Bill Resnick, MD, Board President, is a psychiatrist who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and did his residency at UCLA and earned an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management in 2008. Assistant Clinical Professor at UCLA, he continues to utilize his psychiatric skills, volunteering at the Venice Family Clinic - where he is also a member of the Board of Directors -and facilitating a process group for counselors at Beit T’Shuvah, a unique residential treatment center for addiction, whose Board he also serves on, currently as Vice President. Dr. Resnick has also served on the Boards of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center and a few other organizations, and recently joined the Board of the Menninger Clinic. He also started a program to bring UCLA psychiatry residents to the Clinic, which, over the past several years, has become a popular rotation for the residents.

David Comfort, Board Treasurer, works in finance and product development for Los Angeles based First Century Bank. Born and raised in Virginia, he holds a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA from UCLA Anderson. Following a brief career in professional soccer, David moved to Aspen, Colorado where he held a position working as the Sales and Marketing manager for the Hotel Jerome. In addition to his commitment to the Center, David serves on the Environmental Committee for Crown Family Philanthropies.

Penny Timmons, MA, Board Secretary, was born and raised in Montana. She received her BA in History and Political Science from the University of Southern California and holds Master's degrees in Psychology and Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. She is currently employed as a law librarian by a major international law firm. Additionally, Penny is an MFT Intern at The Relational Center and a graduate of TRC's clinical training program. She is a member and co-founder of TRC's Relational Initiative Facilitation Team (RIFT) and member of the current leadership training cohort. She is actively involved with fundraising and messaging via social media at TRC. Penny has previously taught adult literacy classes for the South Bay Literacy Council and currently volunteers with IBG, Inc.

Rafael Angulo, MSW, Board Member, is Clinical Associate Professor, Field Education, at the USC School of Social Work, where he is currently the Families and Children co-coordinator and the Public Child Welfare coordinator along with being the co-advisor of the Latino Social Work Caucus. He teaches an integrative seminar and the Media in Social Work: Documentary Filmmaking as a Praxis for Social Justice class. Outside the university, Angulo facilitates group therapy for Spanish-speaking fathers, provides individual counseling to the immigrant community and is working on numerous documentary projects for national distribution.

Vanessa Butnick, Esq., Board Member, is responsible for overseeing nationwide product and service development and strategic research for LegalZoom.com. Before joining LegalZoom in 2007, she was an associate at OÕMelveny & Myers LLP and at Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff & Stern LLP, focusing her practice on bankruptcy and corporate reorganizations. Butnick later served as legal consultant for FindLegalForms.com and SmartRules.com, where she helped develop and improve each companyÕs suite of online legal offerings. For two years, Vanessa has volunteered for The Relational Center, providing free legal advice to staff and members. Vanessa graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College and received her J.D. from Yale Law School.

Kasey Crown, MA, Board Member, is a Chicago native turned Los Angeles resident and an active volunteer in the non-profit community. She has a BA in Philosophy from The University of San Diego and an MA in Spiritual and Counseling Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Kasey is currently enrolled in The Relational Center's Advanced Training in Relational Studies. Her deep concern with issues of social justice both domestically and abroad have inspired her to seek out meaningful ways to make an impact in the community. In addition to seeing clients at the Center and in private practice, Kasey chairs the Development Committee of the Relational Center's governing board and actively works to ensure the sustainability of the organization. She has served as a director on the Aspen youth experience board, is currently a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Los Angeles leadership council and sits on the Health and Human Services committee of Crown Family Philanthropies.

Trevor Daniels, PsyD, earned his Doctor of Psychology degree from the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP), where he specialized in Multi-cultural Community Clinical Psychology. Dr. Daniels has 15 years experience working in the mental health and substance abuse fields. In addition he is a community activist and volunteers his professional expertise to several causes, such as HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention. He sits on the Los Angeles County HIV/AIDS Prevention Planning Committee, and is the Deputy Co-chair of the Standards & Best Practices Subcommittee. Currently Dr. Daniels is an Adjunct Faculty member at CSPP, California State University, and is the Training and Development Administrator at SHIELDS For Families Inc., in South Los Angeles.

Donna Gregory is a Communication Consultant who helps individuals and organizations bridge diverse professional and cultural contexts. She holds a Ph.D. in English with a focus in rhetorical theory. On the UCLA faculty for over a decade, she developed and taught courses in the Writing Program and in the Graduate Schools of Public Health, Public Policy, and Management. She received several postdoctoral fellowships allowing her to study the workings of professional languages, notably from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (in peace and security studies), the Norwegian Marshall Fund (peace studies), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (religious studies/mythology). For nine years, she was a Communication Consultant with McKinsey & Company where she developed and led training programs, coached individuals, wrote and edited, and served as Manager of the five West Coast offices' client communications function.

Doug Spearman, Board Member, is a Washington, D.C. native who's been acting since the age of seven. His career highlights have included work on such television shows as StarTrek Voyager, The Drew Carey Show, Charmed, The Hughleys, America's Most Wanted, Gideon's Crossing, MAD TV, Girlfriends, and the motion picture Cradle 2 The Grave with Jet Li and DMX. Doug is probably best known for starring as Professor Chance Counter in the ground breaking LOGO series Noah's Arc and in the feature film based on the series. In 2006, Doug created a television and film development and production company called The Ogden Group Entertainment. Doug has also worked as a writer/producer/director and Creative Director at ABC, CBS, NBC, UPN, Soapnet, BET, LOGO, and currently E! Entertainment Television creating more than two thousand television promos and multi-platform ad campaigns and marketing strategies in his career. His community involvement reaches to all areas of the gay and lesbian community including working for the HRC, GLADD, The Black AIDS Institute, SMYLE in Washington, D.C., Lifeworks Mentoring in West Hollywood, Outfest and serving on the Board of Directors of Equality California.

Traci Bivens-Daviswas formerly the Board President of The Relational Center and the previous Director of Prevention at Common Ground - The Westside HIV Community Center in Santa Monica. Traci has worked in the human services field for over twelve years emphasizing HIV prevention. Her advocacy on behalf of women of color and other vulnerable populations is realized through her leadership in the Los Angeles County HIV Prevention and Planning Committee, and Black HIV/AIDS Consortium. Traci has also provided support to the management team in developing our Organizations and Communities training concentration.

Sally Denham-Vaughan, DPsych is a Clinical and Coaching Psychologist and Gestalt Psychotherapist, Trainer, Supervisor and Writer. She holds a senior managerial position in a large hospital in the UK delivering mental health services to over half a million people. At Metanoia in London, she is a primary tutor on the Gestalt Psychotherapy Masters programme, an academic advisor on the Doctoral programme and joint course director of the Organisational Gestalt Diploma programme. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the British Gestalt Journal and International Faculty Associate at the Pacific Gestalt Institute.

Debbie Myers, CPA, MBA, has been a Finance Manager for Warner Brothers in Burbank, California, since 2005. Formerly a Senior Financial Analyst for the Coca Cola Company and Johns Hopkins, Debbie now volunteers for The Relational Center on Saturdays, both overseeing workflow and advising us in finance and accounting. Debbie runs a gift program for foster children at Christmas time for the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services at Warner Brothers where she also works various other charitable events through their Volunteer Corps.

Leanne O'Shea, MSc is a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice in Melbourne, Australia. Leanne is a former member of the Board of Directors of The Relational Center and is currently a member of our Adjunct Faculty. She studied the Gestalt approach in both Melbourne and London. Her particular interest is the erotic context in the therapeutic relationship and “field activism” – an embodiment of field theory that supports growing relational responsibility. Leanne is passionate about supporting Gestalt practitioners to write. She is well published and is an inaugural co-editor of the new Gestalt Journal of Australia and New Zealand. Leanne is a member of the Gestalt Australia and New Zealand (GANZ) Council.

Carol Swanson, LCSW is co-founder of the Portland Gestalt Training Institute. She has presented at numerous national conferences and was on the planning committee for the first Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT) conference. Originally, she studied with Isadore From, widely known as the dean of Gestalt therapy. Carol also studied at the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles, and was a trainer assistant in their local program and their European Residential Program for four years. She has trained locally and internationally and has contributed to the literature on psychotherapy and creativity. Carol has been in private practice in Portland, Oregon for over twenty-five years.

Deborah Ullman, MA is a coach, somatics-based therapist, and Gestalt trainer who works in Orleans, on Cape Cod, MA, with adults and teens focusing on consciousness and healing, with emphasis on relational therapy. Deborah is Editor and Co-Director of the GestaltPress logo. She travels and teaches widely, and loves music from Miles to Makeba, from Marcia Ball to Mozart, from Mahler to Debussy. She cochairs the Center for Training and Research, Psychology Council, conference series "Evolution of Gestalt" at Esalen Institute and participates on the planning committee for The Relational Center's upcoming conference on Relational Perspectives in Spring 2011.

Gordon Wheeler, PhD is President of Esalen. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, with a long experience of practice, teaching, and organizational consultation to non-profits, with a concentration on mission development and strategic planning. The author of numerous books and articles in the field, he is noted for his work integrating the Gestalt tradition with relational and developmental psychology, with a special focus on child and lifelong development and education, individualism, gender issues, and the dynamics of intimacy and shame. His writings have also been in values and cultural psychology, including multi-cultural issues and post-Holocaust studies; they include numerous translations, and have themselves been translated into a dozen foreign languages. He teaches and trains clinicians widely around the world, and also serves as Editor and Director of GestaltPress (a logo of Routledge, Taylor & Francis).

Mark Fairfield, LCSW, BCD (Board Certified Diplomate in Clinical Social Work), is the Executive Director of The Relational Center, providing leadership for all project directors and overall mission alignment for all of TRC's work. He holds an MS in Social Work from Columbia University. For six years he was the Clinical Director for Common Ground in Santa Monica and has presided over nonprofit boards. Mark has a private practice in the Miracle Mile area where he provides coaching and consulting to a range of clients including executive boards, business leaders and organizational systems in the health care sector, social services, finance and law. Mark has trained and presented internationally and has published in journals and books primarily on the subject of relational practices that confront the harmful effects of islation and promote collaboration, interdependency and sustainable living and work arrangements.

Jami Winkel, LMFT, oversees TRC's Community Counseling Center. She is also the former Director of Care Services at Common Ground - The Westside HIV Community Center in Santa Monica, California, where she oversaw mental health, treatment, and case management services to multiply diagnosed, actively substance using, high-risk communities infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. Jami relies upon relational theory as a support for integrating the harm reduction approach into mental health care. She is particularly interested in using this model to promote greater levels of participation in decision-making and expanded community supports for her vulnerable clients. Jami completed four years of training with the Pacific Gestalt Institute. Jami also maintains a private practice in West Los Angeles.

Maggie Shelton, LCSW, BCD, (Board Certified Diplomate in Clinical Social Work) oversees TRC's public dialogue activities. She holds an MSW from the University of Iowa and took two years postgraduate training in Couples and Family Therapy from the Menninger Foundation. As a doctoral student at Tilburg University her work focuses on collaborative organizational change processes and particularly leadership. She is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. Currently she is Adjunct Faculty at the USC School of Social Work. Throughout her career she has led workshops and trainings nationally and internationally. Maggie has held the positions of Clinical Director of the Southern California Counseling Center, Clinical Director of the Valley Family Center and Director of Clinical Training Programs of California Family Counseling Center/Phillips Graduate Institute. Her private practice at Larchmont Associates focuses on psychotherapy and organization work.

Paul Engler, MA, oversees TRC's community action programs. Paul is also the Executive Director of Center for the Working Poor. Through a partnership with his organization, Paul is providing our community with leadership and expertise to develop community building models to bring to groups, neighborhoods and organizations. These models emphasize teaching skills to collaborate for social justice. Currently, Paul is systematizing The Relational Center's model for small group development with the objective of creating a detailed training guide for group facilitators to implement in many different contexts, including in large organizations and campaigns seeking strategies for long-term engagement of their support base. With Paul's help, The Relational Center is building its capacity to organize community action projects that expand opportunities for Angelenos to move out of isolation into participation in thriving communal life.

Kalina Klamann, LMFT, provides leadership support in the area of clinical supervision at TRC's Community Counseling Center. Kalina was born in Poland to parents who survived World War II as children, and who later actively participated in the Solidarity movement. From these experiences she developed a long-standing interest in ethics and dialogue. For many years Kalina volunteered in harm reduction programs for teenagers and adults struggling with violence and substance use. She coined the term "involuntary therapy" and taught a class addressing the issues present in working with mandated clients. Kalina has a total of 5 years of training at the Pacific Gestalt Institute (PGI) and the Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles (GATLA). She has also completed an advanced course in Clinical Hypnotherapy at the Milton H. Erickson Foundation in Phoenix, AZ, and is a trained couples counselor. Kalina sees clients in private practice and co-leads therapy and training groups.

Dan Fink, MA provides consulting support to all of TRC's own projects while spearheading new special projects focused on providing capacity buiding to neighborhoods and organizations in the tradition of community psychology. During the dot com movement of the nineties he worked as a computer and networking technician and by the turn of the century he was the manager of an information technology department at a large insurance company. Seeking to refocus his career on improving the well-being of others, he returned to academia and completed his Bachelors degree in Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Science at UCLA. Incorporating his technology experience with this degree, he went on do cognitive psychology research at UCLA. Striving to put these new skills to work in a community context, he continued his education and earned is Masters degree in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Applied Community Psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles. Dan's desire for social responsibility led him to be an organizational consultant at The Relational Center, where he is also gaining hours of experience toward his Marriage and Family Therapist license as a counseling trainee.