Belinda Bell Basca (Ed.M. Harvard University) is
a K-5 writer and curriculum specialist of
Science Companion®, a hands-on learning program
that takes advantage of children's extensive
knowledge of--and curiosity about--how things
work in the world. As a consultant for EMT and
CARS, Belinda has assisted on a variety of
mentoring projects and conducted site visits for
Friday Night Live Mentoring and the Safe and
Drug Free Schools and Community program. As a
former researcher at Harvard Project Zero on The
Understandings of Consequence Project, Belinda's
work focused on complex causal science concepts
and their application in the classroom. In
particular, she studied how children reason
about challenging topics in science at the
elementary and middle school level. She
developed science curriculum and conducted
frequent classroom observations of teachers and
interviews with children.
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Bonnie Benard
For over 20 years, Bonnie Benard has brought the
concept of resilience to the attention of
national and international audiences. She writes
widely, leads professional development, and
makes presentations in the field of prevention
and resilience/youth development theory, policy,
and practice. Her 1991 WestEd publication,
Fostering Resiliency in Kids: Protective Factors
in the Family, School, and Community, is
credited with introducing resiliency theory and
application to the fields of prevention and
education. Her most recent publication,
Resiliency: What We Have Learned (2004),
synthesizes a decade and more of resiliency
research and describes what application of the
research looks like in our most successful
efforts to support young people. Benard’s work
in resilience has also led to the development of
the California Department of Education's Healthy
Kids Survey's Resilience and Youth Development
Module, which surveys students throughout
California and elsewhere on their perceptions of
supports and opportunities in their schools,
homes, communities, and peer groups. Benard has
been recognized for her contributions to the
fields of prevention and youth development with
the Award of Excellence from the National
Prevention Network, the Paul Templin Award for
Service by the Western Center for Safe and
Drug-Free Schools and Communities, the Spirit of
Crazy Horse Award from the Black Hills
Reclaiming Youth seminars, and the Paul D. Hood
Award from WestEd for Distinguished Contribution
to the Field. She holds a BA in English and an
MSW, both from the University of Missouri,
Columbia.
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Christina Borbely
Christina Borbely is a research consultant at
CARS providing technical assistance to
California’s Safe and Drug Free Schools &
Communities grantees. Also a member of the EMT
team, Christina coordinates program evaluations
for El Dorado County Office of Education and Big
Brother Big Sister of the Bay Area. Prior to
joining EMT/CARS, Christina was a member of the
research staff at Columbia University’s National
Center for Children and Families. Her work in
the field of youth development and prevention
programs has been presented at national
conferences and published in academic journals.
Specifically, Christina has extensive knowledge
and experience in program evaluation and
improving service delivery by identifying
factors that impact today’s young people. She is
also involved as a volunteer in providing
mentoring and developmental support to youth in
underserved populations. Christina received her
doctoral degree in developmental psychology,
with a focus on children and adolescents, from
Columbia University (2004).
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James Brady
For the past twenty years Mr. Brady has devoted
his professional skills to planning and staging
social marketing campaigns. Ranging from
full-scale advertising and public relations
efforts to community level marketing programs,
he has created marketing communications
solutions for state and local governments and
non-profit foundations. Past campaigns include
tobacco prevention, Medi-Cal managed healthcare,
emergency preparedness, telecommunications
awareness, perinatal outreach, teen pregnancy
prevention, HIV prevention, drug abuse
prevention, recycling and waste oil reduction.
His practical, community-based approach
distinguishes this media professional from
traditional marketing consultants. His intimate
knowledge of health prevention needs in rural
and urban California make him uniquely qualified
to diagnose and provide consultative treatment
to agencies that need to reach intended
audiences with cost-effective social marketing
strategies. He has conducted or planned more
than 300 focus groups, written both campaign and
organizational marketing plans, and designed
evaluation strategies to measure social
marketing effectiveness. Mr. Brady honed his
skills with Elkman Advertising Company in New
York, leading the McDonald’s Restaurants
regional account. He later led promotion and
Public Relations for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting. He conducted Disaster Public
Affairs under contract with FEMA in more than
thirty declared natural disasters. For ten
years he served as the Marketing Director for
Polaris R&D, a San Francisco-based social
marketing company.
Carol Burgoa
Carol Burgoa is an independent consultant and part-time
WestEd employee.
Ms. Burgoa was formerly the Prevention Programs
Coordinator at Contra Costa County Office of
Education. She was responsible for the Safe and
Drug-Free Schools and Communities program, the
School Violence Reduction Program, the Tobacco
Use Prevention Education program, and all school
safety and violence prevention activities, as
well as authoring the Student Leadership Program
Handbook and Yellow Ribbon Resource Guides for
youth led and initiated prevention activities
for the California Department of Education=s
School Safety and Violence Prevention Office.
She developed a statewide competitive process
for high school students to design their own
safe school projects, the Student Leadership
Grant Program, for that agency. A long time
member of the California School Law Enforcement
Partnership, Ms. Burgoa is a trainer in their
Safe School Planning process. For ten years she
has been the prevention consultant for the San
Francisco Police Department's Youth Services and
has trained all their School Resource Officers.
Previously, Ms. Burgoa was the training
coordinator for the Western Regional Center for
Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities where
she was widely known for her ground breaking
work in providing staff development in the broad
area of fostering resiliency in youth. In this
role, she designed, delivered and coordinated
workshops/presentations for Northern California
and provided technical assistance to state,
regional and local youth serving agencies. Prior
to this, she served as project director for
California Department of Education=s innovative
Pros for Kids, a community based drug prevention
program which used professional and amateur
athletes to deliver services throughout
California. She also has teaching experience at
the elementary and secondary levels.
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Rocco Cheng
Chien-hung (Rocco) Cheng, Ph.D. is currently the Program
Director at the Pacific Clinics-Asian Pacific
Family Center. He has been a consultant with
the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Agency Grant Review Committee since late 1990's.
He has over 13 years of experience in providing
prevention services for Asian and Pacific
Islander communities and oversees local, state,
and federally funded programs. These include
substance abuse prevention, viloence prevention,
gang prevention, youth leadership development,
parenting, and mentoring programs. Dr. Cheng
has been invited to may local and national
conferences to present his extensive experience
working with Asian youth and families. For one
parenting program, Dr. Cheng led a team of staff
providing over 40,000 hours of parenting to over
1,400 parents in the past five years. Dr. Cheng
is a licensed clinical psychologist and is
fluent in Mandarin and Taiwanese.
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Randy Davis
Randy Davis has a
background in Public Health, specializing in
community organizing for environmental
prevention, and the epidemiology of drug- and
alcohol-related problems. She has developed and
administered research-based prevention programs
for culturally diverse populations, specifically
for rural communities. She specializes in
program and evaluation plan development, with an
emphasis on logic model and research-based
approaches. Currently, Ms. Davis is a Regional
Trainer for Prevention by Design, a project of
the Institute for the Study of Social Change at
the University of California, Berkeley.
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Angela DaRe
Angela DaRe, Community Development Director,
People Reaching Out (PRO) has 11 years of
experience in the field of substance use and
youth violence prevention programs as well as
community mobilization. She has worked with
People Reaching Out for the past eight years and
contracts with various other agencies and
organizations to provide prevention planning and
training services to other communities. Angela
has been trained in multiple evidence-based
programs and has worked extensively with schools
and local agencies. In addition to working on
community based prevention, Angela oversees
PRO’s various evaluation projects, both internal
and external.
Louise Godbold
Louise Godbold has
been working as a CARS consultant for 5 years.
She specializes in program and evaluation
planning and logic model training. Louise has an
extensive background in the evaluation of social
and health programs: in the last 10 years she
has evaluated Federal, State and local programs
as well as foundation funded programs, which
have provided services ranging from substance
abuse prevention to HIV and gang prevention.
Louise has experience working with immigrant
populations (Latino and Eastern European), low
income communities of color, youth, the gay and
lesbian community, those at high risk for HIV
(sex-workers and injection drug users) and the
homeless. Louise has also held positions with
funding sources, first as a program monitor for
Los Angeles County (Alcohol and Drug Programs)
and then as an evaluation analyst for The
California Endowment. Currently, she is working
on Phase II of a California Endowment and
Rockefeller Foundation workforce development
initiative as the local evaluator for the Los
Angeles and San Diego regions. Louise speaks
Spanish, French and German and holds both US and
European citizenship.
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David Greco
David Greco is currently the Vice President for
Professional Services for the Youth Leadership
Institute (YLI) based in San Francisco. In this
role, he oversees YLI’s nationwide training and
consulting operations as well as their research
and evaluation, and curricula and program
development efforts. Prior to joining YLI,
David served as Director of Marketing and
Communications for the Northern California Human
Resources Association, one of the nation’s
largest human resources associations.
Additional experience includes having served as
the Senior Marketing Manager for the Jossey-Bass
Nonprofit Management and Public Administration
series, where he helped to successful launch
their Social Leadership publishing list focused
on social and economic justice. Originally
from Philadelphia, David earned his M.A. in
Political Science from Villanova University and
B.S. in History & Politics from Drexel
University.
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Edward Kaufman
Edward Kaufman has spent his entire professional life working
with youth and supporting them to succeed. He
believes in the power of young people and has
observed time and time again how when youth are
given the resources and support to succeed, they
surpass our expectations. Before his two and a
half years as the Executive Director of Big
Brothers Big Sisters of Marin and Napa Counties,
Edward spent five years as the Director of
Prevention for the Youth Leadership Institute.
In this capacity, he supported and developed
youth environmental prevention and public policy
campaigns that went beyond individual prevention
efforts and addressed the impact of alcohol,
tobacco, and other drugs in local communities.
As a licensed clinical social worker, he has
been providing services to youth and adults for
the last 18 years. He has worked with youth on a
wide array of issues ranging from HIV prevention
to Youth philanthropy, and has work with such
Bay Area Organizations as the San Francisco
Human Rights Commission, the Marin AIDS Project,
Spectrum Center, and the Oakland YWCA. Edward is
also a faculty member of City College of San
Francisco where he has been teaching for the
last 4 years.
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Joan Kiley
Joan Kiley is the founder and Executive Director of Community
Recovery Services. Joan has coordinated the
Alcohol Policy Network (APN) in Berkeley for
fourteen years, promoting community driven
environmental and policy solutions to
alcohol-related problems. She developed the
Youth Prevention Project as the youth
development component to the APN in 2000. Joan
produces the bimonthly publication Alcohol
Policy Network NEWS. Ms Kiley has been a
statewide leader in the alcohol problem
prevention field, particularly in the area of
environmental prevention. She is a founding
member of the California Prevention
Collaborative, a diverse collaborative of
organizations committed to the advancement of
science-based prevention principles, policies
and programs related to alcohol, tobacco, and
other drug problems in the state of California.
She is also past President, current member of
the Board of Directors, and legislative chair of
the California Council on Alcohol Policy (Cal
Council), a statewide organization providing
linkage, education and advocacy for local policy
action groups.
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Julienne Kwong
Julienne Kwong is currently completing her
master’s degree in Asian American Studies at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Her
research interests range from ethnic minority
travel to the homeland to the use of silence as
resistance among Asian American students. Ms.
Kwong's research and event planning skills began
during her undergraduate tenure at the
University of California, Davis, where she was
involved in cross-cultural activities and campus
community organizing. Ms. Kwong is a graphic
designer, serving The Center for Applied
Research Solutions, UCLA-affiliated groups and
community organizations.
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Martha Madrid
Martha Madrid is currently the Director of Health Education
and Mentoring Services for the Orange County Bar
Foundation. In this capacity, she is
responsible for overseeing a Center for Disease
Control HIV/AIDS health education and risk
reduction model for the Latino community
targeting high-risk females. Previously, Martha
was the Project Director on three National
Cross-Site Mentoring Programs focusing on
substance abuse prevention amongst Latina
females (for the Center for Substance Abuse and
Prevention (CSAP). Ms. Madrid has over 15 years
of experience providing ATOD and crime
prevention services to the Latino community.
Other professional experience includes providing
guidance to improve academics amongst Latina
females with Higher Education Mentoring, she is
currently a scholar with the Institute for HIV
Prevention Leadership, Atlanta, GA, through the
University of South Carolina and the Center for
Disease Control.
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Kindra Montgomery
Kindra has a widespread background in youth
development, school reform, substance abuse
prevention and social marketing. Kindra is
experienced in training and engaging youth and
adults in the systems that impact them ranging
from multi-cultural education to civic and
policy engagement. Currently, she sits on the
National Advisory Board of the Academy for
Educational Development- National Service
Learning Partnership and the Black Women’s Media
Project in Oakland, CA. Kindra has extensive
background in youth and community organizing.
Most recently, she worked with Students Reaching
Out in directing and coordinating community
based environmental prevention projects. Kindra
has also worked with the Youth Leadership
Institute and the Anti-Defamation League as
project director and project coordinator,
respectively.
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Lorne Needle
Lorne Needle joined YLI with 18 years of
experience in the field of youth leadership and
development. As vice president, he managed
operations and worked on the organization’s
expansion. Previously, Lorne directed San
Francisco Peer Resources, more than 12,000 young
people annually. While at San Francisco Peer
Resources, he worked in close collaboration with
the San Francisco Education Fund and the San
Francisco Unified School District. He holds a
bachelor’s in public policy and a master’s in
business administration from Stanford
University.
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Sharon O'Hara
Sharon O'Hara has ten years of experience in the
prevention field. She authored a strategic plan
for prevention for the Ventura County Department
of Alcohol and Drug Programs, and has worked as
a xommunity organizer and as a director of a
grass roots coalition. She is the past Vice
President, and current President of the
California Council on Alcohol Policy. As a
consultant and trainer, she has shared her
knowledge on media advocacy, environmental
prevention, and alcohol policy throughout the
state.
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Jan Ryan
Jan Ryan is a consultant who brings an array of experience to
the CARS team. Jan has been a consultant
locally, regionally, state-wide, nationally, and
internationally. Jan knows how to “translate”
the complexity of the public school culture to
providers. With her training skills she works to
build trusted relationships to continue to
stretch public education possibilities and build
innovative collaborative projects. She worked
with a collaborative of school partners
cooperating closely with the Department of
Mental Health Substance Abuse Prevention
Services to create the Prevention Education
Trust. This work led her to co-write the Safe
Schools and Healthy Students Initiative which
she named locally as Connect to Model for over
100, 00 students in seven other school
districts. Jan knows how to work with teams to
maintain the infrastructure and sustain what is
working. Jan sees opportunities where others
see scarcity.
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Robert Saltz
Robert Saltz, Ph.D. is a Senior Research
Scientist at the Prevention Research Center. Dr.
Saltzs work has centered on ways in which
drinking contexts may influence the risk of
subsequent injury or death. He has conducted
several studies on "responsible beverage
service" programs that seek to have bar and
restaurant personnel intervene to reduce the
risk of intoxication or of driving while
impaired.
Other research
projects have included drinking among college
students, work-related drinking among
public-sector employees, developing indicators
of drinking problems among women, and the design
and implementation of comprehensive community
prevention interventions to reduce
alcohol-involved trauma. Prior to PRCs founding
in 1983, Bob worked on a study of social
networks among people recovering from heroin
addiction.
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Stacy Saetta
Stacy L. Saetta is a CSLEP legal researcher and
associate research scientist. Stacy conducts
legal analyses, including First Amendment
analysis, of alcohol-related statutes and
regulations across state and federal
jurisdictions; best practices analysis of
alcohol-related legal provisions; best practices
analysis of enforcement practices; and model law
development. Her representative assignments
include Alcohol Policy Information System
(APIS), an electronic resource on
alcohol-related policies, developed under
contract for the National Institute on Alcohol
Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which is part of
the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a
component of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. An attorney admitted in
California and New York since 1985, Stacy brings
a wealth of experience in employment law, school
law, civil litigation, and civil and criminal
appeals and writs.
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Kerrilyn Scott-Nakai
Kerrilyn Scott-Nakai is
currently the Director of Operations for the
Center for Applied Research Solutions and
Project Director for the Safe and Drug Free
Schools and Communities Technical Assistance
Project. She has over 12 years of progressive
experience conducting research and evaluation
projects focusing on ATOD and violence
prevention services for youth and their
families—with an emphasis on school-based
programs. Ms. Scott-Nakai has worked at the local,
state, and federal levels. She has overseen
several local and statewide evaluation projects
(including the California Friday Night Live
Mentoring Project, the California Youth Council,
and the Orange County On Track Tobacco Free
Communities Project) and has substantially
contributed to the management and
design of large-scale multi-site federally
funded prevention studies (including Project
Youth Connect and the Mentoring and Family
Strengthening initiative). Before joining CARS,
Ms. Scott-Nakai conducted school safety research as a
consultant for the Florida Safe and Drug Free
Schools Program and the Florida Safe Learning
Environment Data Project (a three-year
longitudinal study). During this time, she
provided technical assistance and support to
SDFSC Coordinators regarding evaluation and
measurement issues. Additionally, Ms. Scott-Nakai
taught a Theory of Measurement course at the
University of Florida for two years.
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Sean Slade
Sean Slade has been
involved in the field of education and in
particular drug, tobacco, health and physical
education for over 15 years. While most of this
experience has been in his native Australia he
has taught and presented workshops across
Europe, South America and the US. Mr. Slade has published articles in various educational
journals both here and in Australia and has a
Masters Degree in Education and Physical
Education.
Prior to relocating to the Bay Area he was the
Senior Education Officer coordinating Drug
Education to all public schools (K-12) in
Sydney, Australia, for the NSW Department of
Education & Training.
Since relocating to the Bay Area Mr. Slade has
conducted and been involved in various SDFS,
TUPE and Health related projects for WestEd,
California Healthy Kids Resource Center and
CARS.
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Michael Sparks
Michael Sparks is currently the Project Director
of Neighborhood Strategies for Vallejo Fighting
back Partnership. He has expertise in the
alcohol policy field as well as in the areas of
community organizing, using local control
strategies to manage problematic alcohol and
drug environments, the legislative process,
neighborhood revitalization, and management of
non-profit corporations. He has provided
training in the areas of community organizing,
alcohol policy, using the legislative process to
reduce problems with alcohol and other drugs,
neighborhood revitalization, and leadership
development.
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Lisa Tobe
Lisa Tobe began focusing on women’s issues VISTA Volunteer
with Appalachian Communities for Children in
Annville, Kentucky, which she continued at the
Kentucky Commission on Women. Here Ms. Tobe
started the Kentucky Coalition on Women’s Health
and advised the Commission’s Executive Director
on healthcare policy. Currently, Ms. Tobe
directs Sierra Resources, which is based out of
Quincy, California. She works with agencies
within her region and state to prevent violence.
She focuses on increasing individual,
organizational and community capacity through
program development and evaluation; asset
mapping; participatory trainings programs, which
utilize participant skills, create dialogue and
address organizationally defined goals; and,
strategic planning. She currently consults for
the University of North Carolina Prevent
Institute, the California Partnership to End
Domestic Violence, the Plumas County Family
Violence Prevention Coalition and the Plumas
County Child Abuse Council. Ms Tobe founded and
directs Women’s Mountain Passages, a non-profit
that works with women and girls to connect with
their strengths so they may improve their lives
and facilitate social change in their
communities through leadership development,
advocacy, youth programs, experiential learning
and support networks. In 2000, Ms. Tobe
completed the California Women’s Health
Leadership Program ran by the Center for
Collaborative Planning. And in 2005, she
completed the Women’s Foundation of California,
Women’s Policy Institute where she advocated for
the passage of legislation that decrease youth
access to violence video games.
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George Vásquez
George Vásquez is the Director of the Responsible Beverage
Service Training Program and the staff
Coordinator for the Environmental Strategies to
Prevention for Fighting Back Partnership (FBP)
in Vallejo, California. His responsibilities at
Fighting Back Partnership include the direction
and coordination of projects designed to prevent
the deterioration of neighborhoods is caused
directly and indirectly by the use and abuse of
alcohol, tobacco and other illegal drugs. Mr.
Vásquez is personally involved in carrying out
project strategies, including training and
technical assistance to business owners,
managers, and staff of on-sale and off-sale
alcohol outlets, community coalitions,
neighborhood associations, and local law
enforcement agencies. Mr. Vásquez was also a
member of the technical assistance team for the
National Program Office of Free to Grow, a
program of Columbia University, New York. His
duties at Free To Grow entailed delivering
training and technical assistance to
professionals and community residents but for
communities at the interstate level. Mr.
Vásquez’s areas of expertise include
relationship building, conflict resolution,
community organizing, leadership development,
alcohol awareness education, and media
advocacy. George is also member of the training
pool for CADCA and has been able to provide
technical assistance at the international level
by helping to form five coalitions in Lima,
Peru. He has been providing Responsible
Beverage Service training throughout Northern
California for the past 12 years through his
consulting firm, Beverage Consulting Network,
Inc. Mr. Vásquez obtained his B.A. from the
Universidad Católica de Guayaquil, Ecuador, Law
School. In 1969, he moved to New York, where he
started his management career in the Food and
Beverage Division in the Hotel Industry. After
25 years working for Americana Hotels, Hilton
International, Westin Hotels and Embassy Suites,
he transferred skills learned in business to his
work for nonprofit organizations providing
training in Spanish and English to owners of
small businesses on the responsible selling and
service of alcohol and helping communities to
empower residents.
