Becky Shepherd joined the Florida State University College of Law in 2005 as the Assistant Director for Development & Alumni Affairs and became the Director in 2006. Her background includes work in both the public and private sectors. Shepherd has extensive experience in the areas of higher education administration, special event planning, public relations, marketing, alumni relations, and fundraising. She has presented and advised both regionally and nationally on the topics of law school alumni affairs and annual giving. Shepherd has been with Florida State University for 16 years, working in the Vice President of Student Affairs Office and in Student Affairs at the College of Medicine. Before coming to Florida State, she served in event planning, public relations, and marketing positions at Florida Physician’s Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida, and The Tallahassee Democrat and Beverage Law Consultants, Inc. in Tallahassee.
Sue Hodges Moore has dedicated her 45-year career to improving lives through public higher education. She served at a comprehensive university in a major metropolitan area, a major urban research university, a rural research institution, a community and technical college system, a fledgling virtual university, and a statewide coordinating board. Just prior to her retirement in December 2021, Sue served as the first Chief Strategy Officer at Ball State University. In this role, Sue led the development of a new strategic plan for the University and supported and tracked the plan’s implementation. She also assisted divisions, colleges, and units with developing and successfully implementing their own individual plans, while ensuring that those plans aligned with the University’s priorities. In addition, Sue oversaw the Offices of Institutional Research and Decision Support, Community Engagement, and Inclusive Excellence. Prior to her tenure at Ball State, Sue dedicated nearly 40 years of her higher education career to the people of Kentucky. Sue began that career at her alma mater, Northern Kentucky University, where she returned as a vice president in 2005. Just prior to moving to Ball State in 2018, she served as NKU’s Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance, with responsibility for […]
Zachary Smith leads the efforts of the external relations staff at the Jacobs School which includes major and principal gifts, donor relations, stewardship, and events. He works directly with the Dean of the School to provide strategic direction for a comprehensive major and principal gifts program as the University completes the next comprehensive campaign. Smith is passionate about advancing higher education by developing strategic and meaningful relationships. At the Palomar Health Foundation, Smith served as the Senior Director of Development where he oversaw a team of fundraising professionals dedicated to the advancement of Palomar Health, California’s largest public health care district. Prior to this position, he served as the Director of Major Gifts within the Palomar Health Foundation where he had the primary fundraising responsibility for the divisions of Orthopedic Medicine, Cardiovascular Care, Men’s Health, Rehabilitative Care, and Neurosciences. He cultivated his passion for higher education at Portland State University, where he earned a B.S. in Criminology and Criminal Justice, with a minor in Civic Leadership. Smith was a member of the PSU Wrestling Team and competed in the PAC 10 Division, during which he was honored as an All-Academic PAC 10 wrestler. He went on to earn his MBA […]
As a Psychotherapist, Dr. Tayyab has offered individual and group therapy since 2011 to more than 500 UTSC students experiencing depression, anxiety, psychosis, and other mental health related concerns. He has handled more than 150 crises in the past nine years in a variety of clinical situations. As the Lead Researcher of Flourish, he assisted his team in developing a strengths-based preventive mental health program that over 3700 UTSC students have participated in which includes comprehensive online clinical assessment and full-day workshops to reduce distress and increase well-being. Dr. Tayyab has also designed, delivered, and disseminated a large-scale group resilience intervention program and co-wrote a 280+ page train-the-trainer manual that provides an approach to support students with mental health issues in secondary and post-secondary settings. Dr. Tayyab has led a national group to design and launch a 135-page Comprehensive Assessment and Planning Inventory to encapsulate a systemic approach towards a student mental health interactive website. As a therapist by heart, and researcher by head, at the Health & Wellness Centre, University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), Dr. Tayyab tries to integrate symptoms with strengths, resources with risks, weaknesses with values, and hope with regrets. He has tried to do the same […]
In his capacity as a health promoter at the University of Toronto, Chad Jankowski has 10 years of experience in developing, delivering, and evaluating health-promoting initiatives that support success. His work has included consulting with campus partners on the development of health-enhancing solutions, co-creating an institution-wide online mental health training resource, and overseeing the creation and development of the health education and promotion programs at the institution’s western campus. In the newly created role of Mental Health Programs Officer for the U of T Faculty of Arts & Science, Chad is pursuing Faculty-wide outreach and engagement initiatives and developing strategic partnerships aimed at enhancing mental wellness for faculty, staff, and students within U of T’s largest Faculty. Within his previous portfolio at Health & Wellness, Chad served as the Project Lead for the Student Life Resilience Project from 2017 to 2019. The Project facilitated dialogue around post-secondary student resilience, built capacity among faculty, staff, and student leaders to enhance their ability to foster personal and academic resilience, and embedded resilience curricula within new and existing student programming.
Jim Helling is a psychotherapist, performance consultant, researcher and instructor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who directed the Athletic Counseling Office (ACO) for 12 years. Jim maintains a private psychotherapy and consultation practice specializing in psychological trauma, dissociative disorders, and performance optimization. He has a background in public health approaches to psychological and behavioral health promotion and has focused on developing more inclusive and culturally-attuned approaches to college mental health. He is a co-investigator with a multidisciplinary childhood adversity and resilience research team. His national and international publications and presentations focus on topics related to the neurobiology of psychotherapeutic change, embodied psychotherapy, mental health disparities, treatment of dissociative disorders, ACE, equity in college athlete mental health, and trauma-informed care. Jim was formerly an award-winning broadcast photojournalist, documentary cinematographer, producer and director who covered US politics, international & military affairs, investigations, and social issues.
Dr. Chandler’s passion is understanding how to build resilience to interrupt the effect Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) have on health risk behaviors, hard-to-treat symptoms, and chronic disease conditions. Her resilience model is the framework for strength-based interventions to develop the capacity to bounce back from stress to promote young adult health and wellbeing. She is a leader in promoting trauma informed care to eliminate seclusion and restraints and create a safe environment for patients and staff on inpatient mental health units. Mentoring as strategy to empower students, nurses, and faculty is the focus of Dr. Chandler’s educational research, which has resulted in two books, the award-winning Ultimate Guide to Getting into Nursing School and New Nurse’s Survival Guide, as well as two Robert Wood Johnson New Careers in Nursing awards.
Rahul Bhat leads a team of interdisciplinary professionals who support the learning of students with disabilities in the following areas: academic skills, resilience, self-advocacy, communication, and leadership. From 2015 until 2017, Rahul served as the Project Lead for the University of Toronto’s Resilience Project. The Project aimed to build a resilience framework and curricula that would inform existing student life programming and staff training with the overall goal of fostering academic and psychological resilience among students. The Project informed programs and services through a Program Design Institute, a Service Design Institute, and student staff training. Rahul has over 11 years of experience as a student life professional, previously working as a Learning Strategist for the University’s Academic Success office, where he spearheaded programming for students on academic probation and those who had experienced academic setbacks. He also founded the University of Toronto’s Mentorship Resource Centre, which provided centralized training and resources to the University’s many peer mentoring programs. In 2010, he started the St. George campus’s First in the Family program, designed to support the transition and learning of first-generation students. Rahul received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Toronto.
Dr. Daphne C. Watkins is a Professor at the University of Michigan, with faculty appointments in the School of Social Work, the Department of Psychology, and the Institute for Social Research. Broadly, her research cultivates a deeper understanding of the influence of gender role socialization on health over the life course for marginalized boys and men. She is the immediate past president of the American Men’s Studies Association; the first woman and person of color to ever serve as president in the organization’s 30-year history. She also serves on several committees and boards aimed at improving men’s health domestically and globally. For example, she serves as the Senior Scientific Advisor for the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and a member of the Movember Foundation Global Men’s Health Advisory Committee. Dr. Watkins has received federal and private foundation funding for her research, and has produced several peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and volume sections. In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Watkins is the Founding Director of the Gender and Health Research (GendHR) Lab and the Young Black Men, Masculinities, and Mental Health (YBMen) project. She is the Director of the Vivian A. and James L. Curtis Research and Training Center at the […]
Dr. Jamie Patton is responsible for developing, implementing and managing new programs and initiatives that advance diversity and inclusion at Cal Poly. As a division-wide leader and diversity officer, he provides direction and consultation for services and policies to ensure inclusive practices across all Student Affairs departments. In addition, he helps provide campus-wide support for diversity and inclusion efforts in partnership with the Office of University Diversity and Inclusion. A native of north Philadelphia, Dr. Patton is a first-generation college graduate with more than 15 years of experience as a higher education administrator. Prior to Cal Poly, he served as the Assistant Dean of Students for Ohio University, where he directed the Parent and Family Program, co-initiated programming to increase graduation and retention rates among African-American male students and implemented social justice development workshops for Student Affairs staff. He later served in several positions during a nine-year period at Northern Arizona University, including Director of the Student Learning Centers and Director of Inclusion and Multicultural Services.
