Board Members
Councilor
John P. Cocco, MSW LCSW is a mitigation specialist for the federal defender of the Southern District in Indianapolis, Indiana. John received his undergraduate degree from Wittenberg University, his Master of Social Work degree from the Indiana University School of Social Work,and is currently a doctoral candidate with the Indiana University School of Social Work. Prior to his work in the federal court system, John was the director of a reentry program at a non-profit agency in Indianapolis for four years. He has worked in mental health and substance use disorder treatment in various roles since 2007. John has been on the board of the NOFSW since 2016.
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Stacey Hardy-Chandler, PhD, JD, LCSW is the Director of the Center for Children and Families for the Alexandria, VA Department of Community and Human Services. In this capacity, she is responsible for Child Welfare, Child and Family Behavioral Health, Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, Early Childhood, Family Systems, and Youth Development as well as for overseeing the City’s Children and Youth Master Plan. She is also the President and CEO of Leadership Excellence & Adaptive Development Services, LLC (LEADS) which provides innovative training, strategic planning and customized consultation services to diverse public sector
organizations. Dr. Hardy-Chandler served as the Director of Field Education for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Social Work for nearly 13 years. While at UNLV, she was also administratively active in such capacities as Assistant Director of the School of Social Work, Graduate Coordinator, and Child Welfare Title IV-E Coordinator. She developed the curriculum for UNLV’s forensic social work certificate program, which she also coordinated from 2005 to 2011. In 2011, she joined the faculty at George Mason University and later transitioned to Fairfax County and subsequently, Alexandria City Government.
In addition to her current role as President of the National Organization of Forensic Social Work, she proudly serves her local community as an appointee to the Commission for Women for the City of Fairfax (Virginia), and is an active member of the Fairfax Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Professional honors have included: National Association of Counties (NACo) and Virginia Association of Counties (VACo) Achievement Awards in Organizational Development for Fairfax Department of Family Services’ “Employee Lifecycle Retention Program” (primary co-author); Fairfax County Outstanding Performance Award (Individual) for the “Family Services Leadership Academy”; Fairfax County Outstanding Performance Award (Team) for “Learning Maps”; National Association of Social Workers – Nevada “Social Worker of the Year”; Dean’s Honor Award for Service (University of Nevada Las Vegas, Boyd School of Law); and Innovation Award (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) for development the “Advanced Graduate Certificate in Forensic Social work”.
Dr. Hardy-Chandler’s ongoing professional aim is “to cultivate a culture of learning and to be a catalyst for individual, systemic and social change”.
Secretary
President
David McLeod, PhD, has spent the past two decades working to actively reduce violence, particularly that directed at people and communities with diminished capacities for self-protection. In addition to being an Associate Professor in the SSW he holds affiliate faculty status with the OU Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and the OU Center for Social Justice, and is the Director of the OU Knee Center for Strong Families. A former police detective who transitioned to become a forensic social worker, David has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in programs of social work, criminal justice, and preparing future faculty. His research is
Treasurer
Dana E. Prescott, PhD, JD, MSW has been licensed to practice in Maine and Massachusetts since 1983 and is a partner with Prescott, Jamieson, & Murphy Law Group LLC, Saco, Maine. He is a Fellow of the International Academy of Family Attorneys and the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He was awarded an MSW from Boston College and PhD in social work from Simmons College. Dr. Prescott holds an instructor appointment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is adjunct faculty at Boston College School of Social Work. He is a frequent consultant, writer, and speaker on professional ethics and policy related to expert and forensic
President Elect
roles, family law and practice, and judicial systems. He is a rostered guardian ad litem and currently serves as Chair of Maine’s GAL Review Board.
focused on the intersection of criminal behavior development, gender, and trauma. Some of David's current professional activities include investigations of forensic psychopathology and differential criminal behavior development, female sexual offending, female incarceration, child sexual abuse, forensic social work, intra-professional and multidisciplinary collaboration, domestic and relational violence, and social work education. David is a board member of the National Organization of Forensic Social Work, the Co-Chair of the Oklahoma Children of Incarcerated Parents Advisory Committee to the Legislature and is currently working on multiple funded research projects. His most recent publications include works on female sexual offending, trauma, domestic violence, and social work education. He has won numerous teaching, service, and research honors and is a four-time recipient of the Ann and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work "Professor of the Year" award.
Past President
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Councilor
Susan McCarter, PhD, MS, MSW, is the Bonnie E. Cone Professor in Civic Engagement and Professor of Social Work at UNC Charlotte. Dr. McCarter’s career began as a juvenile probation officer, inner-city mental health counselor, and policy analyst and advocate in Virginia where she earned her MSW (Clinical) and her PhD (Social Policy and Social Work). For over 25 years she has conducted research as a Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Scholar (now Racial and Ethnic Disparities (RED)) and forensic practitioner. Nationally, Dr. McCarter moderates the Society of Social Work and Research’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Special Interest Group. Regionally, she serves on both the NC RED in Juvenile Justice Subcommittee, the Charlotte Racial Justice Consortium (Central Piedmont CC, Johnson C. Smith, Johnson and Wales - Charlotte, Queens University - Charlotte, and UNC Charlotte), and on the leadership team for Race Matters for Juvenile Justice (Data Chair). With RMJJ, Dr. McCarter conducted Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s First Racial Equity Impact Analysis and she currently leads multiple funded research studies examining the School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPP), DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) training, and Racial Justice, and she explores and trains nationally and internationally on these topics.
Councilor
Emily Reeder Abili, PhD, MSW is a Mitigation Specialist at the Clark County Public Defender in Las Vegas, Nevada. In that capacity, she has been responsible for the investigation of mitigation evidence in capital and non-capital murder cases since 2003. During her tenure at the Public Defender, Dr. Reeder Abili has been responsible for uncovering mitigation evidence in death penalty cases and has extensive experience investigating Atkins claims, assisting with the presentation of mitigation in jury trials, and working with nationally renowned experts as a part of the criminal defense team. She earned her BSW, MSW, and PhD (Public Affairs) from the University of Nevada Las Vegas and previously taught undergraduate courses in quantitative methods and criminology. Professional honors have included Excellence in Legal Defense (Clark County Public Defender), Legal Advocate Award (Nevada Disability Advocacy and Law Center), and Value in Performance Award (Clark County).
Councilor
Viola Vaughan-Eden PhD, MJ, LCSW is Associate Professor and PhD Program Director with The Ethelyn R. Strong School of Social Work at Norfolk State University in Southeastern Virginia. She is also the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at The UP Institute, a think tank for upstream child abuse solutions. As a clinical and forensic social worker, Dr. Vaughan-Eden serves as a consultant and expert witness in child maltreatment cases – principally sexual abuse. She also lectures nationally and internationally on child and family welfare to multidisciplinary groups of professionals. Dr. Vaughan-Eden is Immediate Past-President of the National Organization of Forensic Social Work (NOFSW), President Emerita of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC), and President Emerita of the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence (NPEIV). Additionally, she is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Forensic Social Work, former Editorial Advisor for the Journal of Social Work Education, as well as serves on the editorial board and/or as a reviewer for several other national research journals.
Viola is the recipient of several honors including as a 2019 Council of Social Work Education Leadership Scholar, 2015 Family and Children’s Trust Fund of Virginia Child Welfare Award, 2014 Champions for Children Community Service Award, 2012 National Association of Social Workers Virginia Chapter Lifetime Achievement Award, and 2011 National Children's Advocacy Center's Outstanding Service Award in Mental Health. See www.violavaughaneden.com
Councilor
Ali Winters, DSW, MSW is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Tennessee. She earned her DSW from the University of Tennessee in 2015, her MSW from the University of Alabama in 1996, and her BSSW from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1992. With over 27 years of direct social work practice experience, Dr. Winters’ primary areas of social work practice have been forensic social work in corrections and juvenile justice, direct trauma-based service delivery, program development and evaluation, and behavioral health in healthcare settings. Dr. Winters has also been active in providing clinical supervision and leadership since earning her LCSW in 2005. Her principal areas of research interest include women in solitary confinement, female criminogenic pathways and needs, prison culture and decision-making, ethics, comorbid PTSD/SUDs treatment, and best practices in trauma-informed care.
Dr. Anjali (Fulambarker) Buehler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at Governors State University. My research focuses on two distinct areas, one of which centers on social justice in social work education. Specifically, I am interested in engagement in social justice-related work in the classroom by using specific strategies or tools. The goal of this work is two-fold. First, it provides a mechanism through which students can consider their social location and their identities. Second, it models specific strategies that students can use to engage in social justice work in the future. The other focus of my research is on understanding police response to intimate partner violence. Working collaboratively with police officers in the field, I am interested in understanding officer decision-making, case outcomes, and their impact on intimate partner violence survivors and people who choose to use abuse. The goal of this work is to inform policy and social work practice in law enforcement settings. I see my research and partnership with law enforcement as a critical component of imagining responses outside of the criminal legal system to effectively address gender-based violence. Related to these areas of research, I teach courses related to social policy, forensic social work, research and program evaluation.
Wendy Champagnie Williams , PhD, MSW, LICSW is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Bridgewater State University in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. She has been a social work educator for over 15 years. Prior to joining the School of Social Work at Bridgewater State in 2016, she served as an administrator and faculty member at Wheelock College in Boston for 13 years. A clinical social worker with over two decades of experience, Dr. Williams’ professional practice encompasses outpatient mental health, school-based supportive services, clinical supervision, and program management, consultation, and evaluation. Dr. Williams also maintains a private practice serving individuals and couples, with particular interest in supporting those impacted by incarceration. Research interests of Dr. Williams include resilient reintegration among formerly incarcerated Black men; the impact of incarceration on children and families; strengths and resilience, particularly among communities of color; and dismantling dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression towards active allyship.
