Mercy Family Center

An Outreach Ministry of Mercy health system

New Orleans - Metairie - Mandeville Louisiana

USA

I am currently contributing specialist expertise in trauma-informed care and postvention to CIS’s Risk Assessment and Crisis Management initiative, including consultation, resource development, professional learning, and review of crisis-preparedness and risk-assessment tools.

Areas of expertise: Crisis preparedness and psychosocial recovery; trauma-informed systems; postvention; safeguarding and child protection; student and staff mental health; and leadership decision-making during high-impact events.

What began as a disaster-recovery initiative evolved into a sustained school-based system of care, supporting more than 100 schools through evidence-based trauma and grief interventions, crisis response, suicide prevention, workforce development, and consultation. The program helps schools move beyond one-time training by providing implementation support, communities of practice, and ongoing clinical and organizational guidance.

Project Fleur-de-lis has received sustained SAMHSA support since 2008 and has served as a Category III center within the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Its 20-year evolution demonstrates how locally grounded partnerships, scientific evidence, and long-term investment can transform an emergency response into enduring community capacity.

The framework creates a shared language for checking in across five interconnected areas of life: work or school, love and social support, play and restorative activity, sleep, and eating and drinking. Designed for use by anyone- not only clinicians- it strengthens peer support, encourages earlier recognition of distress, and helps people have more honest conversations about mental health and well-being.

How’s Your 5? has been used by healthcare systems, schools, municipalities, disaster-response organizations, and community groups, including the Canadian Red Cross, Alberta Health Services, and the City of New Orleans Mayor’s Office, and most recently, Jamaican schools in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. Its value lies in translating broad health and behavioral science into a simple, adaptable practice that organizations and communities can make their own.

The three-dimensional, nine-panel cube combines movement, visual prompts, and brief coping strategies. Student focus groups informed revisions, and an accompanying curriculum provides five short lessons for use by teachers and school mental health professionals in classrooms and small groups.

Distributed locally, nationally, and internationally, the concept has also been adapted for military families and primary-care settings. The Coping Cube demonstrates how evidence-based principles, human-centered design, and user feedback can be transformed into an accessible tool for prevention and early intervention.

Published by the Government of Alberta and PolicyWise for Children & Families, the evaluation examined how psychosocial supports were implemented and coordinated during response and recovery, identified effective practices and system-level challenges, and developed recommendations for future disaster planning.

My contribution brought experience from Hurricane Katrina and Project Fleur-de-lis to the evaluation of a different community, disaster, and service system. The work reinforced a central principle of my advisory practice: recovery requires more than clinical services. It depends on coordinated leadership, clear communication, community engagement, workforce support, sustained partnerships, and the capacity to learn while recovery is still unfolding.

Appointed by the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, I serve as the licensed psychologist representative on Louisiana’s Power-Based Violence Review Panel. I contribute trauma-informed clinical and systems-level expertise to statewide higher education policy and practice related to power-based violence, sexual misconduct, survivor support, prevention, institutional accountability, and response.

As a trauma-informed advisor to Scouting America’s Youth Protection Committee, I provide clinical and systems-level expertise to strengthen national safeguarding practices for an organization serving more than 1 million youth members ages 5–21 across the United States and its territories. Since its 2023 launch, the committee has advised Scouting America on youth protection policy, procedures, training implementation, survivor-informed practice, abuse prevention, accountability, and long-term culture change. In this role, I help translate trauma-informed principles into practical recommendations that support safer, more responsive environments for youth, families, volunteers, and communities nationwide.

Current Project Advisor/ Trainer / Grant Writer

Mercy Family Center - Project Fleur-de-lis

Community Treatment and Services Centers - Category III-Louisiana

Funding Periods:

2008-2012, 2012-2016, 2016-2021, 2021 - 2026

$1,000,000.00 Grant Award

Mercy Family Center

As an Advisory Panel Member for Loyola University New Orleans’ Generative AI for Value Creation program, I contribute expertise at the intersection of clinical psychology, human development, mental health, ethics, and institutional accountability. My focus is on helping leaders think critically about how generative AI is adopted: not simply whether it creates efficiency, but whether it supports sound judgment, protects human relationships, reduces harm, and strengthens accountable decision-making. The program emphasizes practical AI integration, strategic value creation, and responsible implementation for leaders navigating organizational transformation.

$1,000,000.00 Grant Award

Mercy Family Center

Chapters:

Trauma-Informed Care: Responding to Abuse and Neglect in International Schools

Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) in International Schools

Hong Kong

October 8 & 9, 2026

NLPRA is a Hong Kong charitable NGO founded in 1965 that specializes in mental health, psychiatric rehabilitation, recovery-oriented community support, and anti-stigma work. Its services include integrated community mental wellness centres, counselling, outreach/home visits, wellness programs, community education, vocational support, residential care, and projects that help people access psychiatric care while waiting for public services.

August 24 & 25, 2026

My work sits at the intersection of crisis preparedness, psychosocial recovery, safeguarding, mental health, and institutional leadership. I help organizations translate evidence and hard-earned experience into practical systems: clearer roles, stronger policies, prepared leaders, coordinated response structures, workforce capability, and sustainable recovery.

I have worked across more than 30 countries and have advised international schools, government agencies, healthcare systems, and youth-serving organizations. My approach emphasizes contextual adaptation and internal capacity-building rather than one-size-fits-all solutions or short-term training alone.

As part of a national collaboration with Guyana’s Ministry of Health and partner governmental ministries, I helped advise and train the countrywide implementation of Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools (CBITS), an evidence-informed school trauma intervention. This work required clinical training, implementation strategy, cross-ministry coordination, workforce development, addressing fidelity concerns, local adaptation, pilot evaluation, and sustainability planning. The project trained Master Implementers, expanded trauma-informed capacity across several regions, and created a culturally relevant public engagement strategy to support youth and community participation to address psychological trauma across the country.

I support institutions during and after crises involving death, suicide, violence, abuse allegations, natural disasters, community trauma, and other events that disrupt learning or work environments. My focus is helping leaders stabilize the system, protect affected individuals, communicate clearly, and move from immediate response into organized recovery.

Selected as a Fulbright Specialist for Fukushima University in Japan, where I provided consultation on post-disaster mental health, psychosocial recovery, and trauma-informed support following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. The appointment was sponsored by the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

I founded Mercy Health’s Zero Suicide effort in 2018 and currently serve as co-chair of the system’s suicide prevention committee, helping establish suicide prevention as a system-wide patient safety priority focused on stigma reduction, risk recognition, safety planning, care transitions, and organizational accountability.

I was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery about the intermediate- and long-term mental health needs of children following disasters. Appearing as Project Director of Project Fleur-de-lis, I presented its tiered, school-based system of care and offered recommendations concerning federal funding, national workforce development, school-community coordination, and access to evidence-informed trauma treatment.

In introducing my testimony, Senator Mary Landrieu credited me with creating Project Fleur-de-lis and expressed interest in its potential as a national model. My written statement and supporting description of the model were entered into the official congressional record.

Source: U.S. Senate Hearing 111-547, December 10, 2009. Introduction, p. 19; testimony, pp. 25–30; written submission, pp. 94–101.

Each episode features counselors, school leaders, safeguarding professionals, nurses, coaches, and other practitioners sharing practical experience, innovative programs, and lessons learned from international school communities. The goal is to create more than a podcast: a growing archive of professional knowledge, regional expertise, and human-centered practice across the AMISA network.

The case study traces how a locally developed disaster-response initiative evolved into a trauma-informed system of care serving nearly 100 Greater New Orleans schools. It also identifies transferable lessons for school policy, disaster preparedness, and immediate and long-term mental health recovery.

The experience demonstrates how crisis response can become sustained institutional capacity when scientific evidence is combined with local partnerships, continuous learning, and long-term implementation.