Alumni

Fawn McNeil Haber, Ph.D. Fawn McNeil Haber, Ph.D. is the owner and director of Brave Minds Psychological Services, LLC, located in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Brave Minds provides specialized mental health services for children, teens, adults and couples. The BMPS mission is to create a safe space where individuals and families can tap into their bravery and overcome difficult and traumatic life experiences including anxiety related to severe food allergies and child sexual abuse. Dr. McNeil-Haber has worked at Trinitas Regional Medical Center as a therapist specialized in providing treatment for child survivors of sexual abuse. She allies with the prosecutor’s office to provide consultations, presentations and treatment for victims. In addition, she is trained in EMDR and TF-CBT. Dr. McNeil-Haber has created and provided various presentations throughout the state to educate professionals on child sexual abuse and vicarious trauma.

Dissertation: Parent Control and African-American Adolescents
Internship: Trinitas Regional Medical Center, Elizabeth, NJ

Jason Fogler, Ph.D. Jason Fogler, Ph.D. is a Staff Psychologist and the Co-Director of ADHD Services at Boston Children’s Hospital’s (BCH) Division of Developmental Medicine. He earned his PhD in 2005 and completed clinical training and a postdoctoral clinical research fellowship in a joint appointment at the VA Boston Healthcare System’s National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Boston Medical Center’s Center for Medical and Refugee Trauma. As Co-Director of his Division’s ADHD Program, he provides comprehensive assessment, psychotherapy, and parent guidance for youth with ADHD and leads a Clinical Outcomes Workgroup to improve care for what has come to be known as “complex ADHD”: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder with one or more co-occurring conditions, including mood and anxiety disorders, learning disabilities, disruptive behavior disorders, and posttraumatic stress. He is the Attending Psychologist on multidisciplinary assessment teams for adolescents generally and children in foster care and various phases of domestic and international adoption specifically. Jason is an Instructor in Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and leads an HMS Academy Interest Group devoted to the hidden curriculum in medical education. He has published articles and taught nationally and internationally on the topics of trauma-focused treatment and assessment, bullying, clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse, autism, ADHD, and executive functioning. He is one of the editors of Trauma Therapy in Context: The Science & Craft of Evidence Based Practice (APA Publications: 2012) and just submitted a second edited book for Springer Nature: Trauma, Autism, and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Integrating Research, Practice, and Policy.

Dissertation: Expressed Emotion, Perceived Criticism, and Depression as Predictors of Outcome in Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder
Internship: Boston Consortium, Boston, MA                                 

April Groff, Ph.D.

Dissertation
: Frontal lobe deficits and eating pathology
Internship
: Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Palo Alto, CA

Kathryn Dingman Boger, Ph.D., ABPPKathryn Dingman Boger, Ph.D., ABPP is board certified in clinical child and adolescent psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology and specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety, mood, and substance use disorders. She has had extensive training and experience in the delivery of empirically-supported treatments in both outpatient and residential levels of care. Dr. Boger helped to develop and is currently the program director for the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program at McLean Hospital. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Andrew P. Merrill Memorial Research Fellowship through McLean Hospital.

Dissertation
: Maternal Expressed Emotion In Early Childhood
Internship: May Institute, Randolph, MA

James McKowen, Ph.D.James McKowen, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and Clinical Director of the ARMS Program. He is an Assistant Professor in Psychology and Instructor in Psychiatry within the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Addiction Medicine. He completed his Ph.D at Boston University, and his pre- and postdoctoral training at Mass General in Child Psychology and Addiction Medicine. Dr. McKowen has expertise in working with adolescents and young adults with substance use and comorbid mental health disorders and their families. Dr. McKowen conducts research on the neuropsychological effects of substance use in youth. He has authored and co-authored several published research articles and presented at national and international conferences in these areas. He is also trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical therapy approaches to the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders in children, adolescents and young adults.

Dissertation: Predictors Of The Prospective Associations Between Depressive Symptoms And Problematic Substance Use In Youth
Internship: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Rachel Freed, Ph.D. Rachel Freed, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She researches risk factors and treatments for mood and anxiety disorders. She also provides assessment and outpatient therapy services to child, adolescent, and adult patients experiencing mood and anxiety disorders.

Dissertation: Psychopathology in the Offspring of Parents with Bipolar Disorder: Three Studies Exploring Risk
Internship: Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI

Priscilla Cheung, Ph.D. Priscilla Cheung, Ph.D.
 is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the assessment and treatment of anxiety and related disorders in children, adolescents, and young adults. She has had extensive training and experience in the delivery of evidence-based treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP), in outpatient, inpatient medical, and school settings. Currently, Dr. Cheung is a staff psychologist at Emerson College’s counseling center. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Alies Muskin Early Career Development Leadership Program from Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA).

Dissertation: Children with Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Developing a Mindfulness Intervention
Internship: Boston Consortium/VA Boston Healthcare System

Erin O'Connor, Ph.D.Erin O’Connor, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow at the Pediatric Anxiety Research Center at Bradley Hospital, an affiliate of the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. In 2018 she completed her PhD at Boston University and her pre-doctoral clinical internship at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Dr. O’Connor specializes in the assessment and treatment of anxiety and obsessive compulsive spectrum disorders in children and adolescents. She has extensive training and experience in the delivery of empirically-supported treatments in outpatient and partial hospital levels of care. Her research interests include identifying interpersonal mechanisms in the development, maintenance and treatment of youth with anxiety and obsessive compulsive spectrum disorders. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Routh Research and Dissertation Award through Division 53 of the American Psychological Association, Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.

Dissertation: Maternal Distress in the Context of Child Distress: Maternal Emotion Regulation and Accommodation of Child Anxiety Symptoms
Internship: Alpert Medical School of Brown UniversityInternship: Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL – Child, Adolescent, and Pediatric Psychology

Johanna Thompson-Hollands, Ph.D.Johanna Thompson-Hollands, Ph.D. is an investigator at the VA Boston Healthcare System, working in the National Center for PTSD (Behavioral Science Division), and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at BU School of Medicine. Her work focuses on the role of family members in the treatment of veterans with PTSD. She is currently funded by a VA Career Development Award to test a brief family intervention that complements individually-delivered Prolonged Exposure or Cognitive Processing Therapy. Dr. Thompson-Hollands is interested in exploring systems-level questions regarding how families are currently incorporated into the treatment of veterans with PTSD (including the frequency and intensity of family involvement in usual care), as well as what veteran- and relationship-level factors predict who will benefit from family involvement. She also hopes to test family interventions in a range of intensities, in order to better target family-inclusive care.

Dissertation: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Brief Family Intervention to Reduce Accommodation in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Internship:

Gail Kemp, M.P.H., Ph.D.Gail Kemp, M.P.H., Ph.D. is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. She teaches Abnormal Psychology, Psychological Testing, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). She completed her pre-doctoral internship at Franciscan Children’s in Boston, MA and is completing a post-doctoral psychology residency at the University of Scranton Counseling Center. Dr. Kemp has extensive experience in using CBT to address anxiety and depressive disorders in youth and young adults in a variety of settings, including schools, outpatient and inpatient clinics, as well as the university setting. Her research interests include: the cultural context of clinical care, parenting intervention acceptability, family expressed emotion and psychopathology, and community-level sources of chronic stress and psychopathology risk.

Dissertation: Rewards as a Behavior Management Strategy: Acceptability Among African-American Parents
Internship: Franciscan Children’s Boston, MA

Tessa K. Kritikos, Ph.D.Tessa K. Kritikos, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical, Health, and Applied Sciences at the University of Houston Clear Lake (UHCL). She teaches, mentors, and supervises students in UHCL’s Clinical Master’s program and Health Service Psychology PsyD combined Clinical/School program. Her program of research seeks to understand and improve the psychological health of children, parents, and families experiencing stress as a result of trauma, medical conditions, or mental health conditions. She has current lines of research examining benefit-finding/posttraumatic growth among 1) youth with a chronic health condition and 2) military families facing deployment. While at BU, she was awarded the Kavita Jain Dissertation Award in 2019. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she received the Drotar-Crawford Postdoctoral Fellowship Research Grant, awarded by the Society of Pediatric Psychology, funding her research on benefit-finding and growth among youth with spina bifida. Clinically, Dr. Kritikos has experience conducting individual and group therapy using evidence-based therapy principles from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and behavioral parent training.

Dissertation: Meaning Making, Parenting, and Child Functioning in Military-Connected Families: A Longitudinal Study of Factors of Psychological Health
Internship: Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL – Child, Adolescent, and Pediatric Psychology
Post- doctoral fellowship: Loyola University Chicago, Pediatric Psychology