2024 Ambassadors of The Year
TRI’s mission continues to be actualized in many places around the world to mitigate the suffering from gun violence, disasters, and war.
We do not do this alone.
There is a wide net of people and organizations, beyond those who work at our organization, who have gone above and beyond to help spread the mission and healing models of TRI.
Now more than ever, we see value in honoring just a few examples of those who have worked diligently to bring healing to individuals and communities who have suffered greatly.
Every year, we recognize Individual Ambassadors and Organizational Ambassadors who work tirelessly to help strengthen communities and deeply integrate the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models into their efforts.
This year, we have selected the following Ambassadors to represent 2024:
Individual Ambassadors:
Jordan R. Murphy, PhD, APRN, CPNP-PC
Rev. Lesley Carroll, PhD
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Virginia Tech Organizational Ambassadors:
Erica Berry Coates, LCSW
Jon Dance, MPH, CPRS
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Children's Hospital Los Angeles Organizational Ambassador:
Beth Fitzpatrick, LCSW
2024 Individual Ambassadors
Jordan R. Murphy, PhD, APRN, CPNP-PC
Dr. Murphy is a nurse scientist and pediatric nurse practitioner specializing in behavioral health and trauma-informed care. She received her undergraduate and graduate education from Spelman College and Emory University, respectively.
Dr. Murphy is the Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Interrelational Science and Pediatrics, LLC and Executive Director of its non-profit arm, Girassol Wellness, Inc.
Through her work, Dr. Murphy supports individuals and families to expand resilience through the use of wellness and clinical interventions and collaborates with organizations nationally to provide workforce development, training, and consultation. Her passion centers on translating science into meaningful clinical practice, working in community settings, and supporting the next generation of health care providers.
Dr. Murphy is a Community Resiliency Model Senior Trainer for the Trauma Resource Institute, has published research, and partners with educational institutions in the area of curriculum development.
Dr. Murphy was first introduced to the Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® in 2015, while pursuing her graduate education in nursing. CRM easily became her preferred first-line wellness intervention to support children and families experiencing behavioral and mental health crises.
To further increase accessibility to mental health services in Georgia (which typically ranks in the bottom five states for the number of available mental health providers), Dr. Murphy developed Bridges to Therapy, a framework for pediatric behavioral health integration in settings including daycare centers, homeless shelters, and schools.
Bridges to Therapy utilizes CRM and other clinical interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy to provide prevention and intervention at the earliest stages of pediatric development. Dr. Murphy and colleagues have worked strategically to bring CRM wellness skills to more than 10,000 professionals and families across the state of Georgia in the last 10 years.
Beyond using CRM in clinical practice, Dr. Murphy has contributed her expertise on three peer-reviewed scientific articles documenting the effectiveness of CRM in women experiencing addiction treatment and as a wellness intervention for healthcare providers working in hospital settings during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
In 2022, Dr. Murphy expanded her scope of practice to address firearm injuries as the number one cause of death for children in the United States. Using her Bridges to Therapy framework, Dr. Murphy supports the youngest survivors of gun violence and their families with CRM wellness skills to help manage the devastating stress response that accompanies firearm injuries.
CRM is well accepted with survivors because of the focus on utilizing body-based wellness skills that help to regulate the nervous system and address symptoms such as anxiety, sleep disruptions, and chronic pain. In addition to supporting survivors and families, Dr. Murphy trains violence prevention professionals to use CRM within their role to interrupt violence before it occurs.
Dr. Murphy has spent the last 10 years using CRM to uplift communities, restore hope to families, and strengthen the next generation of healthcare professionals. She plans to further address gaps in healthcare and champion CRM as an evidence-based solution to improve the mental health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities.
Rev. Lesley Carroll, PhD
Rev. Carroll is a Presbyterian Minister who grew up during Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
She was deeply impacted by the division, suffering and terror that she saw around her and her faith inspired her to commit herself to the work of building relationships including between enemies, and seeking reconciliation between and within divided communities.
Rev. Carroll’s experience working in communities in Belfast that were deeply scarred by the years of violence gave her insight into how trauma impacts peoples lives, leaving them with persistent suffering not always connected to the traumas they have experienced.
Rev. Carroll was involved in setting up a group to support people whose lives were forever scarred by the years of violence and separate and served as an associate member of the NI Victims & Survivors Forum where she encounter people with vision and hope who found holding their vision challenging at times, particularly when their trauma took hold of their thinking and reacting.
In 2015, Rev. Carroll stepped back from parish life due to the effects of her own experiences of trauma and the years of sitting alongside traumatised people in empathy. At that time, she attended TRI’s first European training in London and from then has been committed to the Community Resiliency Model as a way to skill and empower individuals to notice and respond to the ways in which trauma subverts their hopes and dreams and holds them hostage to a past that they cannot change.
Rev. Carroll brought the CRM Model to Victim Support NI, a charity supporting victims of crime including as they progress through the Courts. Victim Support NI adopted the CRM Model systematically to support staff as they support others. She also brought TRI to Northern Ireland to train CRM teachers and this work has continued to grow across the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Rev. Carroll currently works at the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery where she leads a team trained in the CRM skills to support victims & survivors as they come forward to the Commission seeking investigations into what happened during the years of the Troubles/Conflict.
2024 Organizational Ambassadors
Virginia Tech
With the support of a generous alumni donor passionate about preventing mental health crises, Virginia Tech identified 20 staff from across the population wellness department, the counseling center, and the residential well-being department to become the campus' first CRM Teachers in October 2022.
Since that time, Virginia Tech has trained 8 more CRM teachers in other departments, and reached over 8,000 members of VT's campus from over 50 departments with CRM programs. With school enrollment at 36,000 students, the teachers began systematic plans for teaching CRM Zones and skills within the residence halls, first year experience courses, student organizations, faculty/staff departments, and conferences focused on topics of equity.
Contextualizing CRM content for the modern college student, VT has built out modules for students within Canvas (VT’s online academic platform), created new graphics capitalizing on their popular therapy dogs to convey the felt sense of the zones, and developed a Sensory Flow Bike- an attention-grabbing conversation starter to help teach individuals and groups about how to track sensation in the nervous system through giveaways such as fidgets and popsicles. VT student leaders within the Residential Well-being program use CRM language and skills many times a week with students who are feeling stuck in their low or high zone. CRM language is infused within many wellness programs, as focusing on the autonomic nervous system intersects with all well-being dimensions.
Virginia Tech has also constructed a CRM "Theory of Change" to hypothesize how shared nervous system concepts within a group create community resilience. A group of researchers have also conducted qualitative analysis from survey results to investigate if this Theory of Change applies to groups being reinforced weekly with CRM concepts.
Thus far, groups who participate in a CRM workshop together and have weekly "Wellness Wakeup" icebreakers each week of class to stimulate brief reminders and discussion of the concepts, show that 98.5% of students have used CRM skills regularly, and 94% report either more understanding of one another or enhanced resilience in managing challenges. Virginia Tech plans to continue using the CRM model in new ways into the future to support their campus.
Erica Berry Coates, LCSW
Erica Coates is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who serves as the Coordinator of the Community Resiliency Model at Virginia Tech, and has overseen one of the first initiatives within higher education seeking to infuse CRM across the entire campus of 36,000 students and many thousand employees.
Since launching in Spring 2023 with 20 CRM trainers, CRM has reached over 8,000 members of VT's campus and over 50 departments, working to bolster their ability to regulate their nervous systems in the moment and have language to share with others to enhance connection and expand resiliency.
Ms. Coates sees CRM as an incredibly simple yet profound tool for emerging adults who are navigating elevated trauma and mental health concerns, alongside distressing socio-political realities in the US and abroad. She has worked to contextualize CRM to this population - focusing on the science of the model as well as storytelling. Ms. Coates is leading a research team exploring how the use of CRM language and skills within a group creates expanded collaboration and mutual understanding, even amidst stressful conditions.
In her clinical work, Ms. Coates feels it is a profound privilege to facilitate growth and healing in others as they discover their own resilience through hardships and injustices. She has organized training for 10 individuals at Virginia Tech to also become Trauma Resiliency Model-trained clinicians through the Trauma Resource Institute. Ms. Coates draws from brain science on the nervous system and memory reconsolidation for clients seeking to understand the ‘why’ of their symptoms in order to catalyze change, particularly with those clients struggling with identity difficulties pertaining to their religious/cultural upbringing, or with complex trauma.
Ms. Coates obtained her Bachelors in Psychology with minors in Music and Spanish from Anderson University in 2004, and her Masters in Social Work from Syracuse University in 2009. She has worked in clinical, administrative, supervisory and program development roles in various human service agencies in different sectors. The joy of her career has been building multi-disciplinary initiatives to solve complex problems.
Before coming to Virginia Tech in 2017, Ms. Coates created mental health programming in underserved areas in South Carolina, co-founded the Spanish Speaking Clinical Collaborative which grew to 100 service providers focused on services for Spanish speakers in North Carolina, and managed programmatic contracts and staff in New York for child welfare involved families. She helped found and develop the Inclusion Diversity and Equity Advancement Team at Cook Counseling Center. She enjoys indoor cycling classes, exploring spirituality, WWE professional wrestling events, and frantically Googling pop culture references her clients make between sessions to try to appear hip.
Jon Dance, MPH, CPRS
Jon Dance is a person in long-term recovery, a Registered Certified Peer Recovery Specialist (CPRS), educator, and a dedicated PhD student at Virginia Tech. His work centers on mental wellness, youth empowerment, recovery as relational care, and rural community resilience.
With a Master of Public Health focused on community health promotion and equity, Jon brings a deeply relational, justice-driven, and recovery-informed perspective to everything he does.
Sober since September 14, 2020—the last day he used alcohol or illegal drugs—Jon describes the early years of recovery as transformative and often challenging to put into words. This date marks a significant milestone in Jon's personal journey towards recovery, and it is a testament to his commitment to mental wellness. “I was learning things that didn’t have language yet,” he reflects. His background in Human Development introduced him to trauma-informed care and the neuroscience of addiction.
Still, until he encountered the Community Resiliency Model (CRM)®, those lessons began to integrate. That first experience came during a student organization meeting when his now friend and colleague, Erica Coates, introduced CRM. That moment marked a shift. “CRM gave me a common language to talk about mental wellness, practical tools, skills, and a renewed sense of hope,” Mr. Dance says. “It helped me recognize and name the natural cues in my body when I’m entering survival mode, experiencing joy, or even just okay.”
Since his first encounter with CRM, Mr. Dance has emerged as a pivotal figure in Virginia Tech's journey to establish one of the first campus-wide CRM initiatives in higher education. His leadership was instrumental in shaping the initial vision and strategy for CRM integration, co-developing the program’s original logic model, and leading early student-centered focus groups that informed the model's delivery. His feedback and insight were crucial in making CRM engaging, relatable, and inclusive of diverse student experiences. Mr. Dance's co-facilitation of numerous CRM trainings and presentations across the university has helped deliver trauma-informed tools to thousands of students and employees. His outreach and awareness campaigns have increased access for underrepresented groups and brought a recovery-informed perspective to CRM messaging on campus.
Jon's innovative and creative ideas led him to co-design the CRM Sensory Flow Bike with help from his Public Health team, Martha Sullivan, the students in her Industrial Design class, and Erica Coates. This tool is designed to engage and excite students about mental wellness. It encourages students to explore their own nervous system responses through sensory engagement. It has been used in classrooms, outreach events, and wellness fairs, introducing students to the core CRM skills in a fun and approachable way.
In all of his roles, from co-chairing the Montgomery County Prevention Partners, a regional prevention coalition, to advising on wellness initiatives and building community-based mental health supports—Jon centers care, equity, and accessibility. As a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist, he supports individuals seeking recovery or building a new way of life and is a vocal advocate for dismantling stigma and shame surrounding substance use and mental health. His advocacy fosters a culture where it's safe to ask for help and be seen in the fullness of one’s experience. His current doctoral research critiques the shortcomings of traditional drug prevention programs like D.A.R.E. and explores how models like CRM can provide more effective, trauma-informed, and culturally-relevant alternatives for young people and rural communities.
At his core, Mr. Dance believes healing is both personal and collective and that we all deserve access to tools that help us feel more at home in our nervous systems. Through every layer of his work, he invites others to slow down, listen, and find their way back to themselves so they, too, can return to their own flow zones.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Applying the Community Resiliency Model (CRM)®, Fitzpatrick crafted a resilience training program that she named Revitalize because of the way the base word connects with frontline workers.
In 2013 Beth Fitzpatrick, LCSW, Manager of the Employee Assistance Program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, attended a meeting at the Trauma Resource Institute on how to support people under stress.
At the crux of the organization’s Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® was a method of controlling one’s internal reactions to a traumatic or antagonizing situation.
Fitzpatrick was drawn to the science behind it, as the model teaches people to allow the calming parasympathetic nervous system to basically overrule the agitated sympathetic nervous system during a crisis. She thought it was a natural for the health care setting.
“It’s all biology,” she says. “The whole time I was there, I kept thinking, ‘Oh man, I need this packaged for 5,000 people and I need it yesterday.’”
Her thoughts matched with CHLA’s organizational effort to prioritize the welfare of its team members through the Office of Well-Being.
Applying the Community Resiliency Model, Fitzpatrick crafted a resilience training program that she named Revitalize because of the way the base word connects with frontline workers. “They are vital parts of the organization,” she says. She also added a “train the trainers” component so interested team members could assist in conducting sessions and improving employee well-being.
A giant boost to the program came in 2021, when Fitzpatrick was awarded a $2.1 million federal grant to help combat the severe toll the pandemic was taking on the mental health of front-line hospital workers, causing droves to leave the profession. The landslide of new tasks and pressures and considerations “was just too much,” Fitzpatrick says.
The antidote Fitzpatrick offers comes in one sitting: six wellness skills that provide people the means to counteract their instinctive negative response to stress so they can remain stable and productive. Fitzpatrick teaches the skills in a condensed one-hour version, to give people an “appetizer exposure,” she says, or in a comprehensive four-hour session, which she encourages so you get the full menu.
“The four-hour session is the secret sauce of the whole thing,” she says. “We talk about big traumas in the world and at work, little traumas in the world and at work, and cumulative traumas—the things that lead to burnout. We talk about where they show up on our body—all of it.”
Fitzpatrick faces some stubborn biases trying to promote the value of resilience training. For starters, there’s the “hopscotch in semantics” she says she does to avoid the terms resilience and training, which suggest to health care workers that they have some deficit that needs work. “It’s like, don’t make me feel like I need to fix myself,” she says.
Plus, training implies that it’s mandatory and a chore. In fact, it’s neither. Revitalize sessions are entirely voluntary—and the sessions are portable. Fitzpatrick conducts them at departmental staff meetings, hospital wellness fairs, or whatever CHLA location is convenient to the participants. She goes where she’s invited.
“I come to people where they are,” she says, and that includes everyone at CHLA, not merely doctors and nurses.
“We’re supporting anybody wearing a butterfly badge. Yesterday’s session, two people were from the Emergency Department, one was from 6 East, and the other was from Hematology-Oncology. I don’t know that they knew each other before they came in, but they walked out knowing each other.”
Likewise, the 27 trainers assisting Fitzpatrick come from across the hospital. “I have nurses, doctors, chaplains, social workers. I even have a guy in IT who got trained, which I love. Who doesn’t want throw their computer off the roof when you’ve had enough trouble? Now you have a guy who can help settle you down.”
Any resistance Fitzpatrick encounters at the start of a session is virtually gone by the end of it. Surveys confirm that. When asked to rate the session, 462 participants scored it a 4.7 out of 5, and 77% said they left Revitalize feeling better able to manage stress.
Strawn has had the same experience at the wellness fairs, as people arrive skeptical and after sampling the resilience skills are all in. “You can see their face light up, like, ‘Wow, this really works,’” she says. “I have really seen it impact people, if they are open to it."
“Sometimes these skills have been described as infantile, that they’re too simple,” Fitzpatrick says. “Thank god they’re simple because we don’t have room for a lot. It’s biology based, so you don’t have to learn a whole new language.”
Fitzpatrick says the pandemic forced us to stop grinding away in silence and to look after ourselves if we wanted to get through it.
“To have a sustainable workforce, we have to look at things differently,” Fitzpatrick says. “It can’t just be the way things have always been: Put your head down and keep working until you fall over. We can take care of ourselves by self-regulating. The stuff that people can learn is hugely empowering and instant. And they can see it and feel it once they start to use the skills.”
Read the full article on CHLA’s Revitalize program HERE.
Beth Fitzpatrick, LCSW
Beth Fitzpatrick is a nationally recognized mental health leader with more than 30 years of experience in healthcare. Beth has dedicated her career to advancing emotional well-being for healthcare professionals across Southern California.
She currently serves as a Program Manager of Emotional Support Services (ESS) at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), where she leads system-wide efforts to reduce burnout, build resilience, and foster a culture of care, connection, and belonging.
A Certified Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® Teacher, Beth is the visionary behind CHLA’s award-winning Revitalize Program, which delivers biologically based wellness skills grounded in neuroscience. Since launching the program, Beth has facilitated over 263 sessions across the organization and trained more than 4,254 interdisciplinary staff members from nurses, doctors and chaplains to IT professionals.
As part of the Revitalize Program, 70 staff members have been trained in facilitation to share CRM skills in their own units. Her mission is to make self-regulation tools accessible to all, whether in a wellness fair, a department meeting, or a quiet five-minute pause during a stressful shift.
In 2021, Beth was awarded a $2.1 million federal HRSA grant to expand CHLA's resilience programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under her leadership, the Revitalize program has become an essential resource for combating compassion fatigue, moral distress, and cumulative trauma in pediatric care. Her work has also been featured in Advanced Critical Care Journal and spotlighted in CHLA’s organizational initiatives through the Office of Well-Being.
Beth’s career has included working as an EAP Specialist at Cedars-Sinai Health System and she has also taught extensively in the graduate program at USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, with a focus on social work in organizational settings, mezzo theory and practice in work related environments, and clinical social work practice with individuals, families, and groups.
Whether offering critical incident debriefings, facilitating support groups, or teaching resilience skills to a room full of healthcare workers, Beth brings warmth, expertise, and a deep belief in the power of simple, science-backed practices to restore well-being. Her work has helped shift the conversation in healthcare from surviving to sustaining with compassion, joy, and human connection at the center.