Our Team

Joy S. Kaufman, PhD is a Professor and Deputy Chair for Professional Development, Department of Psychiatry Yale School of Medicine, Executive Director of the Yale Consultation Center and Co-Director of YaleEVAL. Trained as a Clinical and Community Psychologist, Dr. Kaufman conducts large-scale, multi-level evaluations of health service delivery systems, provides consultation to governmental and community organizations regarding these evaluations, and carries out related research. These evaluations take place in under-resourced communities; involve close partnerships with state and municipal governments, community organizations, and other public stakeholders; and generate data that informs program and policy development. A unique feature of her work is the training of public stakeholders to evaluate the services they receive or to utilize data so that they can provide rigorous and systematic feedback to improve services and participate in decision-making about their community. Dr. Kaufman's research interests include the identification of contextual factors that impact outcomes for individuals with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Ashley Clayton, MA, is the Research Manager of the Family Violence Research Program in the Sullivan Lab. Trained in community psychology, Ashley has developed and evaluated various community-based mental health interventions. Ashley ventured into the field of community psychology through a determination to use her first-hand experience with mental illness for good and her dedication to social justice. Ashley has extensive training in qualitative and quantitative research, with particular expertise in community-based participatory research, questionnaire development, and stigma. She is a mental health activist and has published numerous research papers on the social inclusion of individuals living with severe mental illness, maternal mental health, recovery-oriented and person-centered care, and healthcare narratives and essays. She is the Visual Arts Editor of The Perch, an Arts & Literary Journal published by Yale’s Program for Recovery & Community Health (PRCH).

Dr. Connell’s research interests address contextual risk and protective processes that influence developmental and related outcomes for child and adolescent populations exposed to adversity. He has a particular focus on populations in contact with the child welfare and children’s mental health systems, including the intersection between parental substance use and child welfare (e.g., maltreatment and foster placement) outcomes.

Elizabeth H. Connors, PhD, received her degree in Clinical Child and Community Psychology from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is Director of School Mental Health Implementation Consultation and Research at The Consultation Center at Yale. Her research program focuses on improving the quality of mental health promotion, prevention and intervention services for children, adolescents and their families in critical access points such as schools and primary care settings. Dr. Connors is conducting stakeholder-informed research to discover the most practical ways to make school mental health treatment more student- and family- centered with ongoing, collaborative use of progress data. Dr. Connors is also involved in community-partnered program evaluation and quality improvement consultation and coaching to school, district and state teams to improve their mental health service capacity and performance. She collaborates with the University of Maryland National Center for School Mental Health to advance research, practice, policy and training about comprehensive school mental health system quality and sustainability nationwide.

Derrick Gordon, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology Section), Child Study Center and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the Director of the Program on Male Development in the Division of Prevention and Community Research of the Department of Psychiatry, and is a Core scientist in the Community Research Core of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA). Dr. Gordon has considerable experience in intervention and prevention development having served as an investigator on several federal, NIH, and state funded projects and studies focused on those factors that either support or undermine men transitioning from prison back to the community; the engagement of low-income, non-custodial fathers; the identification and service of adolescent fathers committed to child protection services; and men mandated to batterer intervention groups in the community. His funding portfolio includes NIH, foundation, HHS, local government, and community-based programs. Dr. Gordon’s work with men has and continues to focus on increasing the health of men and their positive involvement in family and community life. In his mentorship role, pre- and post doctoral fellows get to explore with Dr. Gordon how issues like adolescent fatherhood, low income fatherhood status, transitioning from prison to the community, and men’s access and use of health care services impact their efforts to be healthy community members. Overall Dr. Gordon in his research seeks to identify those factors that enhance the access and use of preventive and indicated health care services by men on the “fringes.”

Amy Griffin is the Director of Health Evaluation Initiatives at The Consultation Center and Co-Director of YaleEVAL. Ms. Griffin holds a master’s degree in Communications and has advanced training in Family and Child Ecology and nonprofit management. Ms. Griffin brings more than 20 years of experience providing consultation on the development and implementation of program evaluations to nonprofit agencies, coalitions, foundations, and local and state departments. She trains nonprofit and state-level organizations in evaluation principles, techniques, and design, and frequents as an invited speaker at universities on evaluation, consultation, and group facilitation. Most recently, Ms. Griffin was selected by the Connecticut Department of Public Health (CTDPH) to provide specialized training to health practitioners in the state through a grant opportunity from the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors.

Dr. Angela M. Haeny is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and leads the Resilience, Empowerment, and Addiction Leadership (REAL) lab at Yale School of Medicine. She is a licensed Clinical Psychologist with specialty in substance use disorders and racial trauma. Her research investigates effective alcohol and drug treatments among priority populations in substance use research with a focus on Black adults. Currently, Dr. Haeny is investigating how to target identity-based stress in drug and alcohol treatment to improve outcomes among Black adults. This work is funded by a career development award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Ms. Henry received her Bachelor's in Psychology from Central Connecticut State University in 2012 and her Master's in Social Work from the University of Connecticut in 2019. She has an interest in social justice, advocacy, criminal justice reform, research and social policy. Her research experience began in her Psychology courses and continued on throughout her time at the School of Social Work as she worked as a Research Assistant to the BSW Program Director, was awarded funds for a research project conducted on a travel study to Puerto Rico, and worked as a Research and Assessment Specialist to Florida State University's Institute for Justice Research and Development. She has contributed to two pending publications on environmental disaster's and their impact on domestic violence in Puerto Rico and microaggressions during a travel study experience.

Ana Hernandez. B.S. is a Research Assistant in the Family Violence Research Program in the Sullivan Lab, wherein Ana researches intimate partner violence (IPV), firearm exposure, post-traumatic stress, substance use, and HIV/sexual risk. Ms. Hernandez’s research interests center on trauma and posttraumatic stress responses. More specifically, she is interested in the retrieval of traumatic memories of bilingual and/or multilingual speakers and its effect on memory details. Throughout her research career, Ms. Hernandez has developed expertise in survey programming, trauma-informed interviewing practices, and cultural adaptation and translation of research materials. Ms. Hernandez holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut where she completed training in the Research Assistant Program through the Office of Undergraduate Research. Throughout her baccalaureate training, she worked in the Dr. Meyer’s Language and Brain Lab researching neurobiology and the influence of talker idiolect on phonetic adaptation. Additionally, Ms. Hernandez has experience researching health risk factors for cardiovascular disease from her work with Dr. Bruce Blanchard in the Department of Allied Health Sciences.

Julia LeFrancois (she/her/ella) recently earned her second master's degree in clinical mental health counseling at the University of New Haven. She currently serves as an Evaluation Coordinator at The Yale Consultation Center (TCC), focusing on public health and social justice-oriented evaluations. Julia earned her first master's degree in community psychology, where she concentrated on research and evaluation, and worked as a graduate research assistant for Esperanza United, a national gender-based violence resource center. She remains actively involved with the Center, offering ongoing guidance in research literacy and student theses. After completing her first degree, she also collaborated with the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) to study housing insecurity among Black immigrant and refugee survivors of domestic violence. Julia completed her clinical training at APT Foundation, a community-based nonprofit that provides open-access treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder and co-occurring mental health challenges. Alongside program evaluation, she is currently conducting neuropsychological assessments with adolescents and young adults at Turnbridge. Julia identifies as a healer, storyteller, and change-maker, with a practice rooted in feminist and decolonial frameworks. Both her evaluative and clinical work focuses on embodied narratives and trauma, with a particular passion for strategically undervalued communities. Prior to her academic path in community and clinical psychology, she worked as a sign language interpreter and has been active in the Deaf community since 2012. Julia is committed to challenging oppressive systems through community-based and compassion-centered strategies, which she applies across her work as a researcher, evaluator, educator, and counselor.

Joanna Meyer joined The Consultation Center in 2014 and currently serves as Director of the Partnership for Early Education Research (PEER) and Assistant Director of Child Wellbeing and Education Research. Meyer partners with education stakeholders to conduct research and evaluation studies that can inform the improvement of education systems and practices. Research interests include educational equity, early childhood education, the transition to K-12 education, social-emotional learning, family engagement, multilingual learners, STEM education, improvement science, and evaluation. Meyer is also committed to the dissemination of research findings to broad audiences, including educators, parents, education leaders, and policymakers, as well as researchers. Along with ten years in research-practice partnerships, Meyer brings ten years of experience as an educator to her work, a foundation that helps her to develop mutually-beneficial relationships among organizations and advocate for diverse stakeholder interests. Meyer’s teaching experience spans three school districts, a Job Corps center, and two experiential learning settings. As a high school STEM teacher, Meyer led her school’s decennial accreditation process with New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), and coordinated the design and pilot of six school-wide rubrics focused on interdepartmental learning expectations. Meyer also served as a fellow of the Maine Writing Project, a mentor teacher for the teacher preparation program at the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development, and a coordinating teacher for the NSF GK-12 program at the University of Maine's College of Engineering. In 2011, Meyer transitioned from the classroom to the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership (MainePSP), a NSF-funded collaboration between the University of Maine and 12 local school districts that focused on improving the science teaching and learning in secondary and post-secondary classrooms. At the MainePSP, Meyer provided professional development and leadership to teachers who were implementing new, inquiry-based science curricula in their grade 6-9 classrooms, as well as engaging in STEM education research, roles that required balancing the needs and perspectives of researchers and practitioners. These experiences informed Meyer’s interest in school improvement, teacher leadership, and education research.

Magdalena (Maggie) Moskal is a predoctoral psychology fellow in the Yale Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Maggie’s primary internship placement is in The Consultation Center with a secondary placement in the Child and Adolescent Services at West Haven Mental Health Clinic. Maggie is a graduate student in the Clinical-Community Psychology doctoral program at the University of South Carolina. Her clinical training has focused on supporting youth and families through an integrated, socio-ecological, and multicultural approach. Her research involves youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) in collaboration with systematically marginalized young people with a focus on substance misuse prevention and juvenile justice. Maggie is also involved in community outreach, programming, and evaluation to advance mental health equity.

Dr. Rachel Ouellette is an Associate Research Scientist in the Yale School of Medicine Division of Prevention and Community Research. She is a prevention scientist and consultant who partners with a range of community partners to promote the well-being of youth and youth-serving adults (e.g., teachers and after-school providers) through the dissemination and implementation of knowledge. She obtained her PhD in Child and Adolescent Psychology from the Clinical Science Program at Florida International University after completing her predoctoral internship at the Yale School of Medicine with the Yale Consultation Center and West Haven Mental Health Clinic. Her dissertation was funded by an NIH F31 Predoctoral National Research Service Award with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and utilized mixed methods to examine effectiveness supporting youth and social connectedness across staff as predictors of after-school staff work-related well-being, including job stress and satisfaction. She completed her postdoctoral training in the Yale DPCR T32 Postdoctoral Training Program funded by NIDA in Substance Abuse Prevention. Her ongoing research covers two areas: 1) She engages in research, community consultation, and program evaluation to promote data-driven decision-making, social connectedness, and emotional well-being among youth and youth-serving adults in public spaces, including school, after-school, and social media; 2) She engages in mixed method research exploring social media as a potential source of risk and ecological context for dissemination of information to mitigate youth substance use.

Bianca Planas García (she/her/ella; M.S.) is a Psychology Fellow in the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry, Psychology Section. Bianca's primary placement is in the Substance Abuse Treatment Unit, with her secondary placement at The Consultation Center. She is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Albizu University, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Bianca specializes in delivering trauma-informed services and evidence-based care for individuals with substance use disorders and comorbidities. Bianca has offered services in a wide variety of settings, including Opioid Treatment Programs, jails, and community mental health centers. Her clinical and research work carries an intersectional lens. Bianca's research is primarily focused on exploring potential transdiagnostic factors, such as shame and stigma, among individuals with problematic drug use to inform treatment development. Specifically, Bianca's research aims to identify how these self-conscious emotions influence treatment engagement, adherence, and outcomes through quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Her work seeks not only to explore underlying psychological mechanisms in substance use disorders but also to develop translational efforts to develop evidence-based interventions targeting shame and stigma, improving treatment outcomes for individuals with substance use disorders.

Alexandrya Pope, LMSW, MSW, MS, is a Research Assistant at the Family Violence Research Program in the Sullivan Lab. Prior to Ms. Pope's work with the Sullivan Lab, she attended Utica College, where she independently conducted research on sexism and the gender wage gap in the workplace and earned a Bachelor's of Science degree in Psychology. She also earned her Master's of Science degree in Experimental Psychology from Saint Joseph's University, with a focus on developmental psychology. While in her graduate program, Ms. Pope conducted and supported numerous studies which examined children's perceptions of gender roles in the classroom, Theory of Mind in children with Autism, informational assumptions' affect on sexism in emerging adults and adults, and whether the Bechdel Test could be redesigned for males.