Expert Trainers

Jelan Agnew, LCSW, is an award-winning mindfulness and mental health Speaker. She is the recipient of Hartford Business Journal’s 40 Under Forty award and CT Magazine’s 40 under 40 award, and is a highly rated TEDx Speaker. Jelan has 11+ years of experience as a DBT Therapist, Adjunct Professor and Workshop/Training facilitator. Founder of Nalej of Self, LLC, Jelan helps individuals and organizations by teaching mindfulness as a skill to address post pandemic burn out, compassion fatigue and feeling stuck in survival mode.

Alicia Davis, PCC, is a Professional Certified Coach, former CT Licensed Massage Therapist and partner in the coaching firm Transformative Leadership Strategies. She brings over 30 years of leadership development experience in the fields of holistic healthcare, social services and behavioral health non-profits, insurance, engineering and corporate settings. She creates dynamic coaching and teambuilding experiences for leaders at all levels of an organization that address challenges such as organizational culture, team alignment, change management, communication and high stress. Alicia offers a unique Core Energy™ coaching approach to individuals, executives, teams and boards who are looking to achieve exceptional results.

Donald F. deGraffenried, LCSW, maintains a private practice in New Haven, Connecticut focusing on trauma treatment and consultation/ supervision to EMDR practitioners. He specializes in the treatment of complex PTSD with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and is a passionate advocate for expanding EMDR into agency and community mental health settings. deGraffenried has extensive experience working with homicide survivors and victims of other violent crimes, using both EMD and the EMDR Recent Event Protocol. He is an EMDRIA Approved Consultant and a Senior Trainer for teaching Part I and Part II Basic Training in EMDR. In 2014, deGraffenried was awarded EMDR “Trainer of the Year” by the Trauma Recovery EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program.

Mara Gottlieb, PhD, LMSW, is the President of Talking Changes, an anti-oppression and bias-awareness consulting firm. For over twenty years, she has run workshops across the country, including serving as a keynote speaker and presenting at NASW conferences. Her programs address subjects ranging from cultural humility to antiracism advocacy, LGBTQ awareness, teen suicide prevention, and vicarious trauma. Dr. Gottlieb has served as an adjunct professor at the NYU Silver School of Social Work, Smith College School for Social Work, and Southern Connecticut State University. She holds a BA from Brown University, and earned her MSW and PhD in Social Work from NYU.

Nancy Grechko, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Vernon, Connecticut. In addition to providing direct clinical care in her community, she also supports mental health practitioners through supervision and consultation and clinical training workshops. Dr. Grechko is passionate about supporting mental health practitioners to do the work they love while taking care of their personal and professional needs.

Summer Krause, LPC, CADCIII, has a clinical practice in Oregon that includes adolescent and adult Seeking Safety, in both individual and group modalities. She has worked with Treatment Innovations since 2011 and counsels children, adolescents and adults, spending the the majority of her career working with adolescents. Her specialties are grief, trauma and addiction. Summer went to graduate school after volunteering in juvenile detention centers for many years to help address some of the underlying issues that contribute to youth entering the juvenile justice system. She completed her master’s degree in counseling with a focus on children and adolescents and has specialized training in traumainformed care. She has worked in nonprofit, group home, juvenile justice, residential and outpatient settings. After being trained by Lisa Najavits in Seeking Safety, Summer implemented Seeking Safety groups for adolescent boys and girls in a residential treatment program. She is based in Portland, Oregon.

Wednesdae Reim Ifrach, MAAT, CEDCAT-S, REAT, ATR-BC, LPC, NCC, RMT, is a trans/non-binary art therapist, fat activist and artist whose work focuses on body justice, intersectional social justice and eating disorder treatment equity access. They are the Director for Walden Behavioral Care’s Rainbow Road, the country’s first virtual Eating Disorder 2slgbtqia+ IOP & PHP, which is proud to announce having over 90% Queer Staffing (as of February 2022). They also co-own and operate Rainbow Recovery where they support people through the gender affirmation process, complex trauma recovery, eating disorder recovery and body image issues. Wednesdae is committed to the mission that all bodies deserve recovery and that marginalized bodies need to be amplified in the eating disorder landscape to eradicate the stereotypes surrounding eating disorders and gender. To that end Wednesdae had the honor to participate in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Artful Practices for Well-being, presented at national and international conferences on the use of HAES, Intuitive Eating and Intersectional Social Justice in mental health care and teaches multicultural and diversity practice in Master’s Level Art Therapy programs. They also serve on the Board of Project HEAL, a non-profit whose mission is to create treatment equity access in the eating disorder field and Anchor Health Initiative, a CT non-profit queer medical center focused on gender affirming medicine and those affected by HIV/Aids.

Eileen M. Russo, MA, LADC, is a certified clinical supervisor and an advanced certified alcohol and drug counselor (substance use and co-occurring disorders) who has worked in the addiction and mental health field for the past 37 years. Ms. Russo also holds credentials as a relapse prevention specialist and a compassion fatigue educator. She has recently retired as Professor and Program Coordinator for the Drug and Alcohol Recovery Counselor program with Gateway Community College in New Haven, Connecticut. For the past 17 years, she has served as a trainer/consultant with the Connecticut Women’s Consortium, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, private agencies, and several states beyond Connecticut. Ms. Russo has assisted over 35 agencies/programs with developing traumainformed programs. Her training experience is extensive, including but not limited to, the staff of private- nonprofits, corrections, domestic violence programs and presentations at national conferences. Ms. Russo has co-authored articles on the integration of trauma-specific services into treatment for substance use disorders and is a co-author of the curriculum Healing Trauma+: A Brief Intervention for Women and Gender-Diverse People, Third Edition, by Stephanie Covington.

Don Scherling, PsyD is a Senior Clinical Consultant, Health Educator, Behavioral Health Wellness Coach, assistant in the Care for Caregivers Yoga program, and a Clinical Faculty member in the Berkshire Medical Center - Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He is a QPR and SPRC certified trainer and a Senior Clinical Consultant and Trainer with SAMHSA/CSAT, the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and other regional and statewide agencies in the Northeast.

Anna Seidner-Osman, LCSW, is the Assistant Director of Yale University’s Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Education (SHARE) Center. At SHARE, she focuses on providing direct services to members of the Yale community who have experienced sexual misconduct, including on-call response via SHARE’s 24/7 hotline, facilitation for student support groups, individual supportive counseling, and short-term traumafocused therapy. Anna is particularly interested in incorporating creative arts-based modalities, including those grounded in visual arts and writing. She also draws from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and other mindfulness practices in her work with clients and offers individual Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), an evidence-based treatment for PTSD and trauma. Anna received her Bachelor’s Degree in Human Rights and Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, CT and holds a Master of Science in Social Work Degree from Columbia University School of Social Work.

David Tolin, PhD, ABPP, is the Founder and Director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Institute of Living, and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the PastPresident of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, the Past-President of the Clinical Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, and a principal investigator for the National Institutes of Health. He received the Award for Lifetime Contribution to Psychology from the Connecticut Psychological Association. Dr. Tolin is the author of over 200 scientific journal articles, as well as the several books including Doing CBT: A Comprehensive Guide to Working with Behaviors, Thoughts, and Emotions and Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding. Dr. Tolin has been featured on the reality TV series Hoarders and The OCD Project, and has been a recurrent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Seth Wallace, LCSW, has over 15 years of experience working to help LGBTQ people live their best lives. He is currently the Assistant Director of the Yale Office of LGBTQ Resources and a clinician at Yale Mental Health and Counseling. Seth works with behavioral and physical healthcare providers, schools, and other organizations nationwide to create inclusive places to live, work, and grow. He is a graduate of Connecticut College and Southern Connecticut State University. He is a proud resident of New Haven, Connecticut where he lives with his husband, baby, dog, reptiles, and a large collection of plants. www.womensconsortium.org