Leadership

Laura Phipps, MSW
Laura Phipps, MSW

Laura works in a variety of roles at FCRP including curriculum developer, trainer, contributor to publications and webinars and group facilitator. Areas of focus include trauma-informed behavior management, coaching, continuous quality improvement, and outcomes focused practice. As a trainer and developer Laura strives to make the training experience engaging, practical and applicable to daily practice.

Emily Putnam-Hornstein, PhD
Emily Putnam-Hornstein, PhD

Emily Putnam-Hornstein is the John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need and the Director of Policy Practice at the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2021, Emily became the Director of the Family and Children’s Resource Program. She also maintains appointments as a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Southern California where she co-directs the Children’s Data Network and as a research specialist with the California Child Welfare Indicators Project at UC Berkeley.
Emily’s current research focuses on the application of epidemiological methods to improve the surveillance of non-fatal and fatal child abuse and neglect. Her analysis of large-scale, linked administrative data has provided insight into where scarce resources may be most effectively targeted and informs understanding of maltreated children within a broader, population-based context. Emily is the recipient of the Forsythe Award for Child Welfare Leadership from the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators and the Commissioner’s Award from the Children’s Bureau.
Emily graduated from Yale University with a BA in Psychology, received her MSW from Columbia University, and earned her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley.
Training Specialists

Selina Armstrong, MA
Selina Armstrong, MA

Selina strives to improve outcomes for children and families by facilitating competency-based classroom and online trainings for social workers. Her recent areas of focus include helping to create more trauma-informed and resilience-informed environments by increasing protective factors that promote resilience. Her areas of interest include domestic violence, substance use, adverse childhood experiences and the effects of trauma.

Michelle Chambers, PhD
Michelle Chambers, PhD

Michelle’s interests include special populations who suffer with mental illness and substance abuse issues. Michelle’s focus here at FCRP includes competency-based classroom and online trainings for social workers, program managers, and supervisors, curriculum development, contributions to practice focused training populations, and other special projects.

Chrystal Coble, PhD
Chrystal Coble, PhD

Focus includes facilitating classroom and online trainings for social workers in child welfare, as well as other facilitation projects on change management and cross-system collaboration.

Evan Friedel, MSW
Evan Friedel, MSW

Evan strives to improve outcomes for families and children involved with child welfare. His work at FCRP includes facilitating competency-based classroom and online trainings for social workers, supervisors and program managers in child welfare. His recent areas of focus include permanency planning and Federal Title IV-E policy. His other areas of interest include, but are not limited to child welfare policy, practice and reform, grief counseling and support, secondary trauma, continuous quality improvement, and coaching.

Tonia Jacobs Deese, LCSW
Tonia Jacobs Deese, LCSW

Tonia’s focus includes facilitating competency-based classroom and online trainings for child welfare staff and supervisors, curriculum development, and contributing to practice-focused publications. Her special interests are the Indian Child Welfare Act, family systems theory, primary and secondary trauma, and the impact of culture on family outcomes.

Krista Kindley-Martin, MSW
Krista Kindley-Martin, MSW

Krista’s focus includes facilitating competency-based classroom and online trainings for social workers, supervisors and program managers in child welfare. Areas of specific interest include trauma informed cultures, interfaith-based initiatives, kinship care providers and continuous quality improvement.

Rodney Little, MHDL
Rodney Little, MHDL

Focus includes facilitating competency-based classroom and online training for social workers, program managers, and supervisors. Areas of specific interest include, child welfare supervision, grief and bereavement, and parent child visitation.

Laurel Powell, MS
Laurel Powell, MS

Laurel has worked with families and individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in various capacities for the past 20 years. Her areas of expertise include utilizing strengths based and trauma informed capacity building with families and systems, supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and co-occuring behavioral health challenges, and crisis prevention and intervention planning.

Jonathan Rockoff, MAT
Jonathan Rockoff, MAT

Jonathan’s focus includes facilitating classroom and on-line trainings while contributing to various publications dedicated to providing support and education to professionals and resource parents in the child welfare system. His interests include foster care, adoption, the impact of sexual abuse, trauma, substance use and behavior management.

Ashton Williams, LCSW
Ashton Williams, LCSW

Focus includes facilitating competency-based classroom and online trainings for social workers, program managers, and supervisors, curriculum development, and other special projects. Areas of interest include coaching, trauma, facilitation, and family-centered practice in child welfare.

Rick Zechman, CMSW
Rick Zechman, CMSW

Rick’s areas of interest include child welfare policy and practice, domestic violence services, fatherhood engagement, sustaining a system of care, community-based child abuse prevention, evidence-based programming and continuous quality improvement. His focus at the FCRP includes facilitating classroom trainings, online trainings, curriculum development and other special projects.
Learning Systems Team

Vanessa Apple
Vanessa Apple

Vanessa is the web and database programmer of learning management systems. Her areas of expertise include ASP.NET, SQL, IIS, .NET, and SQL Server.

Phillip Armfield
Phillip Armfield

Phillip develops e-learning modules for use in synchronous and asynchronous learning. He also manages our webinar platform, and other systems.

Southey Blanton
Southey Blanton

Southey handles customer service requests and assists in troubleshooting for users and administrators of ncswLearn.org. In addition works as a technical developer for on-line courses and other products and services.

Brian Burbank
Brian Burbank

Brian is the website programmer and database administrator for numerous FCRP websites. His areas of expertise include ASP.NET, SQL, IIS, PHP and MySQL.

Vilma Gimenez
Vilma Gimenez

Vilma’s areas of expertise includes database management, usability testing, survey design and evaluation.

Matt Tarpley
Matt Tarpley

Matt designs all multimedia for the Family and Children’s Resource Program. His expertise includes video production and editing, motion graphics, and sound design.
Administrative Team

Anja Beller
Anja Beller

Areas of expertise include administrative support, and customer services.

Vicky Chang
Vicky Chang

Areas of expertise includes office management, administrative support, and customer services.

Iris Cheng
Iris Cheng

A detail-oriented and capable accounting professional who has considerable experience of contracts and grants management, budgeting preparation and personnel management.

Beth Lowder, MSW
Beth Lowder, MSW

Beth’s work focuses on innovative program design, program evaluation, and consultation. Her professional interests are child welfare, community development, social determinants of health, and macro social work practice – including program development, research and evaluation, data analytics and visualization, and applied innovation in the social sector.
She divides her time between FCRP and the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab at the UNC School of Social Work.