JoAnn Stevelos, MS, MPH

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My work begins where others would rather look away.

I write about memory, trauma, hope, family, silence, and repair. Through memoir, essays, fiction, plays, and interdisciplinary projects, I explore the stories people carry long after a crisis has passed and the ways individuals and communities make meaning from what remains. 

About

 

For more than two decades, I have worked with nonprofits, foundations, universities, healthcare systems, and community organizations in the United States and abroad. My work has taken me from trauma-informed initiatives in New Zealand to public health programs in Latin America, from memoir research in Albania to conversations with survivors, clinicians, advocates, and families trying to make sense of what happens after harm.

The settings have changed, but the questions have remained remarkably consistent: How do people survive what should have broken them? What helps individuals, families, and communities rebuild trust after it has been lost?

The questions that drive my professional work are the same ones that drive my writing: How do people survive what should have broken them? What happens after the truth is known? What helps individuals, families, and communities rebuild trust after it has been lost? My current projects include Complicit, a memoir about family secrecy, abuse, and the possibility of hope; The Second Silence, an exploration of what happens after abuse is disclosed but meaningful accountability never arrives; The Archietecture of the Trap, a deep dive into the wreck of my family's archive; and Dream Alibis, a collection of reflections on dreams, memory, culture, and the hidden narratives that shape our lives.

I have long believed that data alone can never tell the whole story. To understand what the numbers mean, we must also understand the lives behind them. As a mixed methods researcher, this conviction has led me to collaborations, partnerships, and friendships that have profoundly shaped both my professional and personal life. It has also deepened my belief that where personal narratives intersect with public life, individual experiences reveal larger truths about the systems, institutions, and relationships that shape us.

I studied at Columbia University, the University at Albany School of Public Health, and Albany Medical College, where my work focused on public health and bioethics.