CoE Consultation Council

Valerie Alloy, Ph.D

Dr. Valerie Alloy is a behavioral health policy administrator, educator, researcher, and practitioner with over 30 years of clinical practice and senior management experience. She currently leads the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Early Childhood Mental Health Initiatives. “The Whole Child Matters” is the nation’s largest investment in Early Childhood Mental Health garnering over $12M per biennium and has received national recognition from Georgetown University, Yale University, and from the US Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families in their 2016 report highlighting “State and Local Action to Prevent Preschool Expulsion and Suspension in Early Learning Settings.” Ohio was acknowledged in the President’s “White House 2016 Progress Report - My Brother’s Keeper.”

Prior to joining OhioMHAS, she served in the Department of Youth Services as a member of the psychology department working with the most violent and dangerous youth offenders. Dr. Alloy is a subject matter expert (SME) on national and regional platforms, lecturing extensively on array of mental health and early childhood mental health, prevention, research, equity and public health policy topics. Her advanced degrees include: The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Clinical Psychology - Child and Adolescent Specialty; the Master of Arts (M.A.) in Clinical Psychology in Child Psychology both from the University of Toledo; and the Master of Education (M.Ed.) in Guidance & Community Counseling from Ohio University. Dr. Alloy is a licensed supervising clinician, passionate agent of change, and a champion for youth, families and lifelong learning.

Jessica Barnes-Najor, PhD

Jessica Barnes-Najor, Ph.D., is the director for Community Partnerships, Office for Public Engagement and Scholarship, Michigan State University. She is a developmental psychologist with a specialization in applied developmental science. Her work focuses on establishing research partnerships and identifying supports for increasing community capacity for engaging in research.

Barnes-Najor is a co-PI for the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center, partnering with American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start, Home Visitation, and Child Care grantees to promote community-engaged research and enhance early childhood program evaluation and research-to-practice activities across the nation. She is also a co-PI of Wiba Anung, a research collaborative including educators from Bay Mills Community College and community partners representing nine Michigan tribes. Through Wiba Anung, Barnes-Najor has developed approaches for conducting culturally sensitive research in collaboration with American Indian and Alaska Native early childhood education programs. She has established a research program with the tribal Head Start centers and home visitation programs in Michigan that includes the use of methodology to assess child outcomes, family characteristics, and classroom quality.

Barnes-Najor was also involved in the development of and training for a framework for incorporating American Indian and Alaska Native language and culture into evidence-based curricula for Head Start programs (“Making it Work!”). She extended this work by supporting a Home Visitation grantee’s efforts to build a home visiting curriculum using the “Making it Work!” framework.

Katie Beckmann, Ph.D

Katie Beckmann is a Program Officer for the Children, Families, and Communities program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. She oversees the children’s health strategy and leads efforts to protect and advance federal policies that support paid family leave, health, and early care and education. She is particularly interested in the intersection of child development, disease prevention, and health promotion to better prepare young children for lifelong education.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Beckmann served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Early Childhood Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where she coordinated, integrated, and implemented early childhood health and development policies and initiatives across Head Start, child care, Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge, and Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting programs. Dr. Beckmann received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with Distinction at Columbia University where her research focused on social and environmental risk factors leading to toxic stress during pregnancy and cognitive outcomes in preschoolers. She earned her B.A. in Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and M.P.H. in Health Policy and Administration at Yale University.

Dr. Rob Corso

Dr. Rob Corso is the Executive Director of the Pyramid Model Consortium and a Senior Research Associate at Vanderbilt University. Previously, he served as the Project Coordinator of the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL). Additionally, he was on the leadership team for the National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning (NCQTL) and served as the Principal Investigator for the Head Start Disability Services Quality Improvement Center (DSQIC) in Region V. Dr. Corso’s interests include the evaluation of professional development projects for programs serving young children and their families.

Carey McCann

Carey McCann is the assistant director of state services for the BUILD Initiative. She supports state leaders to design and develop effective early childhood systems, set policy that guides implementation of services, and advocate for children birth to age five. Carey came to BUILD from more than 12 years at the Ounce of Prevention Fund, where she served as senior manager for the National Policy Team and led its consultation practice and peer learning with 18 states on early childhood policy and advocacy strategies.

Prior to her national work, Carey coordinated the Ounce’s Birth to Five Project, a statewide effort to identify system gaps and barriers, develop solutions, and link the many efforts that were already underway for children birth to five in Illinois. Carey developed expertise in social-emotional development and early childhood mental health policy. She advanced the mental health consultation model developed by the Early Childhood Committee of the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership, and managed implementation of the Assuring Better Child Health and Development Initiative with the Illinois Medicaid agency, which focused on primary health care’s role in developmental, social-emotional, and maternal depression screening.

Carey started her career with six years in child welfare in Rochester, New York. She is a board member of the Illinois Association for Infant Mental Health. Carey has a B.A. in psychology from the University of Rochester, and a M.A. from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration with a concentration in policy and non-profit management, and a family support fellowship.

Stacy Morgan

Stacy Morgan is the parent of an adoptive child and young adults with special needs and a consumer supporter/advocate with over 20 years of opportunities to participate in the planning, development, and implementation of services for populations with special needs, especially in the arena of mental health and disabilities. She is also the kinship caretaker of her 10-year-old cousin who experienced traumatic events and continues to navigate the mental health and foster care systems. She has served as a consultant for various programs and organizations, facilitating partnerships between families and community stakeholders to develop family and consumer centered/driven and culturally competent initiatives, services, and policies for children, youth, and adults with special needs. During this time, she served as a consultant to two National TA Center’s focused on expanding the capacity of family and consumer run organizations serving children and youth with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Ms. Morgan served as a program director and directed the FL Statewide Family Network for 12 years. She also assisted in the development and implemented Florida’s statewide family provider program for their Title V/CYSHCN Program; training, supervising, and evaluating up to 23 Family Health Partners within 19 regional clinics and programs. Ms. Morgan was also, contracted as a Family Partner Coordinator with NC Families United on the SOC Expansion grant project focusing on developing a comprehensive, strategic plan to expand System of Care philosophy and infrastructure, increase engagement within the local and regional collaborative(s), building and maintaining partnerships with community and state partners and evaluating the System of Care process and outcomes within the Eastpointe catchment area. She has also served as the Family Co-Chair of the NC Collaborative for Children, Youth and Families and Associate Director of NC Families United. Currently, Ms. Morgan serves as the Executive Director of the Mental Health Transformation Alliance and Coordinator of the Family and Youth Center of Excellence” Authentic Voices”. She also, participates in multiple community councils and partnerships and serves as the Family Co-Chair for the NC Collaborative for Children, Youth and Families Policy & Research Workgroup.

Nichole Paradis, LMSW, IMH-E

Nichole Paradis, LMSW, IMH-E® is the Executive Director of the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health where she works to promote infant and early childhood mental health through workforce development initiatives across 31 states and 2 countries. Nichole speaks and has written about relationship-based practices that supports infants, young children, caregivers, and families. She is particularly passionate about families with young children involved in child protection proceedings and the provision of reflective supervision/consultation.

Vilma Reyes, Ph.D

Dr. Vilma Reyes is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco in the Child Trauma Research Program. Since 2009, she has been providing Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) services, training, clinical supervision, consultation and coordination of community-based mental health outreach services and evaluation. She is the Assistant Project Director of the Tipping Point Mental Health Initiative, which provides evidence based mental health services and consultation to community-based agencies across the Bay Area. She is a national trainer in CPP and has co-authored articles and chapters on CPP theory and application. CPP is an internationally recognized, evidence-based treatment modality for young children exposed to trauma.

Dr. Reyes worked at Head Start for 7 years (Teacher, Family Advocate, Mental Health Consultant and Family Therapist) and has remained connected to that program to offer ongoing staff training. She has also trained preschool teaching staff at other childcare centers in urban settings. Dr. Reyes developed a CPP-based group intervention, Building Bridges, which has been applied and researched in several community settings including 7 family shelters across 3 counties in the Bay Area, CA. This intervention was adapted to the displaced community in Bogota, Colombia and the Afro-Colombian community in Tumaco, Colombia. This adaptation, Semillas de Apego, is being researched in two randomized controlled studies with a sample size of over 1,200 families.

In addition to her Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology, Dr. Reyes has also earned a Master of Arts in Education and has experience offering consultation, supervision and training in trauma informed systems in school-based settings. Dr. Reyes is an immigrant from Peru and is devoted to increasing access to trauma informed services for Latinx immigrant families. She has done several lectures in national conferences on the intersection of immigration and trauma; with a focus on asylum seekers and refugees exposed to armed conflict, systemic oppression and racism.

Nira Singh, PsyD

Dr. Nira Singh is a licensed clinical psychologist with 30 years of experience in non-profit, community-based organizations (CBOs), working with and advocating for underserved and marginalized communities, with a strong focus on programs for immigrant and refugee populations. She currently serves as Director of Behavioral Health at Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI), where she oversees the diverse range of behavioral health service programs serving infants through older adults, with a multidisciplinary team including peer providers, paraprofessionals and licensed providers. As part of the Executive Leadership, she works collaboratively with AACI’s Wellness, Primary Care, and Advocacy departments as well as with other CBOs, school districts, county, state and national providers, to coordinate innovative and responsive programming that address the whole health needs of the community.

A child of immigrants from India herself, she understands the experience of barriers to care. From her first position as a child advocate in a shelter for survivors of domestic violence, she has worked to address cultural responsiveness and humility among providers and in service delivery. She has been involved in developing and implementing trauma informed, strengths-based services at various agencies in the Bay Area with a focus on client centered care that is responsive to diverse communities. It has also been an important part of her work to develop consumer councils (with a focus on youth and parents) to empower community members and ensure their voices lead services. Previous positions include Director of Refugee Foster Care Services at Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County (CCSCC) and as the Director of Children Youth and Family services at Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS) where she helped to develop their 0-5 programming. Nira has also served as Adjunct Faculty at CSPP-Alameda teaching multicultural awareness and has enjoyed teaching, supervising and mentoring the next generation of behavioral health providers, supervisors, managers and educators in the field. She is passionate about community outreach and organization and working towards systemic changes at the neighborhood, local, state and national levels especially around health parity. She currently serves on the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Contractors Association Antiracism task force and the California Council of Community Behavioral Health Agencies Racial and Social Equity Task Force.

Lindsay Usry

Lindsay guides ZERO TO THREE’s policy agenda on infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) and leads related technical assistance projects and collaborations, working at the state and federal levels to increase access to and utilization of high-quality mental health services for young children and their caregivers. She formerly served as Director of Special Projects for the Institute of IECMH at Tulane University School of Medicine, where she is on faculty. She also served as the Louisiana Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Coordinator for the LA Department of Health and Hospitals, Office of Public Health. Her work has focused primarily on the translation and dissemination of research on IECMH and development to inform policy and programming decisions.

Ms. Usry received her BS in Neuroscience from the College of William and Mary and her Master of Public Health from Tulane University. She is a member of the board of the Maryland-DC Association of Infant Mental Health, and formerly sat on the Louisiana Governor’s Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board. She has previously worked with the U.S. Government Secretariat for Children in Adversity at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as The World Bank. She has worked on international and domestic public health initiatives and also taught elementary special education.

Lauren Wiley, M.Ed.

Lauren Wiley, M.Ed., holds a Master's Degree and certificates in Infant Mental Health from Erikson Institute. Lauren earned the Illinois Association for Infant Mental Health’s Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Credential in 2012.

Lauren has extensive experience using a reflective, relationship- based approach in her work with children, parents, and early childhood professionals in school systems, mental health agencies, home visiting programs, and residential treatment programs. She has consulted on the assessment and treatment of young children, adolescents, and their families in the Early Intervention System, the Department of Children and Family Services, community health agencies, home visiting programs, center-based programs and residential treatment facilities. Lauren’s consultative work with teachers has been featured in the Hechinger Report and the New York Times.

Lauren currently works for the Ounce of Prevention as Assistant Director of Quality and Systems for the Ounce Institute Division.

David W. Willis, MD, FAAP

Dr. Willis is a Senior Fellow with the Center for the Study of Social Policy, CSSP where he leads a national initiative to advance early relational health for child health and communities. A Boarded, Developmental-Behavioral pediatrician, Dr. Willis was a clinician in Oregon for more than 30 years with a practice focused on early childhood development and family therapy. Currently, he is the Co-Chair of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Forum on Children’s Wellbeing and was the previous first Executive Director of the Perigee Fund, a Seattle-based philanthropy. And from 2012-2018, he served as Director of the Division of Home Visiting and Early Childhood Services at the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Maternal Child Health Bureau, in Washington DC., and continues to be thought leader in home visiting and early childhood systems.

During his career, Dr. Willis also has been a Harris Mid-Career Fellow with childhood development nonprofit ZERO TO THREE; the past president of the Oregon Pediatric Society; an executive member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Early Education and Child Care; and chair of the AAP’s Board’s Early Brain & Child Development Strategic Initiative. Dr. Willis has been a national lecturer, advisor to early childhood national policy and visionary for the transformation of child health care in coordination with early childhood communities and focused on the advancement of early relational health and young children’s social-emotional and developmental wellbeing.

Yet, his greatest relational health achievement comes from the joy he and his wife share with his two married sons and their young families who have each blessed them with three grandchildren – LucyMae and Sam in Camas, WA and Clara Sophia, in San Antonio, TX.