Episode Summary
Frank came through the California system as a child adopted into a family challenged with mental health and substance abuse issues. Raised in the East Bay area of Northern California Frank attended 9 different schools in his first 9 years. Raised in a challenging home in a challenging environment both geographically and historically, Frank has a unique perspective that translates for many of our most traumatized communities, families and children. Frank negotiated his way into the military and his first professional training was as a special warfare diver attached to the Marine Mammal program of the United States Navy where he spent 8 years honing behavior modification skills, stress management and understanding the dynamics of nonverbal communication. Later, as a stay at home dad for 2 kids and a student of psychology he became aware of and struggled with development, his own trauma exposure, and behavioral progressions and sequencing. This led to a journey of self-exploration and an academic focus on psychological trauma.
Frank has worked with the International Trauma Center since 1999 and deployed to Ground Zero to manage a team of clinicians working with a federal agency in “the dig” to stabilize them ongoing as they did their difficult work. Frank also worked extensively throughout Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Katrina. Frank has worked abroad in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, Nepal, Jordan, Haiti and several other countries for agencies, like Save the Children, USAID, the World Bank and the International Center for the Protection of Victims of Torture to develop interventions, and trained clinicians working with children.
As director of the Midwest Trauma Services Network and senior vice president of programming for the International Trauma Center, Frank has spent the last several years introducing and training selected trauma-informed evidence-based practices as well as designing and implementing innovations specific to people from at-risk environments through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Frank currently consults in several states for trauma in schools, foster and adoptive parents, community change through trauma-informed care, and provides direct psychoeducation and coaching to complexly traumatized children and families. Frank has a BS in disaster psychology with an emphasis on mental health, an MS in Public Health with a focus on child mental health and an MS in clinical counseling with trauma theory as the primary theoretical framework. Frank is the proud father of two gifted and resilient college students who are also interested in human services.
His mission is to create a world that understands the impact of trauma and abuse on children, families, communities and culture by teaching, challenging and learning everywhere he goes.