Leadership

Children's Mental Health Network Team

scottScott Bryant-Comstock, President/CEO
scott@cmhnetwork.org
Scott has been involved with the Systems of Care movement since the early 1980’s. With close to three decades of experience, Scott has incorporated learnings from policy-makers, families, providers and community leaders throughout the United States into promoting the concept of what it means to take a system of care approach.

brittanyBrittany Smith, Director of Community Management
brittany@cmhnetwork.org
Brittany Smith is the Director of Community Management. Brittany is responsible for ensuring active and clear communication among Children's Mental Health Network staff, its members, and individuals who utilize Network services. Brittany works with the Network to improve our use of social media and new technology in our education and advocacy work. Brittany brings to the Network a keen understanding of how to maximize social media to help effect increased awareness and action around the needs of youth with emotional challenges, their families, and the communities who serve them.

Emmett Dennis, Alumni Outreach Coordinator
emmett@cmhnetwork.org
emmettEmmett J. Dennis III is responsible for identifying and re-engaging Child Mental Health Initiative grantees who have been involved in promoting a system of care approach over the past 20 years in communities across the nation and in the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico. Emmett is a family-member of long standing in his work as part of a graduated System of Care Community in Hawaii, and work on the national level of six years with the Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health (TA Partnership).  In his work with the TA Partnership, Emmett coordinated, guided, and monitored the flow of technical assistance requests received from the system of care communities to assist 40+ peer mentors and Content Specialists in identifying priorities for technical assistance outcomes.  Emmett also served two years on the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health Board of Directors.

Board of Directors

Scott Bryant-Comstock

Scott has been involved with the Systems of Care movement since the early 1980’s. With close to three decades of experience, Scott has incorporated learnings from policy-makers, families, providers and community leaders throughout the United States into a focused approach to promoting the concept of systems of care.

Pat Baker 

More than twenty years working with systems of care programs at the local, state and national level. Former Executive Director of Utah Families as Allies, a 501 c-3 not for profit corporation in good standing. Reviewer of federal systems of care grant programs for the past three years.

Cyndi Nation

More than twenty-five years working with systems of care programs at the local, state and national level. Extensive grant writing, administrative, and staff supervision experience.

Children's Mental Health Network Advisory Council Members - 2012

alfredoAlfredo Aguirre, LCSW, is the Director of Behavior Heath Services for the San Diego County County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA). He also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Network of Social Work Managers, is a member of the California Mental Health Director Association and the organization’s Co-Chair of the Ethnic Services Committee, and is a member of SAMHSA’s Child, Adolescent and Family Branch Council on Collaboration and Coordination.

Mr. Aguirre has worked in the mental health field for over 30 years, and is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including Mental Health Person of the Year in 2008 and the 2011 Hope Award for his leadership in the County of San Diego’s Mental Health Stigma Reduction Media Campaign – It’s Up to Us.

Alfredo received his Masters Degree in Social Welfare in 1978 from the University of California at Berkeley and he has a special interest in cultural competence development in systems and communities. Previously, as the Children’s Mental Health Assistant Director for the County of San Diego, Mr. Aguirre led the development of a community-based, comprehensive system of care for children and youth and their families. He collaborated closely with partner agencies, including probation, child welfare, special education, family members and private providers to build a system to help youth achieve good outcomes in the home, community and school.

While serving as the Children’s Mental Health Assistant Director, Mr. Aguirre also was the Acting Adult/Older Adult Mental Health Assistant Director. Mr. Aguirre led the effort to transform San Diego County’s Older Adult/Adult Mental Health Services, advancing a bio-psychosocial rehabilitation model based on recovery principles. Included in his efforts was to increase capacity to serve individuals with co-occurring disorders, reduce disparities for ethnic communities in seeking care, and to establish primary care based mental health services.

daneDane Anderson is a consultant at the global management consulting firm Bain & Company. He joined the firm in 2011 and has worked across a number of industries including information technology and consumer products. Prior to joining Bain, Dane worked as a teacher with Teach for America, where he was a Sue Lehmann Excellence in Teaching finalist. He taught 8th grade math on the Zuni Indian reservation in New Mexico. Dane received an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business, where he was named a Fuqua Scholar. He is also a summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received dual degrees in economics and political science. At Bain, he is actively involved in recruiting.

deck

Elaine F. Deck is an accomplished administrator with twenty years experience in program development and curriculum design.  She currently serves as  Senior Program Manager for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Smaller and Tribal Police Department Technical Assistance Program providing training, resources and assistance to thousands of smaller and tribal police agencies nationwide serving populations of 50,000 and fewer. This portfolio includes projects funded by the U.S. Department of Justice covering topics of Internal Affairs, New Police Chief Mentoring, Police Facility Planning, Police Consolidation Planning, and Police Response to Persons with Mental Illness. Elaine was coordinator of the IACP’s 2009 national policy summit on Building Safer Communities: Improving Police Response to Persons with Mental Illness. This national discussion included advocates, consumers, families, youth, public health, mental health and law enforcement engaged in dialogue to improve coordination between the various representatives that produced the summit report available here: http://www.theiacp.org/PublicationsGuides/NationalPolicySummits/BuildingSaferCommunities/tabid/664/Default.aspx

Elaine’s work in this area continues as a partner with the US Department of Justice, University of Memphis, and the Crisis Intervention Teams International (CIT) who are developing a national law enforcement curriculum to improve responses to persons in emotional crisis.

Prior to coming to the IACP, Elaine administered alcohol and drug treatment programs for women offenders and their children. Law enforcement and community collaboration was a benchmark in the success of these projects.  Ms. Deck received her Bachelor of Science Degree in clinical psychology from California State University Fullerton and a certificate in alcohol and drug counseling from the University of California, Irvine.  Ms. Deck has consulted with the National Institute of Corrections and the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

Teka Dempson, BA is the mother of two wonderful sons and a 1 year old grandson. She is very active in her own community and faith organization in Durham, NC and beyond. She has spent 30 years crafting her knowledge and skills as a Family Advocate, Liaison, Coordinator, Technician and Director. She really believes in the life of a COMMUNITY.

Teka’s preparation for what has become her life mission is her faith, being a graduate of Shaw University, Family Resource Credentials from Duke University, and Early Childhood Administration and credentials from Durham Technical Community College. However the best training and learning came from her oldest son and spending time with families in the community. That’s knowledge one will never find in an academic setting.

Teka’s was among the first staff hired in the late 1980’s in Durham first Residential locked facilities under the Willie M model. Throughout her years in the field she has been and continues to be called upon to share thoughts of how the process used by agencies impacts children and families. In the early 90’s as the Child/Family Director for the partnership with Edgemont Community Center and Dr. Beverly G. Rose programs, Teka helped put services for children and families in place with a budget of $500,000.00. This began the important opportunity to serve many different cultures throughout the community.

Teka is very committed to volunteering and giving back to not only her community but communities far beyond. Some of Teka’s volunteer loves and passions include:

anneAnne Ferrier has worked in the field of human change and development for 25 years. She graduated with honors from the Vrije University in Amsterdam as a clinical psychologist and served in private practice in the Netherlands and Spain. She is also a certified Executive Coach and Consultant for non- profits as well as global corporations in the area of Diversity and Inclusion and Leadership development.

Anne spent her childhood in Surinam, a former Dutch colony in South America. Her formative experiences include growing up part of an intact multicultural community. It became the inspiration for her professional efforts to identify what people need to build the capacity for deeply hearing and seeing each other's cultural perspectives. Anne's approach, as a seasoned executive coach, focuses on the concept of the observer and how our cultural assumptions open or limit our interactions with others.

As the Cultural and Linguistic Competence Coordinator for the Sarasota Partnership for Childen’s Mental Health, she received the People’s Choice Award as well as a Silver ECCO for “the Observer and the Observed” project and documentary about diversity and stigma involving families with children with mental health challenges. She also designs and facilitates “World Café” dialogues, with the goal of building a diverse community where different points of view can be heard, respected and celebrated. At a World Café, participants can discover and share their strengths, enjoy spontaneous art, live music, new kinds of food and drink…all while experiencing dynamic and constructive conversation with people from different backgrounds.

Anne is currently a Senior Consultant for Cook Ross, an organizational development consulting firm with an international client base providing training and coaching for Senior Leaders in the area of Diversity and Inclusion, Unconscious Bias and Leadership Development. Anne helps her coaching clients gain new insights and build new professional beliefs and skills by enabling them to increase their compassion for both self and others. For Anne, the journey to inclusion is built upon trust, mutual regard, and meaningful communication.

Mario Hernandez, Ph.D., a Psychologist, is a Professor and serves as Chair of the Department of Child and Family Studies (CFS) within the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences at the University of South Florida.  CFS, as a nationally recognized center of research, evaluation, technical assistance/training, and Academics, is committed to improving the well-being of individuals, children, and families within communities across the country through promoting respect, inclusion, development, achievement, mental health, and an optimum quality of life.  CFS has an annual budget of approximately $23 million that supports the work of 250 faculty and staff.

Dr. Hernandez is nationally recognized for his 30 years of local, state and national experience in the field of children’s mental health and systems of care.  While in California in the 1980s, he was one of the founders and later the leader of the “Ventura Project” which was the nation’s first county-based system of care.  In this historically significant system of care Dr. Hernandez and the Ventura team cut the path to eliminating the placement of children into California’s state mental hospitals and substantially reduced the placement of children outside of their homes and communities.  The impact of the “Ventura Project” was large by reforming how children’s mental health services were funded and organized through California.

Dr. Hernandez is nationally recognized for his work with communities interested in creating local systems of care.  He and his colleagues at CFS have developed an approach known as “theory of change logic models” that facilitate a community’s ability to take their collective ideas about improving the lives of children and their families and turning these ideas into tangible implementable strategies.  This approach to developing and articulating service delivery strategies has been adopted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration by requiring the development of logic models within its system of care oriented Children’s Mental Health Initiative.  The logic model approach has also been applied to states, providers, funders, academic departments, and philanthropic organizations.

Dr. Hernandez is also known for the development of the System of Care Practice Review (SOCPR). The SOCPR is a practice improvement tool that operationalizes the values and principles of systems of care at the level of service delivery.  This tool has been adapted and used by the state of Arizona, various providers in local communities, and a leading mental health collaborative in Canada.

Dr. Hernandez is dedicated to the implementation of cultural competence and to the elimination of mental health disparities.  He and his team at CFS have developed a model that helps to operationalize the concept of cultural competence so that it can be implemented within communities and organizations.

As a scholar, Dr. Hernandez has edited books, chapters, peer reviewed publications, monographs, and edited special journal issues.  He remains an active consultant nationally and provides technical assistance in the application of logic models and in the implementation of cultural competence. He serves on various local and national boards that focus on improving the conditions of children challenged by mental health challenges and poverty.

princess3Princess Katana, MD, is a multi-lingual professional with over 20 years of experience designing, managing and effectively implementing programs dedicated to prevention, early intervention and the transformation of health and human services. She is a leader and promoter of multi-agency local, state and national collaborations resulting in long-term positive outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse service recipients. She is also an experienced national trainer and engaging public speaker on engaging culturally diverse communities and organizations in effective partnerships that improve service delivery for underserved communities. Currently Princess is Director of Multicultural affairs for the Epilepsy Foundation where she oversees activities that support the organization’s affiliates across the country in reaching diverse communities with messages on epilepsy.

Before coming to the Epilepsy Foundation Princess led efforts designed to advance culturally and linguistically competent approaches to mental health service delivery. She worked with national experts to identify and promote the implementation of strategies designed to reduce disparities in behavioral health care, and interfaced with national leaders to coordinate efforts among agencies, public and private organizations. In response to priority needs, she worked to conceptualize technical assistance projects and provided guidance and support to community/population specific organizations striving to establish Native American, Latino, African American and Asian American and Pacific Islander consumer networks.

Princess stays in touch with the field by coordinating Federal site visits to communities funded through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Center for Mental Health Services’ (CMHS) Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program. She brings to these site visits critical knowledge regarding the administrative and operational aspects of federal funding mechanisms, including contracts, grants and cooperative agreements.

Princess Katana is an innovative thinker with experience implementing multi-faceted funding approaches to achieve the sustainability of large demonstration projects and programs addressing early childhood intervention, as well as health and human services across the life span. She promotes dialogue and collaboration between leaders of faith and community based organizations around social and health issues, so that communities are better able respond to the needs of individuals affected by substance use and mental illness, or impacted by a chronic conditions; She led system change, program development and the implementation of financing strategies that resulted in the successful achievement of goals and long term sustainability of The Children’s Partnership, Texas’ first system of care for children and adolescents with mental health needs and their families.

martha

Martha Kaufman, M.Ed., currently holds the position of local Project Director for NC Project LAUNCH, at the Alamance County Health Department in Burlington, NC. Project LAUNCH, awarded to the NC Division of Public Health, is a public health prevention initiative funded by SAMHSA to help children 0-8 reach social-emotional, cognitive and developmental outcomes by providing access to behavioral health services and family supports within primary care practices. Prior to this role, Martha worked at the national, state and community level to help improve life outcomes for children with complex needs, and their families though System of Care approaches. Most recently, this included consultation to California’s Residentially based Services Reform (RBS) initiative, helping transform group homes to family-centered reunification entities, reconnecting youth to their families, schools and communities. In 2004-2006, she had a leadership role in the development of the NC Durham System of Care, which received the national Award of Excellence in Community Collaboration by the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, along with two NC Association of County Commissioners’ Ketner Productivity Awards for reducing unnecessary out of home placements of youth, and linking them and their families to concrete supports through Faith Partners. Martha and The Durham Center Deputy Director, Rob Robinson, conceptualized and operationalized NC’s first Care Review process, now replicated statewide. Martha received the Durham County Commissioners’ Lifetime Achievement Award for leadership in development of the Durham SOC, and became a NC ‘Tar Heel of the Week’ (Raleigh News & Observer) for “contributions to mental health and human service improvements in North Carolina”.

In her role as the Chief of Child and Family Services for the NC Division of Mental Health, Martha spearheaded the development of the NC State Collaborative for Children and Families, established policy requiring Community Collaboratives in all NC counties, and Child and Family Teams as the mechanism for service delivery throughout the state’s public mental health system.  Her first SOC experience was as State Project Manager for Pitt-Edgecombe-Nash Public-Academic-Liaison (PEN-PAL).  In this role she oversaw development of the first cross-disciplinary graduate course at East Carolina University, promoting workforce development grounded in the SOC approach. Martha testified in the 1998 Congressional Briefing, in which the PEN-PAL Project was featured as a national model, to support continued funding for the national SOC movement. She subsequently authored and managed the NC’s FACES grant, co-authored the SOC Network grant, and coordinated technical assistance for SOC grantees via the National Resource Network/Washington Business Group on Health.

Martha is a family member and a dedicated family advocate.  She has served on the Board of Directors for NC Families United and as Vice President and Secretary of the Board for the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health. She is the proud mother of two wonderful young adults, loves art, music, reading, and lives in Durham, NC.

lambertLisa Lambert is the executive director of Parent/Professional Advocacy League (PPAL), a statewide, family-run, grassroots nonprofit organization based in Boston.  PPAL is the state organization of the National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health and has been a SAMHSA-funded statewide family network since 2000.  

Lisa Lambert became involved in children’s mental health as an advocate for her young son in 1989 through the CASSP family network in California.  After moving back to Massachusetts, she began supporting families whose children and youth had behavioral health needs.  She became involved with PPAL, first on a regional level and then on a statewide level. Her areas of expertise include mental health policy, systems advocacy and family-driven research.

Realizing that individual parent and youth stories need to be supported by data, Lisa authored several family-driven studies which highlighted the challenges families encountered when accessing services, their perspectives on psychotropic medications and the training needs of family partners. Lisa also authored a chronicle of PPAL’s Worcester-based youth group which highlighted how a strong youth-guided initiative had an impact on their community.  

Lisa Lambert serves on a number of committees in Massachusetts as well as the Building Bridges Initiative Youth and Family Partnership workgroup. She has been instrumental in working with local and national media to highlight the concerns of families and youth.  She is dedicated to ensuring that family voice is included in every state and national conversation about the policies, practices or services that impact them.

Denise Sulzbach, J.D. has been a member of the Policy and Finance Center at the Institute for Innovation and Implementation at the University of Maryland, School of Social Work (formerly the Innovations Institute at the School of Medicine) since 2008.  In this capacity, she serves as the State Project Director for Maryland’s two system of care grants, Maryland CARES and Rural CARES, is a member of the implementation team for the State’s 1915(c) Medicaid Demonstration Waiver, and provides system of care consultation to other states.  Ms. Sulzbach has been the sole or co-author of several successful federal grants proposals that have brought over $45 million dollars into the State of Maryland to improve outcomes for children with complex needs and their families.  Ms. Sulzbach has fifteen years of experience and success in program, policy, training, technical assistance, and legal and fiscal analysis, with a solid track record of leveraging support by building upon multidiscipline partnerships in the planning and implementation of data-driven projects with  outcome-based results.  She has considerable background and experience in the provision of cross-agency and cross-discipline technical assistance and training to public and private providers in the development and implementation of systems of care practices and principles to improve outcomes for youth with complex needs and their families.

Ms Sulzbach has served the State of Maryland in several high-level, Governor-appointed positions.  From 2003 to 2007, she worked for the State of Maryland, serving as Project Director for Maryland’s Mental Health Transformation State Incentive Grant, Director of Systems of Care and Interagency Policy at the Governor’s Office for Children, and the Deputy Secretary for Administration at the Department of Juvenile Services.  Ms. Sulzbach also worked for several years at the county level as a prosecutor, at which time she was assigned to the child advocacy center and specialized in child abuse and sexual assault, juvenile law, and drug courts.  Her background also includes work as a court advocate for victims of domestic violence, Medicaid eligibility technician for the State of Connecticut, and respite care provider for children with intensive needs.