Our core faculty are regular conference and keynote speakers who publish, teach, consult, and provide training throughout the United States and abroad. Together, we have decades of experience pioneering arts based practices with survivors of domestic and sexual violence, war, homicide, developmental and attachment trauma, and child abuse.

Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray (she/her), Kint’s Executive Director, 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.

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.

Brian T Harris, PhD, MT-BC, LCAT (he/him) is Co-Executive Director of Harris and Long Psychotherapy, a creative and analytic group psychotherapy practice. He holds a PhD in Expressive Therapies and is a faculty member at New York University and a core faculty member of the Kint Institute’s creative arts therapy and trauma certificate program. Dr. Harris is the past head of the Pavarotti Music Center’s music therapy department in Mostar, Bosnia and past consultant to UNICEF in development of music therapy initiatives for Syrian refugee children in Jordan. He is co- editor of the book Creative Arts Therapies and the LGBTQ Community in addition to numerous other publications. Dr. Harris is a trained Advanced Vocal Psychotherapist and Analytical Music Therapist and is the current president of the International Association for Analytical Music Therapy. He has worked for over 25 years with a diverse range of clients.

Faculty

Magdalena V. Karlick, M.A., Phd-c, ATR-BC, LPCC (she/her) is an Art Therapist and educator. Magdalena is multi-racial and benefits from many privileges including: light skin, middle-class, able-body passing, post-graduate education, and a US citizen with a passport. Since 2006, she has lived in O’Gah P’Ogeh Owingeh, the unceded territory of Tewa-speaking people, also known as Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a cis-woman and queer mama with two children. Magdalena is the owner of Our Imaginal World an organization that provides individual and group therapy, arts-based supervision, post graduate education, community health consultation for agencies, as well as commissioned art installations. She has been an educator in the Art Therapy, Expressive Arts, and Counseling fields since 2012. Currently she is the Art Director for Tomorrow’s Women working with Palestinian and Israeli youth during an international summer camp intensive in New Mexico. As a supervisor she focuses on power dynamics, personal bias, culturally sensitive ethical practice, self-care, and self-regulation. Magdalena has received training in Somatic Experiencing, Sandplay, & Psychodrama, and weaves these understandings of group, symbol and body into her classrooms, work with clients, and supervisees. She is a doctoral candidate in the Expressive Arts program at the European Graduate School, focusing on exploring the “Aesthetic Responsibility of the facilitator to the group” through various methods of Arts-Based Research. As a supervisor she focuses on power dynamics, personal bias, culturally sensitive ethical practice, self-care, and self-regulation.

Heidi Landis, LCAT, RDT-BCT, TEP, CGP (she/her) is Licensed Creative Arts therapist, Registered Drama Therapist and Board-Certified Trainer, and a Trainer, Education and Practitioner of Psychodrama (TEP). Specializing in trauma-informed work and the use of creative arts therapy techniques, she has a private practice and consulting business in New York City where she sees clients and facilitates trainings nationally and internationally. Previously Heidi worked at Creative Alternatives of New York, as Associate Executive Director of clinical and training programs where she ran Trauma-Informed Drama Therapy groups with many different populations as well as trained staff and site partners in using creative techniques in psychotherapy and in the classroom. Most recently Heidi was the Community Coordinator of Mental Health at a high-school in the South Bronx for immigrant and refugee youth.

Currently Heidi is working on bringing trauma informed practices outside of the therapy room and into places like schools, arts organization, film sets and organizations. She is currently partnering with The Park Avenue Armory, The NY Philharmonic, Theaterworks USA and The Video Consortium, offering wellness group for staff and casts as well as helping shape trauma informed spaces and curriculum.

Heidi is an adjunct professor at New York University and Yeshiva University in NYC, Lesley University in MA, Concordia University in Montreal and on faculty of the KINT institute. She has published about her work in the books Trauma-Informed Drama Therapy: Transforming Clinics, Classrooms and Communities, Handbook of Child and Adolescent Group Therapy: A Practitioner’s Reference, and in Creative Arts-Based Group Therapy with Adolescents: Theory and Practice as well as in multiple academic journals.

Kat Lee, MA, RDT-BCT, CCLS (she/her) is in private practice as a drama therapist in Connecticut, USA, where she focuses on doing embodied work with folx who have traumatic life experiences. Kat also works with Greenleaf Integrative, a consulting organization specializing in burnout prevention for helpers and healers. She has served as faculty at New York University and the Kint Institute, focusing on cultural awareness and intersectionality in creative arts therapy. She is the past Director of Secondary Education for ALIVE/Miss Kendra Programs through the Post Traumatic Stress Center in New Haven, CT.

Nancy S. Scherlong, LCSW-R, PTR, CJT, M-S is a psychotherapist, writer and teacher and has been practicing in the field of expressive arts since the 1990’s. She has a long history in the domain of crisis services and trauma-informed intervention and has provided direct care, consultation and training to area schools, businesses and clinics in the aftermath of sensitive and traumatic events. She is the current co-president of the International Federation for Biblio-Poetry Therapy, past government affairs chair to the National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapy Associations for over 10 years and currently serves as adjunct faculty for Adelphi and Columbia Universities in their Master of Social Work programs as both a clinical practice professor and a practicum supervisor. She is part of the core faculty for the Therapeutic Writing Institute, a global on-line school and community for writers and journal therapists. Nancy specializes in trauma informed approaches with individuals, couples and groups and is additionally trained in the methods of EMDR, IFS, Somatic Experiencing and psychodrama, all of which she integrates into her practice interventions. She is a two-time recipient of the National Association for Poetry Therapy’s Distinguished Service Award in 2005 and 2017 and was named Field Educator of the Year by the Hudson Valley branch of Adelphi University. She is the founder and owner of Change Your Narrative LCSW PLLC, based in NY and CT, through which she offers psychotherapy services, coaching, continuing education workshops, training groups and outreach education in integrating expressive writing with trauma work.

Britton Williams (she/her) is a drama therapist (RDT) and licensed creative arts therapist (LCAT). She works as an adjunct professor in the Program in Drama Therapy (NYU), an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College (CUNY) and in private practice. She is a PhD candidate in the Social Welfare Program at the Graduate Center (CUNY) where she is a member of the inaugural Mellon Humanities Public Fellows cohort. Britton’s work is deeply and urgently concerned with the possibilities that live with/in radical (re)imagining and the inextricable connectedness of healing and liberation. Her work also extends to non-clinical settings. In this capacity, she uses drama therapeutic techniques with organizations, companies, schools, and universities to help guide and facilitate sessions on: anti-oppression; stress, burnout, trauma, and anxiety; implementing creativity in the workday for increased employee engagement, team-building, and productivity; and care-practices.