Board

Board of Directors

Elizabeth Hawkins Robinson, Executive Director, ONE Freedom Inc.

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.&

skipper

Damian D. Skipper Pitts

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.

Amy Smith-Boden, MBA

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.

Richard Diamond

Mr. Diamond is the Executive Vice President of Property Centric Group, Inc. where he heads 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 Diamond was Executive Vice President of WellCall, Inc., one of the largest providers of healthy living benefits to Fortune 500 clients on a national basis. After joining the company in early 2005 he added significant new business as well as integrated company services within the fitness sector through strategic partnerships. WellCall is a market leader in behavior change. WellCall delivers health management programs for corporate clients, health plans and other third party resellers. Their programs are proven to produce validated outcomes and positive ROI for clients such as AOL, KPMG and Pepsi.

Prior to WellCall, Mr. Diamond was President and CEO of Stradivarius Associates where he led their health and wellness consulting practice. Stradivarius focuses on business strategy, sales and marketing projects within the healthcare, wireless and Internet industries for client companies such as Telehealth, ImagiNet Communications, Informatouch and Empire Research.

Before his tenure at Stradivarius Associates, Mr. Diamond was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer 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. After identifying their market niche, he embarked on an aggressive effort to cultivate and build high profile business alliances to secure their competitive edge in the voice and data services market. Mr. Diamond served concurrently as President & COO of GoComm Wireless, a startup venture in 1995. Joining the organization as an equity partner and founding member, he designed and built the entire operating infrastructure, developed business plans and financial models, identified new business opportunities, and led an extensive management recruitment and empowerment effort to support company growth.

Before joining the GoComm companies, Mr. Diamond served in various sales and marketing roles, starting in field sales and migrating into management. Ranked consistently within the Top 3% of all sales professionals, he has, to his credit, won numerous awards over the years for sales performance, excellence and management leadership. He has delivered workshops at industry conferences on sales and marketing excellence including presenting a 4 hour Marketing Optimization Program to the annual conference for 200 franchisees of The Entrepreneur’s Source.

After graduating from Drexel University in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Marketing and Finance, Mr. Diamond and three other partners established a real estate investment company where he still serves on the board. He also participates as a Director on the board of Next Generation Fitness Company and sits on the Board of ONE Freedom, the nation’s leading reintegration solution provider for military service members. His number one goal this year is to summit Mount Kilimanjaro while raising funds for charity.

Dr. Hallie Ward

Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Denver

Advisory Board

Chad Storlie

USAR, SF, LTC, MBA, business executive in the transportation industry. Advisor to ONE Freedom military programs.

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.

Peter Levine, Ph.D., Founder and director of The Foundation for Human Enrichment and author of Waking the Tiger; Healing Trauma.

Kristin Henderson, Author of the acclaimed book: While They're at War. Journalist, international lecturer and family reintegration specialist.

Belleruth Naparstek, MSW, Founder of Time Warner Health Journeys audio series of guided imagery and author of Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal.

John Henry Parker, Founder of the nonprofit Veterans and Families, executive coach and business strategist, second-generation Marine veteran, father of OEF veteran.

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.

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.
Brett Litz, Ph.D.: Principal investigator on several research studies that explore the efficacy of early intervention strategies for survivors of trauma.

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