About Us
Christie Jackson, Ph.D.
For over 15 years, Dr. Jackson has trained and supervised therapists in several Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) to evaluate STAIR. These studies have included diverse groups of individuals in a variety of treatment settings, including women in public sector clinics, juveniles in detention centers, women Veterans affected by military sexual trauma (MST), and veterans receiving care exclusively through telemedicine. Her experience conducting training, supervision, and integrity monitoring for STAIR evaluation studies includes an NIMH multisite (15) trial evaluation program for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Dr. Jackson has specialized in the treatment of traumatized individuals throughout her career. Currently the founder of Evolution Trauma and Wellness, Dr. Jackson formerly served as the Director of the PTSD Clinics at the Manhattan and Honolulu VA Medical Centers. Dr. Jackson’s clinical expertise with traumatized individuals spans numerous populations, including Veterans, law enforcement personnel, political refugees, survivors of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, adolescents in juvenile detention, rape and assault survivors, and individuals affected by childhood trauma. Dr. Jackson completed a postdoctoral fellowship in trauma and dissociative disorders at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, as well as other specialized training in the area of posttraumatic stress. She served as Program Co-Chair for the 2011 International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) Conference, has published articles and book chapters in the area of traumatic stress, provided clinical supervision to mental health professionals, clinical psychology interns, externs, and psychiatry residents, and presented widely on PTSD and similar topics.
Marylene Cloitre, Ph.D.
Dr. Cloitre is the lead developer of STAIR and STAIR Narrative Therapy. For over 30 years, she has provided clinical and research supervision regarding the care and well-being of diverse trauma-exposed populations, including those who have experienced childhood abuse, sexual assault, physical assault, combat, and military sexual trauma, as well as providing specialized care to communities such as refugees and sexual and gender minority individuals. She has worked for 30 years to develop empirically supported, client-tailored, flexibly-delivered mental health programs for trauma-exposed populations. She has been the principal investigator of over 10 government or foundation-funded clinical trials and has published 200+ peer-reviewed articles, 35 chapters, and 5 books.
Dr. Cloitre received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Early in her career, she was on the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College for 10 years and was a tenured professor at the New York University (NYU) School of Medicine, where she also held the Cathy and Stephen Graham Endowed Chair in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. After 9/11, she received awards for her services to New York City from the NYU Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Tuesday’s Children, a foundation for and by the families affected by 9/11. Dr. Cloitre is a past-president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) and was a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) ICD-11 working group on trauma-spectrum disorders, focusing on the formulation and testing of the Complex PTSD disorder. She is also the 2015 recipient of the Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Practice of Trauma Psychology from Division 56 of the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Cloitre lives in San Francisco and is a Research Professor at the NYU Silver School of Social Work. She was Director of Research at the National Center for PTSD Dissemination and Training Division at the Palo Alto VA where she worked for 14 years. Previous to that, she was the founder of the Institute for Trauma and Stress at the NYU Child Study Center and the Stephen and Cathy Graham Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Brandon Weiss, Ph.D.
Dr. Weiss is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and an Attending Psychologist at NYU Langone Health, where he provides individual, group, and couples therapy as well as supervises psychology postdoctoral fellows and psychiatry residents. He completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln under the mentorship of Dr. Debra Hope. He completed internship at the Boston Consortium in Clinical Psychology, where his major rotation was within the National Center for PTSD Behavioral Science Division at the Boston VA. He then completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for PTSD Dissemination and Training Division, part of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University School of Medicine, working primarily with Dr. Marylene Cloitre. For the past 14 years, he has been actively involved in research, service delivery, teaching/training, and consultation related to the assessment and treatment of trauma-related difficulties. Much of his work focuses on underserved populations, particularly sexual and gender minorities.
Sherry Yam, LCSW
Sherry earned her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Southern California and currently serves as a Clinical Supervisor at World Relief California, where she leads a statewide, trauma‑informed refugee resettlement program emphasizing evidence‑based, culturally responsive, and low‑intensity interventions. She is also a researcher affiliated with the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. Previously, she served as the National STAIR and webSTAIR Trainer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, working closely with Dr. Marylene Cloitre to support national training and implementation efforts. In that role, she also acted as the STAIR Services Champion for the Northern California VA Health Care System, focusing on expanding access to STAIR services in rural settings and addressing intergenerational trauma among BIPOC and AAPI Veterans with Complex PTSD. In the community, she serves as an ad hoc expert witness for psychological evaluations at the USC SDP–Keck Human Rights Clinic and provides clinical support to Ukrainian colleagues through the ESTSS4Ukraine Taskforce in response to humanitarian crises. Her work bridges clinical practice, research, and systems‑level implementation to advance equitable, scalable trauma treatment across diverse settings.
Stephanie Cherry, LCSWR
Stephanie is a clinical social worker with a Masters in Psychology and twenty years of experience working with adults affected by trauma, including the first responder community. I am trained in CBT, STAIR, PSTAIR, and exposure techniques, and in all of these work models, therapy was intentionally designed to be accessible. She is committed to removing barriers to good mental health.
She has 20 years of experience with the STAIR model (STAIR-Narrative Therapy, Parenting-STAIR), both in clinical trials and in private practice, working with adults who have experienced interpersonal and community trauma. Stephanie has also provided consultation to clinicians working in Randomized Control Trials and in University Counseling Centers, treating individuals with PTSD.