Our Directors and Affiliates
Tom Nochajski (former co-director) and Sue Green in Parker Hall, South Campus.
The Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care (ITTIC) is supported and guided by our team of talented directors and affiliates, who possess an array of skills and expertise that translate to informed, cutting edge research rooted in real-world impact and best and current practices.
The ITTIC Team
Susan A. Green
Susan A. Green, LCSW, is a clinical professor at the UB School of Social Work. She is certified as an EMDR therapist and in Advanced Critical Incident Stress Management and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Susan teaches or has taught courses in social work interventions with children, adults, families, groups and communities; trauma theory and treatment; risk and resilience; and diversity. She is committed to the integration of theory with practice as she combines full-time teaching and training with clinical practice. Susan has been working with various groups and individuals for more than 20 years as both a special educator and social worker.
Email: sagreen@buffalo.edu
Samantha Koury
Samantha is one of the co-directors at ITTIC, as well as a trainer and consultant on various projects. She is a graduate of the UB School of Social Work and has a doctorate in educational leadership and organizational innovation from Marymount University. Samantha has nine years of experience working with leaders, organizations, and systems to become more trauma-informed in their work. She is passionate about trauma-informed leadership, workforce wellness and helping organizations and systems plan for, implement, and sustain trauma-informed change.
Megan Koury
Megan is a project/office manager and trainer at ITTIC and an adjunct professor in UB's Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Program, teaching Violence and the Family. She holds a master's in urban planning from the UB School of Architecture and Planning, specializing in community and neighborhood planning. Megan's interests focus on the effects of historical and institutional trauma and how they play out at the city, community and individual level. One day, Megan hopes to see how trauma-informed cities can help fight against the adverse effects of trauma and adverse community environments.
Amy Wlosinski
Amy is a part-time project manager and trainer at ITTIC. She is a graduate of the UB School of Social Work and the UB Graduate School of Education. Amy spent eleven years of her career working in Higher Education focused on improving accessibility. More recently she served as a supervisor in an evidence-based parenting program at a local non-profit. She is passionate around the areas of trauma-informed parenting, disability access, and trauma-informed organizations.
Tina Zerbian
Tina is the part-time assistant director with ITTIC and is responsible for strategic planning, communications, contract management, leadership development and trauma-informed care training. Tina comes to ITTIC from her long-time role as the CEO of Connecting Communities in Action, a trauma-informed human services organization serving Western New York. She is deeply committed to creating trauma-informed networks and resilient communities.
Jangmin Kim
Jangmin Kim, PhD, is an assistant professor in the UB School of Social Work. He joined the ITTIC team in 2023 as a research consultant. His research interests center around macro practice, working with organizations and communities, particularly within child welfare and other systems of care for children, youth and families. Drawing from a social justice perspective, his recent research focuses on the development of trauma-informed organizations to address workers' secondary traumatic stress and enhance their safety and well-being. In addition, his interests extend to building trauma-informed collaboration that brings multiple systems together to promote system changes and provide effective services that improve the well-being of children, youth and families who have experienced historical trauma and oppression.
A Special Thanks
Thomas H. Nochajski (ITTIC co-director from 2012-2021)
Thomas Nochajski is a retired research professor from the UB School of Social Work. He has over 30 years of research experience and has been a principal investigator or co-PI on several NIH- and foundation-funded grants. His work focuses on all aspects of the prevention of alcohol and drug problems, including how mental health and other behavioral risk factors influence treatment and prevention outcomes. Nochajski also has experience with instrument development around screening and assessment issues for various groups. He has engaged in numerous evaluations of existing programs, including drug courts, mental health programs, drinking driver programs, substance use treatment and other programs for criminal justice groups. His most recent work focuses on trauma and trauma-informed care.
Email: thn@buffalo.edu
ITTIC Partners and Affiliates
Trainers who work with the Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care provide training and consultation on various projects in the community and across the state.
Ann Adams
Ann has her bachelor's and master's degrees in special education from SUNY Geneseo and Nazareth College Her career began in teaching and transitioned into school counseling and academic coordination at Villa of Hope. She worked there for over 30 years in both residential and day programs and is passionate about supporting students, families and the community through a trauma-informed lens. Ann is currently a site coordinator for the G2 program through the Strong National Museum of Play, and her work with ITTIC involves training and consultation with staff working in educational settings.
Ted Adams
Ted has worked at the Villa of Hope for 28 years and currently serves as the Villa’s coach/mentor in the HR department and trainer in the organizational development department. In that capacity, he is involved in screening and interviewing, Justice Center calls, leading post-crisis response at team meetings and providing support and guidance to program managers. He is a trainer in Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) and sanctuary. Ted primarily works with ITTIC as a trauma-informed consultant/coach in school districts.
Amy Fleischauer, LMSW
Amy is a nationally recognized subject matter expert on human trafficking, intimate-partner violence and the implementation of trauma-informed care within diverse systems. She works for the Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care, providing coaching and training to systems interested in changing their culture of work through a commitment to trauma-informed practices. Amy also is a consultant at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, providing training and technical assistance to social and legal service providers implementing innovative anti-trafficking programming
Thomas Gibbons
Thomas is a recently retired, 25-year veteran of the New York State Police. Thomas was assigned to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation for over 19 years as an investigator and senior investigator. He was also assigned to the campus sexual assault victims unit and served as the regional coordinator responsible for being the liaison between the New York State Police and every private and state college and university in the eight counties of Western New York. Tom organized and implemented training for local police departments, prosecutors and campus personnel responsible for responding to sexual assaults, dating and domestic violence, and stalking. He also developed and implemented training standards and in-person training for all NYS law enforcement in association with NYS Executive Law 838-a section 3(a), "Sexual Offense Trauma-Informed Victim Response Training."
Vicki Grant
Vicki is a graduate of the UB School of Social Work and currently the commissioner of the Allegany County Department of Social Services (DSS), where she has been employed for 31 years. She was instrumental in bringing trauma systems therapy to Allegany County, a trauma-informed environment to DSS as an organization, and in the passing of a trauma-informed resolution to the Allegany County Legislature, making it the first county in New York State to resolve that the entire county will be trauma-informed. She also initiated a county-wide, trauma-informed coalition named Trauma-informed Care Throughout Allegany County (TICTAC). Vicki primarily works with ITTIC to provide SAMHSA trainings, coaching to organizations and assisting in Champion learning collaboratives.
Jamy Stammel, LMSW
Jamy is a UB School of Social Work graduate, who also holds an MA in women’s studies from the University at Albany. She was an adjunct professor at the University at Albany for three years. She now works at Lake Shore Behavioral Health as a chemical dependency counselor, providing individual and group therapy to adolescents and adults. She also works per diem in the mental health program providing cognitive processing therapy, which she is a certified provider of for both adults and adolescents. She is the liaison for her agency and the Hamburg Drug Court program. She is an advisory board member for the Trauma-Informed Community Initiative of Western New York (TICI) and an adjunct professor at Simmons College, teaching Racism and Oppression in Social Work and Drugs and Alcohol in Social Work. At ITTIC, Jamy is a SAMHSA trainer and provides training, consultation and coaching to staff in both ITTIC's projects with Catholic Health and CHCANYS.
Ineke Way, PhD, ACSW, LMSW
Ineke is a retired professor emeritus at the Western Michigan University School of Social Work. She co-founded, with Karen VanDeusen, the school's specialization in Trauma Across the Lifespan for MSW students and helped develop the school's TF-CBT Training Project. Way continued to teach, part time, courses on secondary traumatic stress and trauma-informed self-care, strengthening trauma-informed organizational capacity, and intervention with adolescents with sexually abusive behaviors. Her research interests prior to retirement focused on trauma-informed organizational change and readiness to implement evidence-based trauma treatment; secondary traumatic stress effects for students exposed to trauma course content; and vicarious trauma in clinicians who provide sexual abuse treatment. Her treatment experience is with children who experienced sexual abuse, non-offending parents, adolescents with sexually abusive behaviors, and adult survivors of incest.
The Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care collaborates with UB faculty on both grant projects and research.
Denise Krause
Denise J. Krause, MSSW, is a clinical professor in the UB School of Social Work. Krause has been involved in several ongoing solution-focused training initiatives in New York State since 2005, many in collaboration with ITTIC. She works with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, county-level social service departments and voluntary agencies to train at the administrative, supervisory and direct service levels.
Whitney Marris
Whitney is a UB School of Social Work graduate and a former project manager at ITTIC. Whitney has diverse field experience ranging from organizing and mobilizing individuals, communities and policymakers to advance trauma-informed, human rights-affirming systems, to providing direct services to trauma survivors in various community-based settings and in private practice, to the creation and development of equitable, accessible programs to facilitate individual and community healing and growth following trauma exposure. Her professional and research interests include transformative justice, trauma-informed organizational and systems change, advancing equity and justice through public policy advocacy and action, and the use of technology to enhance mental health. Whitney works with ITTIC to provide trauma-informed consultation and training in various systems of care, to track and report on trauma-informed public policy efforts, and to develop curriculum for ITTIC's Trauma-Informed Online Training Modules.
Mickey Sperlich
Mickey Sperlich, PhD, MSW, MA, CPM, is an associate professor in the UB School of Social Work. She has been part of several trauma-focused perinatal studies and is co-author of the Survivor Moms’ Companion, a psychosocial intervention for pregnant survivors of abuse. Mickey is currently studying a postpartum version of this intervention in Detroit and is broadly interested in developing trauma-informed approaches to address the sequelae of sexual violence and other trauma, particularly for childbearing women.
Sperlich is collaborating with ITTIC on a project with New York State SUCCESS and Coordinated Care Services Inc. to develop a trauma-informed care assessment tool for organizations that will increase accessibility, include attention to the effects of toxic stress and provide support for implementation. Sperlich is also working with ITTIC to develop a curriculum to determine best practices for conducting client-centered psychoeducational trauma support groups for women in a residential treatment setting with opioid use disorder.
The Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care collaborates with faculty from other universities primarily through research and publication.
Travis Hales
Senior Research Associate
Dr. Travis Hales is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is a leading researcher in developing an evidence base for the adoption and implementation of trauma-informed care. Travis received his MSW and PhD at the University at Buffalo and has conducted research and evaluation with ITTIC since 2014. Travis’s research specializes in scale development, quantitative methodology and program evaluation.
The Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care collaborates with practitioners in both grant projects and the provision of the evidence-based treatment Seeking Safety.
Lynn Siradas
Lynn Siradas, Director of Foster Care and Organizational Development at New Directions Youth and Family Services, has worked with ITTIC since its inception. Lynn provides supervision for MSW students at the UB School of Social Work. Lynn worked with ITTIC on the NYS Success project and facilitates Seeking Safety groups in agencies and the community on behalf of ITTIC as needed.
Graduate students at the Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care assist with project coordination, research, evaluation and the provision of training.
Analea Blackburn
Analea is a master's student in the UB School of Social Work, completing her advanced-year field placement at ITTIC. She is also the vice president of the UB School of Social Work Graduate Association and works as a peer mentor for UB Accessibility Resources. Analea is passionate about disability equity and accessibility. She is interested in the intersection of accessibility, Universal Design and trauma-informed care.