Originally from Paterson/Clifton, New Jersey, Vicky has been a resident of New Orleans since 2007. Vicky obtained her B.S. from Cornell University in Animal Science, and though the plans for a veterinary career fell through, she still indulges in her love for animals through her two dogs and five cats, all of whom are rescues. After a career in oncology billing and management, Vicky returned to graduate school at Tulane and completed both a Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Health.Within the Social Work program, Vicky also obtained Certificates in Disaster Mental Health and International Social Work.
Prior to joining the CCC program, Vicky was the original Program Manager for the Tulane Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy (DRLA), where she was integral in the development of several projects including their new Master's program in Disaster Resilience Leadership and an innovative evaluation of humanitarian aid following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The DRLA is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to strengthening global humanitarian leadership, with one of their areas of focus being psychosocial and behavioral leadership issues. It was the lack of global action in this area that propelled Vicky into enrolling in the CCC program to pursue her PhD. Vicky's research interests focus on the psychosocial impact of disasters and collective trauma on communities, and finding non-traditional ways of supporting community recovery in those contexts. It is her hope that she can forge a research agenda that will help to shape future policy in community recovery planning that will be sensitive to the social, mental and emotional realities faced by communities devastated by trauma, and that will expand the concept of psychosocial well-being to be more culturally and contextually appropriate in such settings.
Collective trauma, Disaster research, Psychosocial theory
