We are a team of dedicated creative arts therapists who recognize the power of the creative process to provide safety, expression, structure, growth, empowerment, and re-organization to lives that have been fractured by events beyond understanding. Being human is a creative endeavor, and the arts can restore connection to meaning, belonging, society, and one’s self.
Our core team and leading-edge faculty of renowned practitioners have pioneered the use of creative arts therapies in a variety of trauma contexts globally, from interpersonal, racial and domestic to collective and mass trauma. Together, we integrate Art Therapy, Dance Movement Therapy, Drama Therapy, Music Therapy, and Poetry Therapy to provide a training curriculum that combines innovative and evidence-informed practices.
Core Team
Executive Director
Amber Elizabeth Gray, PHD, MPH, LPCC, BC-DMT, NCC (she/her) is an author, frequent speaker, organizational consultant and an embodied provocateur and catalyst. Also a Human Rights Psychotherapist, she is a trailblazer in the use of Somatic Psychotherapy and Dance Movement Therapy with survivors of interpersonal, collective and intergenerational trauma, particularly torture, war, and human rights abuses. Equally activist, artist and advocate, Amber provides clinical and transformational training on her Right to Embody trainings integrating refugee mental health and torture treatment with creative arts, mindfulness, and body-based therapies for programs serving survivors worldwide. She originated a resiliency-based framework and clinical approach (Restorative Movement Psychotherapy) for mind-heart-spirit based therapies with survivors of trauma in multi-cultural contexts. She also created Polyvagal-informed Somatic and Dance Movement Therapy based on 24 years immersion in Polyvagal Theory. The latter is the subject of her upcoming book, Roots, Rhythm and Reciprocity, to be published by Norton. She regularly facilitates WildZeNess eco-somatic Body of Change retreats for survivors, caregivers and practitioners serving communities affected by injustice, oppression, and trauma.
Training Director
Craig Haen, Ph.D., RDT, CGP, LCAT, FAGPA (he/him) has been working clinically with people impacted by interpersonal, familial, racial and attachment trauma for over 20 years. He provides acute crisis intervention following acts of violence and atrocity; trains crisis teams and schools in responding to mass trauma events; and has consulted with organizations in the fields of arts education, social justice advocacy, global development, legal services, and community intervention on the implementation of trauma-responsive practices. He has a private practice in White Plains, New York where he treats children, adolescents, adults, and families. Dr. Haen taught at the Undergraduate, Masters, Doctoral, and Continuing Education levels for over a decade at New York University, Lesley University, Adelphi, Sacred Heart University, and Manhattanville College. He has published widely on both clinical practice and research, and is the editor of four books, including Creative Arts-Based Group Therapy with Adolescents: Theory and Practice with Nancy Boyd Webb and Handbook of Child and Adolescent Group Therapy with Seth Aronson. He serves on the Editorial Boards of The International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, The German Medical Science Journal of Arts Therapies, and The Arts in Psychotherapy, where he has guest edited two Special Issues on the arts and trauma treatment. In addition, Craig is a Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, where he co-chairs the Community Outreach Task Force, a group that provides both frontline and secondary support in response to trauma events in diverse communities; and chief trauma consultant for Horizons at Sacred Heart University, a program that seeks to address the opportunity gap for BIPOC children from Bridgeport, CT.