TRAINERS
AMANDA ROBERTS, PHD, MA
LEAD PRISE TRAINER
Dr. Amanda Roberts began her journey as a trainer many years ago as a fitness instructor and coach and then later led a large number of psychotherapy groups. In the past two and a half years she has focused on launching PRISE workshops and delivering trainings nationally and internationally.
STEPHANIE DOWLING, LPC
JENNIFER WALDEN, LPC, CSAC
HEIDI PIDCOKE, MA, LMFT
TRINA TAMRAKAR, PhD, MSc
More about Amanda
In the past five years she has become an EMDR trainer specializing in Early Intervention Protocols and disaster response. She was co-leader of two large trainings in Manchester and London following the terror attacks of 2017 and assisted in training close to 150 clinicians in recent trauma protocols as part of an effort to capacity build for the Trauma Response Network in the United Kingdom, of which she was a founding member. The TRN is a nation-wide service that was formed in order to bridge a treatment gap that the National Health Service was not meeting. Dr. Roberts also led the Western Massachusetts Trauma Recovery Network for several years, a group of pro-bono EMDR clinicians poised to respond to community disasters. Hers was one of the first US teams to be established after Hurricane Katrina which was considered by many to be a model for other TRN teams.
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As a former faculty member of Humanitarian Assistance Programs (HAP) headquartered in Connecticut, she has also co-led several other large trainings around the United States from Idaho to Colorado to Massachusetts and Connecticut. HAP provides low-cost trainings across the USA designed to support local TRNs of which there are close to 50 across the nation. Teams of EMDR trained clinicians have responded to community disasters such as the Boston Marathon bombing, 91, Sandy Hook, the Las Vegas shootings and other critical events.
More about Jennifer
I have a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William and Mary and a Master of Science degree in Education from Old Dominion University. I am licensed as a Professional Counselor in Virginia and as a Clinical Professional Counselor in Maryland. I am also a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor in Virginia. In addition, I am certified by EMDRIA as an EMDR therapist.
EMDR has transformed her clinical practice in many ways, and she believes that this modality should be more widely available, across socioeconomic, cultural, educational, and geographic boundaries. Humbled by the depths of pain that clients have shared with her, she has celebrated with them as they reclaimed their emotional lives and began to experience wholeness. Jennifer believes this type of transformation should be available worldwide, as trauma is often bound up in violence, discrimination, mental and physical health problems, and inequality.
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Before she was a therapist, she was a psychology and sociology high school teacher in the Tidewater area of Virginia. She enjoyed her time in the classroom and developed skills in curriculum development, classroom instruction, and mentoring. She also discovered that she enjoyed working individually and in small groups with students and decided to pursue a master’s degree
in counseling.
Her clinical work began in an addiction treatment program in Williamsburg, Virginia. There, it became clear that her effectiveness as a therapist would be limited unless she learned about the treatment of trauma. Over time, she had the privilege of working with many adults and teenagers as they began their journeys toward recovery and wholeness. After her experience at Williamsburg Community Hospital, she worked at Phoenix House in Arlington, Virginia (now known as National Capital Treatment and Recovery). For twelve years she had the opportunity to serve in residential and outpatient programs, with both adults and adolescents and created educational materials for other clinicians and provided agency-wide training classes.
In 2015, Jennifer transitioned to private practice. Working in this setting provided her with an opportunity to work with clients over longer periods and learn more about how the past influences the present. She continues to mentor and supervise new clinicians in the field.
More about Stephanie
Stephanie graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Human Nutrition and later obtained a Masters Degree in Counseling from the College of Idaho. After graduation she joined the Air Force and was on active duty serving in several stateside locations as well as overseas in Panama. After 9/11 Stephanie was called back to active duty and worked at the Pentagon supporting deployments and deployed herself to Oman in support of operations there.
Stephanie began her career working for the Veterans Administration as a readjustment counselor, where she did individual, group and family counseling with veterans from several wars and conflicts. During that time she was in the first co-hort of veterans administration counselors to become trained in Military Sexual Trauma (MST). She became the Military Sexual Trauma counselor for the Boise Vet Center.
After retiring as a colonel from the Air Force Stephanie opened a private practice, where she specializes in counseling with veterans and college students. She is trained in EMDR and several other modalities for working with trauma.
When not working Stephanie enjoys playing golf, watching football and hiking with her dog Figgy in the great outdoors of Oregon.
More about Heidi
Along with EMDR, she is certified in the Global Mental Health Program focusing on Refugee Trauma given by Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global and Continuing Education.
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She has engaged in training throughout her professional life; developing training materials for youth mentoring programs, facilitating workshops for parents in high conflict divorce and teens whose behavior has become out of control. She has pioneered mental health programs for in South Africa and Kenya and assisted United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in developing training curricula for peacekeepers in Rwanda, Ghana and Mali.
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In the past 5 years she has been certified as a trainer of trainers by UNITAR and facilitated workshops for military personnel, diplomats and government staff in various countries. While working for UNITAR, she created online courses and webinars.
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She joined PRISE as a trainer in 2020 and is the designated PRISE trainer for Alternatives to Violence International, an organization with a strong global presence in over 70 countries.
More about Trina
Trina completed her PhD in trauma psychology from the University of Southern Denmark, with a focus on vicarious trauma of first responders and those in the helping professions. Her work was funded by the European Union and the Marie Curie grant. Her applied research was conducted in collaboration with the police services and firefighters in the UK. She earned her MSc in Psychology of Mental Health from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and her Bachelors in International Relations from North Carolina, US. Her background is in human rights, having worked in the field for over six years, predominantly in project management and communications positions in Nepal and Washington DC respectively. She developed a keen interest in helping trauma victims while working with young civil war victims and former child soldiers of Nepal, where she coached young people with complex PTSD, trained them in conflict transformation and empowered them to conduct their own trainings.
After the devastating earthquake in Nepal in 2015, she conducted several PFA trainings on-site, in the affected villages, for community leaders, teachers, human rights staff and volunteers. Trina believes that mental health support should be accessible to all, especially the marginalized and vulnerable populations, hence her values align with PRISE that focuses on training paraprofessionals where psychologists are not easily available.
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Currently Trina is exploring sound as a trauma healing modality. In her free time, she enjoys expressing her creative side through voice, movement and beautifying a space, and generally being in nature.