Board

ONE Freedom Board of Directors

Elizabeth Hawkins Robinson, Founder and Executive Director

Elizabeth Hawkins Robinson is the founder and executive director of ONE Freedom, Inc. ONE Freedom (OF) is a nonprofit education organization dedicated to transforming stress and trauma by offering interactive workshops on the brain and body and skills for self-regulation. ONE Freedom programs are a distillation of scientific discoveries in neuroscience, somatic recovery and skills-based techniques. ONE Freedom’s mission is to demystify the effects of traumatic stress and point the way toward healing with vital tools for navigating today’s personal and global climate of change. The aim is to bring to light and resolve a mounting stress epidemic by serving individuals and organizations inside the military, government and private sectors.

Since 2003, Elizabeth has assisted in the groundswell of addressing traumatic stress for U.S. service members, veterans, families and care providers with programs such as Strength after Service™, Writing the Warriors Journey™, ONE Freedom/Outward Bound Wilderness Programs, and Retreats for Women in Uniform. She is collaborating with other nonprofit leaders to bring OF programs to college and university campuses across the country, as well as coordinating a national campaign on stress education.

Elizabeth holds a Bachelor of Arts in public relations and marketing and is an award-winning writer with over 20 years of experience in communications and management in the nonprofit and education sectors. Elizabeth is also co-founder of Magis Group LLC, a private firm that provides performance enhancement, resilience building and stress mitigation to organizations. She founded Journey Writing Workshops™ and has taught transformative writing for over 15 years.

Damian D. Skipper Pitts, Chairman of the Board

For nearly 10 years, Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts has been helping organizations like the U.S. Film Industry, the City of Philadelphia, Wachovia Banks, Wells Fargo, MBNA, Hilton Hotels, HSBC, Affiliate offices of the National Urban League and others develop and grow leaders at all levels. The Founder and Chairman of The Bison Group® Corporation and its affiliate divisions, Skipper leads a team of U.S. Marines turned business professionals; the leader at providing military-style executive education and learning services for business, education, government, faith-based organizations and higher learning institutions. Bison’s consultancy works to improve the clients’ business performance by redesigning how they behave, think, and train their associates using strategies from the U.S. Marine Corps. Its mission is simple: To integrate the rigor and discipline from its training designs, while instructing the global marketplace how-to increase their human capital, and increase performance and integrated talent management’s “best practices” to build greater outcomes within the Future Picture.

Skipper’s message is grounded on a simple, yet fundamental principle: “First learn to lead yourself and then lead others to find their voice.” A U.S. Marine turned business professional and author, consultant and motivational speaker, he continues to provide the essentials for anyone to keep striving for excellence no matter where they are or what they are doing. He specializes on training in the areas of transformational leadership, organizational behavior, team building and strategic execution. As a life coach, he has authored 30 journals and 8 books including, “Building Great Teams: Charting the Path of Organizational Politics,” with two 2009 releases, “Success TRAPS: Awaken your Realized Potential for Lasting Fulfillment” and“Success TRAPS, The Concepts Guide (includes The Seven “T’s” of Oz and A Journey to Emerald City).”

Under Skipper’s leadership, The Bison Group uses traditional business, management, leadership principles and military stratagem, and also takes them into non-business spheres to help thinkers solve problems and master the art of mobilizing resources and people to achieve common objectives. He has also authored the organization’s flagship executive education military-style leadership and organizational behavior program, “The Six Levels of Leadership,” that is currently being taught at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. The program includes 15 modules and 45 lectures/lessons, providing a wealth of summary, discussion, and applicable presentation material for participants to execute strategy and performance management to achieve their own level of “Personal Proficiency,” while increasing their present state of “Professional Mastery.” The lessons and advice benefits anyone in a work or non-work situation that is pressure-laden, but ultimately lacking in real personal satisfaction. Basically, Skipper teaches what to do when you find yourself out at sea and in the water alone “you put your head down and swim through the rough waves” – leaving all they touch extraordinarily much better than the way they found it.

Richard Diamond, Vice Chairman

 

 Mr. Diamond is currently VP Business Development for Social Media Training, Inc., a new media training, advertising and marketing agency where he leads the firm’s sales and business development team.  He has been responsible for the launch of their new SaaS product line, Demand Generator, which integrates traditional, interactive and social media. They are also the nation’s fastest growing corporate training company dedicated to assisting busy executives with the most effective social media strategies.  He focuses on partnerships, sales and business development as well as new product development.

Before this, Mr. Diamond was the Executive Vice President of Property Centric Group, Inc. where he headed up corporate and business development. In June of 2009, he and several others orchestrated the acquisition and recapitalization of the company. Since 2007, Property Centric has been the leading local search solution in the multifamily sector and include trend setting clients such as: Avalon Communities, The Lynd Co., Riverstone Residential, AIMCO and many others.

Prior to this, Mr. Diamond was Vice President of Sales and Marketing of BrandX where he led their client sales team. BrandX focuses on business strategy, sales and marketing projects within the healthcare, wireless and Internet industries for client companies such as Telehealth, ImagiNet Communications, GRIP, GE and Empire Research.  While at BrandX, he served as Director of Sales at Wax Communications, Executive Vice President of WellCall and President of InformaCorp, three comprehensive client engagements. (AKA Stradivarius Associates)

 Before his tenure at BrandX, Mr. Diamond was EVP Sales of The GoComm Group, where he and his colleagues built a worldwide service provider organization from its inception in 1995, to a well-recognized voice and data communications company with revenues for 2001 in excess of $20 million.

 

Amy Smith-Boden, MBA, Treasurer

Amy Smith-Boden works on organizational development for non-profits, small businesses, and faith-based organizations. d/b/a Good Business Works (GBW) she makes the case for good corporate citizenship, i.e. businesses should be profitable as well as ethical, and essentially that profit alone is not an adequate reflection of the organization. Amy is comprehensive in data gathering and in interpretation; her research considers all stakeholders (shareholders, employees, competitors) in any given project / venture.

Her corporate experience along with intuitive knowledge of doing well by doing good, are exhibited in GBW's tenet that success is for those who take responsibility for it. In 2001, while living in The Netherlands, Amy earned an MBA in Corporate Social Responsibility and Finance from NIMBAS, the internationally top ranked business school in Utrecht. Before moving abroad Amy worked for 10 years in customer service for telecom and industrial automation multi-national corporations. Her international experience began as a Spanish major at Agnes Scott, a prestigious women's college in Atlanta. She supplemented Spanish studies abroad through NYU ~ Madrid, and UVA ~ Valencia programs.

 

Paul Darby, M.A., L.P.C., CAC III, Secretary

Paul holds a Masters Degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Certified Addictions Counselor in the State of Colorado. For the past sixteen years he has been affiliated with the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine’s, Addiction Research and Treatment Services, in-patient unit for adolescents, where he serves as Family Therapy Supervisor. Paul teaches family therapy, supervises licensed therapists and treats families with a variety of co-occurring disorders. He has lectured medical students in the Substance Abuse Division of the School of Medicine and facilitated workshops at conferences in Colorado on numerous topics including the treatment of trauma and preventing abuse of patients at an institutional level.

For over ten years, Paul evaluated and treated sexual offenders under the aegis of the Criminal Justice Division’s, Sexual Offender Treatment Board. Ultimately, Paul used the knowledge he gained from evaluating these offenders to provide consultation to a variety of agencies, schools, recreational facilities and day care centers on how to protect children from abuse and how to help such institutions collaborate in preventing and managing sexual abuse in a synergistic manner.

Paul also manages a robust private practice where he treats the victims of psychological trauma using somatic-based therapies, including E.M.D.R. He has consulted with a variety of agencies over his thirty year career in how to develop both science-based and humanistic programming for their patients, clients and families.

 

 

Dr. Hallie Ward, M.S., Ph.D.

Hallie received her B.A. in Experimental Psychology at Whitworth College, a Clinical M.S.  at Eastern Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Washington, 1982.

 

She recently retired as a full time Adjunct Psychology Professor from the University of Denver following some 42 years of college teaching.  During her doctoral years, Hallie both taught at the college level and worked as a Corporate Trainer for such institutions as banks, hospitals, department stores, city utilities, and so forth.

 

During the 1980s, Hallie accepted a position in Bavaria, Germany as an Educational Specialist serving the children of military families attached to The Russian Institute. 

There, too she served as an Adjunct Graduate Level Professor for Boston University.  For most of Hallie’s academic career her research emphasis has been related to attentional issues in cognition and toward the topic area of “Metacognition”.   

 

She is currently re-working middle school curriculum materials related to past research topics in addition to many other academic and professional advancement projects. 

 

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Advisory Board

Chad Storlie USAR, SF, LTC, MBA

Business executive in the transportation industry. Advisor to ONE Freedom military programs.

Dr. Robert Scer, M.D.

Robert Scaer, M.D. received his B.A. in Psychology, and his M.D. degree at the University of Rochester. He is Board Certified in Neurology, and has been in practice for 33 years, twenty of those as Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services at the Mapleton Center in Boulder, CO. His primary areas of interest and expertise have been in the fields of brain injury and chronic pain, and more recently in the study of traumatic stress and its role in physical symptoms and diseases. He has lectured extensively nationally and internationally on these topics, and has published several articles on the whiplash syndrome and other somatic syndromes of traumatic stress. He has published a book in 2001, The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation and Disease, presenting a new theory of dissociation and its role in many diseases. A second edition of this book was released in October, 2007. A second book, The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency, released in July, 2005, explores the insidious spectrum of culturally-based trauma that shapes our lives, and how transformation and healing may still take place. He is currently retired from clinical medical practice, and continues to pursue a career in writing and lecturing.

David Berceli, Ph.D.

Dr. David Berceli is an international expert in the areas of trauma intervention and conflict resolution. He is also the energetic and creative founder and CEO of Trauma Recovery Services (1998).

The goal of this organization is to provide specialized trauma recovery assistance to international and local organizations whose employees are living and working in trauma inducing environments. For the past 25 years he has lived in nine countries and worked in over 30 countries providing trauma relief workshops and designing recovery programs for international organizations around the world.

Fluent in several languages, David brings a keen understanding of the interwoven dynamics of that stress and trauma can have in cultural, religious and ethnic dimensions. Through this comprehensive understanding he has developed specific processes to enable people to manage personal stress, anxiety and trauma as well as bring healing and reconciliation between diverse groups and individuals. He is the creator of a revolutionary and unique set of Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) that release the deep chronic tension created in the body during stressful or traumatic experiences.

Dr. Clara Raquel Epstein

Clara Raquel Epstein, MD is a Neurosurgeon with Subspecialty Fellowship Training in Stroke & Cerebrovascular Disorders and Stereotactic Radiosurgery & Neurosurgical Oncology. Dr. Epstein has experience and has completed specialty training in both complex spine interventions and minimally invasive techniques in surgical approaches to the spine, including treatment of the aging spine and adult spinal deformities.

Dr. Epstein is actively involved in National & International Organized Medicine and in Development of Novel Technologies as Applied to Neurosurgery including Neuro-robotics, Neuro-endoscopy, Stereotaxis & Neuro-imaging, and Neuroinformatics. In addition to serving as a Scientific Advisor to the ONE Freedom Board of Directors, Dr. Epstein is The International College of Surgeons, United States Section Council of Surgical Specialty Group Chair for the Division of Neurological Surgery and is on the Board of Directors of The American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons also serving as the Chair of the AANOS Scientific Organizing Committee.

Please Visit the following site for additional information about Dr. Epstein: http://www.braindoctor.net/

Peter Levine, Ph.D.

Peter A. Levine received his Ph.D. in medical biophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and also holds a doctorate in psychology from International University. He has worked in the field of stress and trauma for over 40 years and is the developer of “Somatic Experiencing.”

He teaches trainings in this work throughout the world. He has taught at various indigenous cultures including the Hopi Guidance center in Second Mesa Arizona. Peter has been stress consultant for NASA in the development of the first Space Shuttle. He was a member of the Institute of World Affairs Task Force with “Psychologists for Social Responsibility” and served on the APA initiative for response to large scale disaster and Ethno-political warfare. He is on the ‘distinguished faculty’ of Santa Barbara Graduate Institute.

Peter is the author of the best selling book “Waking the Tiger - Healing Trauma,” (published in twenty languages) as well as four audio learning series for Sounds True including the book CD, “Healing Trauma, a Pioneering Program in Restoring the Wisdom of Our Bodies;” and Sexual Healing, Transforming the Sacred Wound.”  He is the co-author of “Trauma through a Child’s Eyes, Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing.” And “Trauma-Proofing Your Kids, A Parents Guide for Instilling Confidence, Joy and Resilience.”

Kristin Henderson

Kristin Henderson is an author and journalist, including reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. Her work earned the 2008 large newspaper/magazine domestic coverage award from Military Reporters & Editors, and has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, the New York Times, and Military.com, among others. Media appearances include NPR's  "All Things Considered" and  "Fresh Air", NBC's "Weekend Today Show", MSNBC, Air America, C-SPAN, BBC, and Australian radio (ABC).

Kristin, a Quaker, is married to a Navy chaplain who served with the Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her latest book, While They're at War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront, is an in-depth portrait of military spouses in wartime. Her critically praised memoir, Driving by Moonlight: A Journey Through Love, War, and Infertility, details her own experience during her husband's deployment to Afghanistan following 9/11, as well as her struggle with infertility.  She's the recipient of a Bread Loaf nonfiction fellowship. 

Kristin has participated in the Marine Corps' Key Volunteer family support program and Compass, the Navy's spouse mentoring program. She's a member of the National Military Family Association and Military Reporters and Editors. Currently, she lives in Japan, where her husband is stationed.

Belleruth Naparstek, MSW

Psychotherapist, author and guided imagery pioneer Belleruth Naparstek is the creator of the popular, 55-title, Time Warner Health Journeys guided imagery audio series.  Her first book, Staying Well With Guided Imagery (Warner) is a widely used primer on imagery and healing.  Her second book, Your Sixth Sense (Harper Collins) has been translated into 9 languages, with a new 2009 edition just released.  Her latest book on imagery and posttraumatic stress, Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal (Bantam Dell), won the Spirituality & Health Top 50 Books Award and was released in paperback January of 2006.

As Prevention Magazine recently noted, Belleruth has been quietly creating an underground revolution among mainstream health and mental health bureaucracies, by persuading major institutions such as U.S. Veteran's Administration, the U.S. Dept of Defense, The American Red Cross,  Aetna U.S. Healthcare, kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California, United Health Care, Oxford Health Plan, GlaxoSmithKline, Ortho Biotech, Roche, Abbott, Amgen, and nearly 2000 hospitals, mental health centers, recovery clinics and vet centers to distribute her guided imagery recordings, in most instances free of charge to recipients.  In addition, her audio programs have been involved in over two dozen clinical trials, with nearly a dozen studies completed to date.  Efficacy has been established for several psychological and medical challenges, most recently for PTSD at Duke University medical Center/Durham Veterans Administration Hostpital.

Emily Lindner, MD

Integrative internist at the Advocate Illinois Masonic Integrative Medicine Center.

Kathy Moray, RN

Integrated nursing, teacher and trauma specialist. Instructor for the Healing Touch Program and faculty of Beyond Ordinary Nursing.

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Research Board

J. Douglas Bremner, MD

Psychiatrist and radiologist specializing in PETSCAN study of trauma, principal investigator for numerous grants related to stress and trauma.

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