the Dream House is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project investigating how we engage with visual archives through a trauma-informed lens, aiming to make visible the absences that have been excluded from historical narratives and, in doing so, create opportunities for recovery, reworking, and reimagining the stories we tell. In the Dream House centers on the archive and lived experience of JoAnn Stevelos, who survived the decade-long abuse perpetrated by her stepfather, a Catholic priest, against her and her four siblings and her mother, who not only allowed the abuse but meticulously documented their lives together in photo albums - assembling a history as she wanted it to be remembered.
This work is interested in the gaps, silences, absences and redactions that often permeate archives, especially in the context of traumatic histories and survivor testimonies. How can we bridge the boundaries between private and public memory in mourning and grief? How can participatory visual storytelling practices be integrated into recovery? By reimagining how we work with our personal and collective archives, we create a space where healing becomes a shared responsibility—one that embraces creativity, compassion, and mutual support.
This project explores how archives—both personal and collective—can support survivors of trauma by reactivating them through sensory memory and creative interventions such as the use of flowers, heirlooms, and memorabilia. Rather than focusing on erasure, we aim to work with archives in ways that honor the experiences of survivors while fostering recovery and growth. We are interested in integrating participatory methodology and therapeutic techniques, focusing on care-driven, rather than state-driven, methods to transform trauma into creative spaces for creativity and healing.
As JoAnn writes: “We placed my mother’s albums on everyday objects, as if setting the past down gently in the life I had built—offering it a place to rest. A life I was, in many ways, seeing for the first time. Petals from the flowers I had bought that morning were placed over the faces of my siblings in one photo, covering them with something soft, something ephemeral. It was a gesture of care. An offering. A way to hold what could not be undone. The past became something to study, not just something to endure. It was not just a revisiting, but a reckoning. The camera turned these places into evidence—of what happened, of what was lost, of what remained. And in that way, it felt like collaboration. It felt like the story was ours to shape.”
What Do We Do With the Photos of Monsters?
My sister said, “Burn them all.”
My brothers wanted nothing to do with them.
But I couldn’t look away.
When the photo albums arrived, carefully packed in black nylon bags, they were almost absurd in their neatness. Years of holidays, birthdays, vacations—each image a performance of normalcy. My mother, smiling in a sleeveless sundress. Frank, the priest, our “Dad,” in a bathing suit, barbecuing. The children—us—posed like offerings.
In Monsters, Claire Dederer writes that we are all monsters in our own way, and the question is not whether we are monstrous but what kind of monster we are. But what kind of monster documents crimes in soft light and wide smiles? What kind of monster builds an archive to deny the very thing it records?
These albums are their masterpiece—not because they are art, but because they are proof of the performance. A choreography of control. A curated innocence.
So what do we do with the archive?
Do we destroy it, in solidarity with the rage that wants obliteration?
Do we keep it, as evidence of harm and the impossibility of clean memory?
Do we alter it, annotate it, reclaim it?
The Architecture of the Trap began here—in the tension between preservation and obliteration. We decided not to burn the albums. Not because we forgave, or forgot. But because they are not just their record. They are ours, too. The backdrop of our survival. The set of our childhood. The place where the trap was laid—and where we began learning how to get out.
The question isn’t just: What do we do with the monster’s image?
It’s: What do we do with the part of ourselves that once loved the monster, trusted the monster, called the monster “Dad”?
We don't reframe the past to make it palatable.
We reframe the archive to make the future truthful.
***
The albums weren’t just filled with their faces. They were filled with ours.
There’s one photo of Frank holding a pacifier. Sarah and I noticed it during our first dive into the albums and set it aside. It was disturbing—yet profoundly intriguing. We knew we would do something with it eventually; we just didn’t know what.
When we came across it again during our deeper excavation of the archive at Arts, Letters, and Numbers, we had the same reaction. We placed it on our work table and left it there for days. I would pick it up now and then, still just as perplexed.
Toward the end of our residency, we took the photo outside. Instinctively, I placed it next to an image of my mother doing her makeup in a mirror—one I assumed Frank had taken. We laid them together in a patch of tall grass beside a stream. A new frame for the image: vertical, tender, held in green and water.
Later, Sarah arranged them side by side on a metal grate, blades of grass poking through. The photos had found a new home. The monsters had a new shape.
And suddenly, their story felt less monstrous.
More ordinary.
The ordinariness of being a monster.
The ordinariness of having a monster’s story.
***
Do I destroy that photo because it hurts? Or do I keep it because it tells the truth about what was done to me—and how well I learned to hide it?
These are not just moral questions. They are archival questions. They are survivor questions.
Because this isn't just about them. It's about what happens when an entire system colludes to make the monster seem safe. What happens when mothers smile in photos they staged. When churches reassign men like Frank to new parishes. When silence becomes the price of family.
Claire Dederer asks, "What is the cost of our complicity?" But children don’t have the luxury of complicity. We have only survival.
And what do you do when survival looks like complicity in the photos?
The albums make that clear. They are not random snapshots; they are instruments of forgetting. A mother's curation. A priest’s erasure. A child's forced performance.
And yet, they are also the beginning of a map.
Not a path out, exactly—but a record of where we were trapped.
Of what it looked like.
Of how close we came to disappearing.
***
Gabor Maté writes that trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result. For me, that meant splitting.
There was the self who knew. Who screamed inside. Who disappeared into vodka miniatures, who left her body during dinner, who watched herself from the ceiling.
And there was the other one—the good daughter. The one who smiled for the photo. Who knew how to fold her hands in church. Who thanked Frank for ice cream. Who posed next to him in Polaroids that still make my stomach turn.
The albums hold both selves. And that’s what makes them so hard to hold.
To destroy them would be to deny the good daughter ever existed—to erase the performance I had to give to stay safe.
To keep them as-is would be to accept the lie they were meant to tell.
To alter them is something else entirely.
It’s not revenge. It’s not closure.
It’s artistic intervention. It’s archival reclamation. It’s survival as authorship.
We began experimenting—scanning the photographs, isolating hands and mouths. Writing new captions. Obscuring his face. Circling mine. Extracting the marginalia—my mother’s neat labels, her dates and events and passive verbs. Easter, 1983. Frank with kids. At home.
At home.
We started asking: Can a photograph be repossessed?
Can the story embedded in it be unfolded?
Not to change what happened, but to change what it means?
What does it mean to take back a picture?
It means we no longer play our assigned parts.
It means we strip the image of its power to lie.
It means we build The Architecture of the Trap not as a gallery of horror, but as a blueprint of survival.
Because it’s not just the monster’s archive anymore.
It’s ours now.
And we are not burning it.
We are reimagining how to live with it.
How to live with the monsters in the photos.
PROFILE
Innovator and executive leader with a proven track record in shaping public health policy and advancing children’s health care on a global scale. Recognized for providing clear vision and collaborative leadership to diverse stakeholders across sectors.
Committed to equity-centered, trust-based leadership that prioritizes community-led solutions, redistributes power, and amplifies the voices of those most impacted by systemic injustice.
Expert in developing comprehensive partnership strategies to support multi-year, multi-faceted, and multimillion-dollar initiatives.
Experienced in advising Executive Teams and Boards on thought leadership, brand positioning, and philanthropic engagement with foundations, high-net-worth individuals, corporations, and mission-aligned supporters.
Demonstrated success in launching and leading high-impact, collaborative programs at the local, national, and international levels, with a focus on sustainability and compassionate leadership.
Specialized expertise in children’s health policy, applied research, program design, and cross-sector management.
Broad experience across public health systems, including direct service, educational initiatives, research, and national policy formulation. Known as a transparent and empathetic communicator.
Principal, JSC, LLC
US & INTERNATIONAL CONSULTING PROJECTS
Executive Leadership and Strategy Consultant for World Mosquito Program (WMP). WMP has developed a novel technology to eliminate dengue. 2021-present
Consultant for the Institute for International Health and Education. 2018—2021.
Strategy Advisor for MYRVR Technologies MYRIVR App is a scalable global innovation that provides people free and equal access to community services to attain their full health potential and addresses health inequities. 2017-2020
Strategy Advisor and Program Evaluator for Trust MYRIVR, (New Zealand) and Stop the Silence®: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc. partnership for the implementation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded Comprehensive Child Sexual Abuse Training, Prevention, Mitigation, and Care Model in New Zealand. 2017-2020
Strategy and Development Advisor for Stop the Silence®: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc. Working in 15 countries across 7 continents to prevent, treat, and mitigate child sexual abuse and trafficking. Stop the Silence®: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc. advanced to round four in the MacArthur Foundations $100M and Change program. 2017— 2020
Experienced Proposal Reviewer and Interviewer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leaders Program, contributing to leadership selection aligned with Dr. Gail Christopher’s Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) framework. Additional reviewer experience includes PCORI, NIH, CDC, and ACPHS. Invited Wise Head Panelist for MacArthur Foundation 100&Change 2024
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Executive Director, Coalition for Supportive Care for Kidney Patients, George Washington University. January 2020-2025. Reporting to the Executive Committee, responsible for the overall fiduciary and management of an annual budget of approximately $10 million. Leading a diverse team with national and international partners to conduct research, develop policies, and provide evidence-based programming for kidney care teams, people with kidney failure and their families.
Director of Research, Evaluation and Monitoring, The Clinton Foundation’s Alliance for a Healthier Generation October 2012 to May 2016 (Grant funded position) Direct oversight of all evaluation, monitoring and research to identify and share best practices for children’s health and wellness programs. Liaison to the Clinton Foundation's cross initiative evaluation of all Clinton Foundation health programs. Co-lead evaluator for the First Lady’s of the United States Let’s Move Active Schools Program. Contributed to strategic planning while serving on the leadership team initiative to grow the Alliances’ reach, servicing 15,000 schools in 2012 to over 35,000 schools in 2016 with over 80% engagement rate. Developed and maintained a portfolio of up to 20 learning and evaluation plans for AHG program. Secured approximately $10M in funding for program evaluation.
Center Director, Center for Best Practice for the Prevention of Early Childhood Obesity Albany, New York, Foundation for Healthy Living 2007-2009 (Grant funded position - Foundation closed) Direct oversight for all aspects of the Center for Best Practice for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity including research, evaluation and monitoring, program development and management, grants management, and strategic planning. Secured and managed all aspects of a $1.6M budget and supervised professional staff and interns.
Health Program Director, New York State Arbovirus Laboratories at Griffin Laboratories Slingerlands, New York 2001-2010 (Grant funded position) Administered all aspects of a $15M NIAID, CDC, NSF contracts for the laboratory research programs. Worked independently to administer all aspects of program and operations for the Arbovirus Laboratories with a 50 person staff as well as both national and international collaborators.
Director of Programs, Administrative Director, Alden March Bioethics Institute, Albany Medical College Albany, New York 2006-2007 (One year contract) Direct oversight of all aspects of research and educational programs for the Alden March Bioethics Institute. Secured and managed all aspects of a $3M annual budget and supervised professional staff and interns.
Program Officer, Oversaw the strategic administration of New York State Block Grants supporting English as a Second Language, Pregnant and Parenting Teen Programs, and other youth-centered initiatives. Led the full grantmaking lifecycle, including drafting Requests for Proposals (RFPs), developing evaluation criteria, recruiting and managing external review panels, and coordinating the proposal review process. Conducted thorough analysis of applicant organizations and recommended funding allocations to the Commissioner in alignment with programmatic goals and state policy priorities.
EDUCATION
Masters of Public Health, Social Behavior and Community Health, 2009 School of Public Health, State University of New York
Masters of Science, Bioethics, 2009 Albany Medical College, Alden March Bioethics Institute
Bachelor of Arts, Liberal Arts, 1994 Columbia University, New York, New York
Certificate Programs:
200 hours Yoga Certificate Training, Yoga Alliance 2025
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM) Trauma-Informed Education 2024
Harvard ED-X From Laboratory to Market Harvard University 2024
Mastering the Treatment of Trauma, The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine 2024
Working with the Pain of Abandonment, The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine 2023
How to Apply Mindfulness to Your Life and Work, The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine 2021
Embodied Philosophy Contemplative Therapies: Building Resilience Through Mindfulness and Compassion 2020.
End of Life Doula Training, International End of Life Doula Association 2022.
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS, TRAININGS, AND SEMINARS
Wounded Leaders: Who Am I To Do This Work? Full Day Workshop National Nurses League, Washington DC 2023, 2024, 2025.
Worthy: The Power of Kindness in Raising Body Positive Children. Full Session Presentation. US Nanny Association Conference 2025, Iowa University. 2024 Webinar for the Colorado State Social Workers Association September 2021. Webinar for the New York State County Health Officials June 2021. Webinar for the New York State Public Health Association. March 2021.
Kidney Scholars Team: Supportive Care for People with End Stage Kidney Disease. New York Academy of Medicine. 2024
Pathways: Supportive Care for People with End Stage Kidney Disease. Grant Makers in Aging. 2022, 2023
Joining Together in a Global Movement toward the Prevention and Mitigation of Child Sexual Abuse and Trafficking: Developing and Maintaining Partnerships and Enhancements of Collaboration. Full session presentation. International Society of Child Abuse Prevention. Doha, Qatar. February 2020.
Uncover the Hope in Children and Caregivers: The Link Between Childhood Obesity, Bullying, Child Sexual Abuse and Death by Suicide. Full session presentation. New York State Division of Mental Health Conference September 2019.
Child Sexual Abuse and the Link to Suicidal Ideation and Death by Suicide Full session presentation. New York State Division of Mental Health Conference September 2019.
Evaluating a Global Movement toward the Prevention and Mitigation of Child Sexual Abuse and Trafficking: Developing and Maintaining Partnerships and Enhancements of Collaboration. 69th New York State Public Health Association Annual Meeting and 2019 New York State Association of County Health Officials Annual meeting and collaborative public health conference. Hot topics session. May 2019.
Joining Together in a Global Movement toward the Prevention and Mitigation of Child Sexual Abuse and Trafficking: Developing and Maintaining Partnerships and Enhancements of Collaboration. Institute for Violence, Abuse, and Trauma Conference, Hawaii, April 2019
Let’s Move Active Schools Evaluation Report. Presidential Council, Nike, and Center’s for Disease Control. 2014.
Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s Summary of Evaluation Findings. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Fall 2013.
PAST & CURRENT PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS/BOARD POSITIONS
International Society of Child Abuse Prevention, Committee Member
Eat REAL, Board Member
New York State Public Health Association, Board Member
Obesity Action Coalition, Advisory Board Member, Childhood Obesity
American Public Health Association, Member
American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Pediatric Ethics Alliance Group Member
PUBLICATIONS & PERFORMANCES
SELECTED PLAYS – FULL LENGTH
Little Red Wagon- Submitted to Yale Drama Series Playwriting Competition 2025
SELECTED PLAYS – SHORT / ONE ACTS
Little Red Wagon (Radio Reading—Purple House Radio, 2017)
(Staged Reading—University Club of Albany, 2017)
We Are at the Well (Production – Wit and Ill Theater, 2008)
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Memoir, working title, Hope Was the Work: A memoir of survival, public reckoning, and radical repair.
Chap Book, Dangerous Situations
Art Book, Architecture of the Trap
Archival Practice Workshop, The Dream House
PUBLICATIONS
This is About My Mother, Personal Essay, The Guardian, 2025
How Do You Forgive The Unforgivable? Personal Essay, Chicago Story Press, 2025 Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essay
The Second Silence, Substack Blog, 2025
Passersby, Dew Drop, 2023
The Alaei Brothers, Arts & Understanding Literary Magazine, 2019
No Syrup, Just Butter, Personal Essay, P.S. I Love You, Medium, 2018
Howard Be Thy Name, Novel, Amazon, 2017Dream Alibis, Poetry and Plays Anthology, Amazon, 2017
A Voice of My Own, Personal Essay, The Writer, 2016
Second, You’re Really Nigerian, Short Story, Arts & Understanding Literary Magazine, 2014 (Honorable Mention, Glimmer Train and Hudson Valley Writer’s Guild)
WRITING WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS
New York State Poetry Workshop with Gary Maggio, 2020
New York State Writer’s Institute Short Fiction Workshop with Lydia Davis, 2016
New York State Writer’s Institute Fiction Workshop with James Lasdun, 2014
Troy Arts Center Poetry Workshop with Victorio Reyes, 2013
Troy Arts Center Fiction Workshop with Lucia Nevai, 2012
Columbia University Writing for Television with Frank Pugliese, 2012
31 Plays in 31 Days August Challenge, 2014-2016
SELECTED RESIDENCIES
Arts & Letters & Numbers with Sarah Blesener 2025
The Church Residency and Performance with Ryder Cooley, 2018
PS 21 Residency and Performance with JD Urban, 2018
Roxbury Writing Residency and Reading with Annie Dewitt, 2017
