Meet Our Founders:
Leaders in Prolonged Grief Treatment

I am a licensed clinical social worker with additional training as a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. During 2011, I co-authored and presented a paper, “Complicated Grief Treatments; A Social Work Perspective” at the International Conference for the Advanced Professional Practice of Clinical Social Work in Williamsburg, Virginia. During 2012, Katherine Shear and I traveled to Japan to consult and provide workshops for mental health clinicians who were treating the victims of the earthquake and the tsunami.  Another paper titled “Complicated Grief Treatment: Implementing Treatment Strategies” was co-authored by Katherine Shear and myself. Additionally, I co-authored a chapter describing grief-monitoring techniques with Katherine Shear which was published in Neimeyer’s book on grief techniques.

As a Senior Clinical and Research Social Worker at The New York State Psychiatric Institute for over 30 years, I developed excellent diagnostic and treatment skills in a variety of in-patient and out-patient clinics. As an Instructor in Clinical Psychiatric Social Work at Columbia University and New York University, I have trained medical students, residents, and graduate students. I have also taught Adult Psychopathology at Columbia University Graduate School of Social Work as an adjunct professor.

In 2001, I began working with Dr. Katherine Shear, providing her newly developed therapy for complicated/prolonged grief in the first ever study to demonstrate its effectiveness. I went on to collaborate with Dr. Shear in supervising and training professionals in Complicated Grief Treatment (CGT; also known as Prolonged Grief Treatment) through the Center for Complicated Grief, established at Columbia University. Twenty years later, I continue to lead workshops and supervise clinicians through the Center in this highly efficacious treatment, and to work closely with Dr. Shear and team in developing programming for clinicians around the world.

I have spoken and led trainings nationally and internationally on grief and prolonged grief for Relationships Australia in Queensland and Brisbane; also, in Beijing, China, where I gave a keynote address at the 1^st International Congress on Grief Research and Intervention; at the Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation in Newtown, CT; The Ecumenical Center for Education, Counseling, and Health in San Antonio, TX; Essentia Health Grief Support Services in Duluth, MN; and various other healthcare organizations. I have also presented at annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association, Pennsylvania Psychological Association, New Jersey Psychological Association, Association of Death Education and Counseling, and other professional organizations. I have co authored chapters and articles with Dr. Shear, and am the coauthor (with Allan Zuckoff, PhD) of Finding Your Way to Change: How the Power of Motivational Interviewing Can Reveal What You Want and Help You Get There, published by The Guilford Press in 2015.