Staff & Volunteers
We are grateful for the amazing staff and volunteers who dedicate their time and talents to helping CPTSD Foundation provide the best trauma-informed support for our members, readers, and website visitors.
Some of our team prefer to not have their picture online, and/or not be listed on our website. We respect their privacy, and fully acknowledge their unwavering support for CPTSD research, trauma-recovery, and their dedication to survivors.
Our Amazing Team
Each and every member of our organization plays an integral role in helping us reach survivors through our programs, blog, social media, partnerships, and more.
Call Leaders
These amazing professionals are here to help support and encourage you on your healing journey.
Call Leader: Sabra Cain, LMSW
Healing Book Club, Daily Recovery Support
Sabra joined CPTSD Foundation in 2017, and started the Healing Book Club in 2018. In addition, researches future resources for the CPTSD Foundation to use.
Sabra received her LMSW in 2021 and is an outpatient therapist working with a wide range of ages and trauma experiences. She enjoys helping others work through their own healing journey by embracing their strengths and capacity to heal.
Call Leader: Rhonda Firestar
Weekly Creative Group, Daily Recovery Support
Rhonda has been with CPTSD Foundation, first as a member of our programs, and throughout her healing journey in recent years, she is now certified in Peer Support and helps lead the Daily Recovery Support calls, as well as pioneering the Weekly Creative Group, which launched in the fall of 2021.
Call Leader: Ashni Shah
Daily Recovery Support, Project Coordinator
Ashni is a certified and qualified counseling psychologist and complex childhood trauma recovery therapist. She is also an ICF (International Coach Federation) certified Life Coach and Positive Psychology Coach. Having a lived experience of childhood complex trauma and narcissistic abuse, she deeply understands the major and minor struggles of trauma survivors. Offering a safe, compassionate, supportive, and non-judgmental space along with providing research-based effective intervention, techniques, and resources to adult victims of trauma and abuse, adds value and meaning to my personal and professional life.
Ashni has a special inclination towards Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Inner Child Healing Modality as an integrated approach towards healing the wounds of attachment trauma. She thoroughly enjoys reading non-fiction literature on psychology, finance, and trauma recovery. In addition, she likes dancing, singing, and creative art forms.
Ashni is on a journey to move towards Thriving from just Surviving as a highly sensitive person and an empowered empath. “What I admire most about my work is that I get to walk alongside beautiful people in individual and group settings on their own journey of healing, recovering, and thriving.”
Call Leader: Mindy Levine
Trauma-Informed Yoga Facilitator
Mindy holds a Masters in Education and has been a student of yoga for over 20 years and teaching since 2008.
Yoga was a path for her. It helped her notice what it felt like to move and live inside her body.
She is trained as a crisis counselor and received her certification as a TCTSY-F (Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga Facilitator). In addition, Mindy has studied Polyvagal Theory with Deb Dana and has taken part in a heart-based training in relational neuroscience for healing trauma with Bonnie Badenoch. She recently published an article for Voices Against Torture, an International Journal on Human Rights.
Mindy also faciliates trauma informed yoga for groups, one-on-one, co-direct yoga teacher trainings as well as teach trauma information modules for various yoga schools.
Mindy also shares, “My bio could also read: Mindy Levine, disrupting harm to make space for non-harm and advocating for the right of others to do the same.”
Call Leader: Adam Friedman
Meditation Facilitator
Adam worked as an advertising copywriter before transitioning to a career in social services. He has since worked for organizations that help the homeless, people returning from incarceration, domestic violence survivors, individuals on welfare and military veterans.
Adam has meditated regularly since the 1990’s, gone on many silent meditation retreats and has taught meditation in New York City jails; at nonprofits including a drug treatment center and homeless shelter; to therapists and to other individuals interested in the benefits of meditation.
Call Leader: Naima Mokhtar
Daily Recovery Support
Naima is an integrative pyschotherapistand a relationship counsellor, as well as a cultural activist dedicated to fostering global unity through education, as a consultant, empowerment as a coach, and empathy as a decent human being.
She is also a facilitator for Nia; a quirky, non-impact fitness, dance technique.
In addition to leading calls for Daily Recovery Support, Naima is active in our online groups, and provides recorded content in our members library.
Call Leader: Oak
Daily Recovery Support & Pride Support
A survivor turned thriver, Oak is dedicated to helping others find their own path on the journey of trauma recovery. Their postgraduate work in diplomacy and international affairs prepared them well for a shift in career focus from the macro, geopolitical world to micro moments helping people learn to appreciate the differences between each other. Oak is a trauma recovery professional, LGBTQIA+ advocate and public speaker. They write and speak on a wide range of topics including trauma, diversity, resilience, and dehumanization.
Outside of work you will find Oak in nature hiking and capturing pictures of glimmers or lifting in the gym. Oak also enjoys serving their community and is an active board member with several nonprofit organizations
Call Leader: Athena Petersen
Daily Recovery Support
Executive Director, CPTSD Foundation
Athena is an author, speaker, and advocate working in the field of Complex Trauma Recovery.
With a deep passion for helping those who have been impacted by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), she and her staff of dedicated volunteers reach thousands of survivors weekly in over 180 countries.
This foundation is her life’s work.
She’s proud to work in tandem with expert practitioners and treatment centers, offering daily touchpoints to anyone currently in trauma therapy or who wants a safe place to come, feel heard, and validated between therapy appointments.
With 3 published books, Athena speaks publicly every week and firmly believes compassion is a priceless gift we can all give.
She also leads Daily Recovery Support Calls, and the Monday livestreams on YouTube.
Trauma-Informed Blog
In addition to the over 150 (and growing) number of guest writers who regularly contribute to our blog, these amazing individuals create and edit the content you see each week.
Blog Editor & Chief Staff Writer: Paul Michael Marinello
Paul Michael Marinello serves as a writer and blog editor for CPTSD Foundation. Previous to this role he managed North American Corporate Communications at MSL, a top ten public relations firm where he also served on the board for Diversity & Inclusion for a staff of 80,000. Paul Michael grew up in New York and attended SUNY Farmingdale before starting a ten-year career at Columbia University. He also served as Secretary and Records Management Officer for the Millwood Fire District, appointed annually by an elected board of fire commissioners from 2008 – 2017.
Social Media Team
These wonderful volunteers and staffers bring you the trauma-informed content each week on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linked In.
Social Media and Content Creation: Mark Babatunde
Mark is a writer and aspiring foodie. He is learning to outgrow his anxieties and live each day with gratitude. In addition to overseeing the Twitter and Instagram accounts, he and his team provide a vital roll in many behind the scenes daily operations with the content provided to our members and on the website.
He leads a team of content creation and social media experts who focus on providing daily, trauma-informed content for both social media and our Daily Encouraging Text program.
His bucket list includes; jet skiing across the Atlantic and setting a world record for the longest text message. He is also a wannabe singer, a civil engineer and the biggest fan of, The Simpsons.
Consultants
These wonderful professionals help in developing trauma-informed content for future programs
Jennifer Falandys
“A Lifetime Patient Turned Service Provider”
Jennifer is an Educational Consultant, a Certified Trauma and Resilience Life Coach, and a Coaching Mentor, with over twenty-five years of experience as a Mental Health and Disability Advocate. She has been coaching for eleven years.
Jennifer has a B.A. in Psychology and a background in non-profit mental health, providing coaching, education, and resources to clients, engaging in community outreach, and facilitating support groups.
Her personal mission is to help restore integrity, ethical mindfulness and trauma informed care into coaching and service provision.
She believes that integrity is an essential ingredient in the cultivation of a felt sense of safety. This can help build trust so that those we work with might feel safe enough to allow us to walk beside them and guide them on their journey. People need to know that we care about them, and that the investment made to work together in whatever capacity that may be, is mutual.
Jennifer specializes in the science of trauma and toxic stress and the study of human behavior and communication in the context of being human She has combined her skills, background, and experience to bring awareness and change to the mental health and coaching industries because she believes that people deserve to maintain their humanity in the process of enrolling in a program and receiving support.
Her continued advocacy efforts include accessible support, reducing traumatization within coaching and clinical practice, patient care and dignity, conscientious leadership, and collaborative systems change.
In her downtime, Jennifer enjoys writing, birdwatching, and nature photography.
Workplace Mental Health: Cyndi Bennett
Advisory Board
Members of the Advisory Board meet with our organization regularly to discuss best practices, organizational transparency, program development, fundraising efforts, CPTSD research, events, and more.
