Jennifer Winkler is currently the Family Case Management Well-Being & Family Support Manager at Children’s Wisconsin, where she has worked for the last 12 years in various direct practice and leadership positions within the agency. Throughout her career, Jennifer has demonstrated passion around staff and program development, continuous quality improvement efforts, and building an organizational culture that is rich in innovation. Jennifer received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carthage College in 2006, with a major in Social Work, and a Master’s of Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007, with a specialization in child and family welfare.
ICFW Affiliate
Children’s Wisconsin
Category: Affiliates
Leah Jepson
Leah Jepson is the Project Director of the Milwaukee Coalition for Children’s Mental Health (CCMH) at Mental Health America of Wisconsin, an initiative to improve the mental health of children 0 – 8 in the City of Milwaukee through systems change and authentic engagement of people with lived experience. She is also the co-founder and Executive Co-Director at the Next Step Clinic, a community-based collaboration to address disparities in Autism Spectrum Disorder and children’s mental health identification and treatment. Leah has nearly 25 years’ experience as a social worker that includes home visitation, research, community-based program development and implementation, advocacy, and coalition-building. Her current focus is on young children’s mental health and social-emotional development, authentic engagement of those with lived experience, social justice and health equity. Leah holds a Master’s of Science degree in Social Work and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, both from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
ICFW Affiliate
Mental Health America
Milwaukee Coalition for Children’s Mental Health
Christy Warner-Metzger, Ph.D
Christina Warner-Metzger, Ph.D., hails from Oklahoma State University with a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. True to her organization’s motto of Doing good and doing it wellTM, Dr. Warner-Metzger founded Evidence-based Practices and International Consulting (EPIC), LLC, to promote increased accessibility and excellence in professional training, consultation, and program development within the mental health and wellness sector. With a focus on training culturally humble and socially responsible professionals, she also directs the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) Program and Early Assessment and Recommendations for Learning in Young Children (EARLY) Clinic at DePaul University’s Family and Community Services. She is 1 of 21 PCIT International Certified Global Trainers worldwide and a Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) co-developer, which provides her with clinical expertise in PCIT and CARE training and dissemination. Dr. Warner-Metzger is also the co-developer of a project piloting Trauma-Directed Interaction (TDI) with young children. She has served as a trainer and consultant for dissemination efforts across the United States, as well as Indonesia and Australia. Her contributions as an expert trainer and consultant on institutional, regional, federal, and international grant-funded projects has spanned the greater part of the past decade. She is also experienced using the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Learning Collaborative model. Dr. Warner-Metzger’s clinical and research interests include Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), developmental disabilities, disruptive behavior disorders, trauma-informed systems, underserved populations, barriers to treatment participation, and dissemination efforts. She has contributed to these topics through numerous peer-reviewed and invited presentations at national and international conferences, as well as authored peer-reviewed journal articles, government publications, and edited book chapters. Her previous clinical work in Memphis and current work in Chicago has focused on serving urban populations experiencing economic and racial marginalization.
ICFW Affiliate
PCIT International Certified Global Trainer
Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE), Co-Developer
Evidence-based Practices & International Consulting (EPIC), LLC
Julian D. Ford, Ph.D
ICFW Affiliate
Professor of Psychiatry and Law, University of Connecticut
Professor of Psychiatry and Law, University of Connecticut
Julian D. Ford, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. is a board certified clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Law at the University of Connecticut where he directs two Treatment and Services Adaptation Centers in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network: the Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice and the Center for the Treatment of Developmental Trauma Disorders. Dr. Ford is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He has published more than 250 articles and book chapters and is the author or editor of 10 books, including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, 2nd Edition, Treating Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach, 2nd Edition, Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Scientific Foundations and Therapeutic Models, and Critical Moments: Transforming Crises into Turning Points in Psychotherapy. Dr. Ford is the Principal Investigator for the national Developmental Trauma Disorder Field trial research study, and developed and has conducted randomized clinical trial and effectiveness studies with the Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET©) model for youths and adults with developmental trauma histories and complex PTSD.
Clarence Johnson
ICFW Affiliate
Executive Director, Wisconsin Community Services
Executive Director, Wisconsin Community Services
Fueled by a lifelong commitment to leadership excellence in Human Services, Clarence Johnson has held many high-level positions since beginning his career decades ago. Clarence believes the key ingredients to effective and successful leadership include holding yourself accountable to the highest standards of performance and empowering and supporting others to reach for their highest level of effectiveness. As one of the most experienced African American nonprofit leaders in the Milwaukee area, Clarence has helped to shape the future of several nonprofit organizations in the Milwaukee Community and is held in high regard in many circles. During his long and distinguished career, Clarence has also served on over 20 nonprofit boards and remains an active member of the Milwaukee area community. Clarence was recently elected to the board of directors of the Wisconsin Association of Family and Children’s agencies and is also serving as a board member for NAMI Southeast Wisconsin.
Mr. Clarence Johnson is currently serving as the Executive Director of Wisconsin Community Services, a position he has held since January of 2017. Established in 1912, Wisconsin Community Services, Inc. (WCS) is a non-profit organization respected throughout the Milwaukee region and state of Wisconsin for its steadfast commitment to bettering the lives of individuals involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, the criminal justice system. WCS provides services to more than 15,000 individuals each year through 40+ programs in southeastern Wisconsin. The mission of WCS is to advocate for justice and community safety, providing innovative opportunities for individuals to overcome adversity. Since assuming top leadership role at WCS, Clarence has led the organization to a 62% increase in revenue (from 24 million to 40 million dollars), and significantly expanded the number of programs offered by the agency. Johnson was also instrumental in leading the effort that which resulted in the WCS Center for Driver’s License Recovery being named as one of Mutual of America’s three national 2019 Community Partnership Award winners. A national award that honors the outstanding contributions that nonprofit organizations, in partnership with public, private, and other social sector organizations, make to society.
Johnson joined Wisconsin Community Services in 2010 as the Associate Executive Director. In addition to providing high-level leadership, Johnson was then responsible for various programs and divisions, which helped to expand the work of WCS, and cultivate partnerships with community organizations and stakeholders. Clarence also brought Community Building Milwaukee to WCS, which involves numerous agencies, institutions and organizations across the Milwaukee community serving, youth and adults. Johnson is a lifelong resident of city of Milwaukee and earned both his undergraduate and graduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Has worked on several research projects during his career and began a program to reduce the incidence of obesity and chronic disease among central youth. A program that is now offered city-wide. Working for over 35 years in Social Services, Johnson has extensive experience working in and leading nonprofit, government, and human/social services agencies in the Milwaukee area. Prior to his time at WCS, he served as Executive Director of Neighborhood House of Milwaukee, Chief Operating Officer for YW Works (then subsidiary of the YWCA), and spent several years as a high level manager for Milwaukee County Department of Health and Social Services.
John Meurer, MD, MBA
ICFW Affiliate
Professor and Institute for Health & Equity Director, Medical College of Wisconsin
Professor and Institute for Health & Equity Director, Medical College of Wisconsin
John Meurer, MD, MBA is Professor and Director of the Medical College of Wisconsin Institute for Health & Equity. The mission of the Institute is to improve health and advance equity through research, education, and shared expertise by working collaboratively with local, national and global communities.
Dr. Meurer is a general pediatric clinician-educator and is academically recognized for his achievements in community-engaged research. He has a national reputation for research to improve childhood asthma and advance early childhood development and community-engaged health systems research. He has been a collaborative and transformative steward and leader of 25 Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin projects including 5 recently focused on improving early childhood developmental care systems.
He holds a medical degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, completed his residency at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Texas, attained a master of business degree from Northwestern University, and was a fellow with the David Winston Program, Washington DC.
Lixia Zhang, PHD, MSW
ICFW Affiliate
Assistant Professor, University of Louisville
Lixia Zhang’s research interests focus on child maltreatment and other negative circumstances that undermine individuals’ health and well-being across the life span. She is also interested in prevention and intervention strategies to avert childhood trauma or mitigate its effects, especially among disadvantaged children and families. Zhang has been involved in a variety of international, national and state research projects. As an ICFW affiliated scholar, she is currently collaborating with Dr. Joshua Mersky on two adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) studies. The first study is a cross-cultural ACEs Study. Dr. Zhang and Dr. Mersky collected original data from more than 1,200 recent high school graduates in China to test the effects of ACEs on psychosocial well-being in emerging adulthood. The second study is an intergenerational ACEs study. Dr. Zhang and Dr. Mersky are working with families and schools to determine how parents’ exposure to ACEs can affect the emotional and behavioral development of their school children.
Lixia holds a master’s and PhD in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Penelope Dixon
ICFW Affiliate
Shelter Manager, Milwaukee Women’s Center
Penelope is the Shelter Manger at the Milwaukee Women’s Center, a division of Community Advocates. In her role as the shelter manager, she oversees the 68 bed shelter for families experiencing homelessness and domestic violence. She is committed to providing a trauma-informed approach to enhance housing stability for the families served.
Prior to her role as a shelter manager, Penelope spent eight years with Children’s Wisconsin and the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being as a Child and Family Therapist and Foster Parent Educator. In both roles she worked directly with families involved in child welfare. Earlier in her career, she worked in special education in Milwaukee Public Schools.
Penelope is a licensed professional counselor. She earned her bachelor’s degree in educational policy and community studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and later a master’s degree in professional counseling from Grand Canyon University. She is a Milwaukee native with a passion for caring for Milwaukee’s most vulnerable populations.
Laura A. Voith, MSW, PHD
ICFW Affiliate
Assistant Professor, Case Western University
Stemming from her macro and direct practice work with domestic violence and sexual assault services, Dr. Voith focuses on violence prevention and intervention, particularly violence against women and children, and implementation science on the delivery of violence prevention programs. Her research on social inequalities contributing to the risk of violence exposure, subsequent health disparities resulting from violence exposure, and the prevention of such violence is carried out through two lines of research. (1) Dr. Voith examines the effects of individual- and neighborhood-level cumulative risk and protective factors on the relation between violence exposure and risky outcomes with children and adolescents. (2) Dr. Voith examines how men’s exposure to trauma, violence, and adversities contribute to violent perpetration and victimization, and how individual factors, such as men’s social networks, interact with neighborhood-level characteristics to enhance or diminish the risk of men’s use of violence in intimate relationships. These two lines of research will inform the development and evaluation of violence prevention programs with at-risk children and adolescents, and the improvement of batterer intervention programming with men.
Jennifer Jones
ICFW Affiliate
Chief Strategy Officer, Prevent Child Abuse America
Jennifer Jones currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA) where she develops, implements and advocates for an integrated strategic framework to help grow PCAA’s leadership role consistent with national prevention priorities, and serves as the lead on regional and national strategic partnerships.
Prior to her role with PCAA, Jones was the Director of the Change in Mind Institute and the Co-Director of the Safety and Resilience Impact Area at the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. Jones led all aspects of the Institute, including raising $1.7 million for the Texas Change in Mind Learning Collaborative and National Impact Study. Jones also served as the Project Director of the Child Safety Forward Initiative, a three-year Department of Justice cooperative agreement working with 5 jurisdictions to develop community-led, systematic solutions to reduce child fatalities caused by child maltreatment. Jones worked closely with the Alliance policy team, other national organizations and congressional representatives to advance brain science infused policy and trauma-informed care legislation.
Preceding her role at the Alliance, Jones served as the Associate Director of the Wisconsin Children’s Trust Fund (CTF). In her last two years at the agency, Jones served as Interim Executive Director, at the Board’s request, and coordinated all activities related to the Governor-appointed Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board, including managing all operations, and overseeing the agency’s budget and grantmaking functions. Before her positions with the Children’s Trust Fund, Jennifer served as the communications specialist in the Secretary’s Office at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and as a child welfare policy advisor in the Wisconsin Division of Children and Family Services.
Jones is an affiliate of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being, a joint project of Children’s Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Jones is also a member of the National HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) Advisory Board and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hunger Task Force. Jennifer received her master’s in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and bachelor’s in social work from Marquette University.
Katelyn Blair PHD, MSW
ICFW Affiliate
Senior Researcher, JBS International, Inc.
Senior Researcher, JBS International, Inc.
Katelyn Blair, MSW, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher in Child Welfare at JBS International, Inc. She is responsible for the analysis of Child and Family Services Review data on child and family outcomes, yielding results on national and State performance and best practices in child welfare. Dr. Blair also contributes to the analysis of calculating Statewide Data Indicator Profiles for the Children’s Bureau. She provides support in the analysis of estimates of improper payments and state and national error rates for the IV-E Foster Care Program.Previously, Dr. Blair worked at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Children’s Wisconsin as a research assistant and clinician where she designed and implemented studies that aided in the translation of evidence-based interventions into child welfare. She led efforts to examine distal system-level intervention outcomes, developed and validated a measure of early childhood resilience, and evaluated child welfare practice. She also delivered evidence-based interventions (Parent-Child Interaction Therapy and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to children and families within the context of child welfare services to improve well-being and facilitate resilience. As a researcher-practitioner, Dr. Blair married her clinical work with data collection, analysis and management to help develop an applied, translational research and evaluation agenda that contributed to the implementation and dissemination of trauma-informed services to underserved families.
As an ICFW affiliate, Dr. Blair continues to collaborate with team members to promote the use of evidence-based interventions and resilience in child welfare research and practice.
Dr. Blair holds a master’s degree in social work and a doctoral degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Reggie Moore
ICFW Affiliate
Medical College of Wisconsin Comprehensive Injury Center
Reggie Moore serves as the Injury and Violence Prevention Director of the Office of Violence Prevention (OVP) located within the City of Milwaukee’s Health Department. Appointed in 2016, Reggie leads the city’s efforts to assess, prevent, and decrease incidents of structural and community violence. OVP’s mission is to prevent and reduce violence through partnerships that strengthen youth, families, and neighborhoods. On November 11, 2017, the Office of Violence Prevention released Milwaukee’s first comprehensive plan to address violence from a public health perspective.
Prior to joining the city, Reggie has led local and national organizations including the Center for Youth Engagement, Urban Underground, and the national Youth Activism programs for the Truth Initiative in Washington, DC. He has volunteered his time with several local and national organizations including the Milwaukee Public Schools Foundation, the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing, and Scaling Wellness In Milwaukee. An organizer at his core, Reggie has dedicated his life to being a catalyst for social change.
Tim Grove
ICFW Affiliate
Senior Consultant, Wellpoint Care Network
Tim Grove is a senior consultant at Wellpoint Care Network, a human services agency whose mission is to facilitate equity, learning, healing and wellness for all. He has 25 years of professional experience in a variety of direct care and administrative positions including, in-home services, foster care, treatment foster care, residential treatment, child welfare, community based services, quality improvement and staff development.
Grove’s work at Wellpoint includes being the senior leader of trauma informed care (TIC) initiatives across all agency programs and as such was responsible for implementing Wellpoint’s TIC philosophy and practices, including Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT). He also created a TIC training curriculum centered around the Seven Essential Ingredients, or 7ei, of understanding and practicing TIC. Grove and the training team at Wellpoint have used the 7ei framework to train more than 50,000 people across the country over the past 12 years. Groups that are currently using the 7ei curriculum include judges, law enforcement/first responders, schools, child welfare agencies, social service agencies, health centers, community agencies, post secondary academic institutions and many others.
He is a Mentor with the ChildTrauma Academy and a Master Trainer in Dr. Rob Anda and Laura Porter’s ACE Interface curriculum. Grove and the SaintA team’s work has been highlighted in various radio and television projects, including a 2018 60 Minutes segment with special correspondant Oprah Winfrey. Their work has also been showcased in a number of magazines, journals and newspapers, including a three-year research study on the effectiveness of 7ei in child welfare published by the Journal of Child Custody in 2019.
Carmen Pitre
ICFW Affiliate
President & CEO, Sojourner
President & CEO, Sojourner
Carmen Pitre is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Sojourner, Wisconsin’s largest service provider for families dealing with domestic violence. Under Pitre’s leadership, Sojourner provides crisis housing, system advocacy and individual support to thousands of women, children and families.
Pitre draws on decades of work and personal experience to improve the way the community supports families impacted by domestic violence. Pitre believes – and data proves – a holistic approach of co-locating services and coordinating resources is effective, efficient and yields better outcomes for families. In 2016, Pitre rallied key community leaders to create the Sojourner Family Peace Center where people impacted by domestic violence can access emergency shelter, domestic violence services, physical and mental health services, law enforcement and legal assistance, counseling, employment services, financial literacy, community education and professional training – all under one roof.
Pitre was integral in the 2009 merger of Sojourner Truth House and the Task Force on Family Violence when she became Co-Executive Director of the new agency, Sojourner Family Peace Center. Before the merger, Pitre was the Executive Director of the Task Force on Family Violence from 2002 to 2009. Pitre served as the Director of the First Judicial District Judicial Oversight Demonstration Initiative and the Coordinator of the Milwaukee Commission on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault from 1997 to 2000.
Pitre graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana – Bachelor of Arts program in 1984.