Michael Gregory
Michael Gregory is Faculty Director of the Youth Advocacy and Policy Lab (Y-Lab). Mike is also Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Senior Attorney at the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI). Mike teaches Harvard’s Education Law Clinic, in which law students represent individual families of traumatized children in the special education system and participate in TLPI’s larger systemic advocacy to create trauma-sensitive schools. Mike has also taught courses in Education Law and Policy and Education Reform Movements. Mike is a co-author of TLPI’s landmark report and policy agenda Helping Traumatized Children Learn, and is also a co-author of Educational Rights of Children Affected by Homelessness and/or Domestic Violence, a manual for child advocates. In 2009, Mike and Susan were named Bellow Scholars by the Association of American Law Schools, in recognition of TLPI’s advocacy for Safe and Supportive Schools legislation in Massachusetts. In 2013, Mike was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick to serve on the Families and Children Requiring Assistance Advisory Board, a statewide panel that will advise the Commonwealth on the implementation of the reformed CHINS law. He received his JD from Harvard Law School in 2004, graduating cum laude. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in American Civilization from Brown University in 1998, and received a Master of Arts in Teaching, also from Brown University, in 1999. Mike began his work for TLPI in 2004 upon receiving a Skadden Fellowship.
Crisanne Hazen
Crisanne Hazen is the Assistant Director of Harvard Law School’s Youth Advocacy and Policy Lab (Y-Lab). Crisanne joined HLS in the summer of 2016. She came from San Jose, California, where she worked as a supervising attorney at Legal Advocates for Children and Youth (LACY), a program of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. Starting at LACY as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in 2006, Crisanne developed a “know your rights” curriculum for pregnant and parenting teens, which she taught at 6 area high schools. Over the 10 years at LACY, she represented hundreds of teen parents in family law and restraining order matters, as well as directly represented children and youth of all ages in a variety of civil proceedings including family law, guardianships, housing, benefits, special education, and school discipline. She helped to start and later manage a medical-legal partnership clinic in the Pediatric Department of Valley Medical Center in San Jose. She also managed other population-based projects, including a CSEC project, transition-age foster youth project, and a foster youth identity theft project. Crisanne is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of California-Davis School of Law.
Jodi Guinn
Jodi Guinn is the Clinical Instructor in the Education Law Clinic and a Lecturer on Law. Jodi teaches in the Education Law Clinic, in which law students represent individual families in special education matters, advocating for children who have been exposed to trauma to receive the special education instruction, services and supports to which they are entitled under state and federal law. As part of this work, she supports TLPI’s broader advocacy for trauma-sensitive schools. Prior to joining Y-Lab, Jodi worked as an education attorney at the Justice Center of Southeast Massachusetts, a subsidiary of South Coastal Counties Legal Services, where she represented low-income students and families in special education and school discipline matters on the South Coast of Massachusetts. She also had a Skirnick/One Day’s Work Fellowship at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, where she advocated for older students between the ages of 14-22 to receive required special education transition supports, in order to prepare them for employment, independent living, and postsecondary education. As a law student, Jodi participated in the Harvard Education Law Clinic.
Jodi received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, and her B.A. in English and Women’s and Gender Studies from Dartmouth College.
Anne Eisner, LCSW, LMFT, LMHC
Anne Eisner is the Director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI).
A licensed social worker, she leads the project’s policy work and, along with Joe Ristuccia and Marissa del Rosario, its work with educators. The focus of both these efforts is to build and sustain safe and supportive, trauma-sensitive schools.
Before coming to TLPI, Anne provided and supervised home-based clinical services to families and children impacted by domestic violence, child abuse and neglect. She helped to develop an innovative treatment approach that included care coordination and advocacy along with intensive clinical services. That experience and perspective of maintaining a systemic focus while providing services to individual families are well-aligned with and inform her current work with TLPI.
Anne has a Master’s degree and holds the following licenses: LCSW, LMHC, and LMFT.
Marissa T. del Rosario, LICSW
Marissa T. del Rosario is the Trauma-Sensitive Schools Specialist with the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI). Along with Anne Eisner and Joe Ristuccia, Marissa coordinates TLPI’s work with educators in creating trauma-sensitive, safe and supportive schools. Additionally, Marissa collaborates on TLPI’s legislative advocacy work and its innovative Student Speak initiative. Prior to joining the TLPI team, Marissa worked for nineteen years in urban and rural public school districts. She began her career as an elementary school educator and then worked as a licensed clinical social worker in public schools for a leading educational nonprofit. Over the years, Marissa has worked extensively with students, parents, and school personnel at all levels to help remove barriers to students’ educational success.
Marissa holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work with a concentration in Political Social Work and is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker.
Bettina Neuefeind
Bettina Neuefeind is Senior Attorney and Helpline Manager in the Education Law Clinic/Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI). As a longtime direct services attorney and advocate for culture change around trauma, mental health and schools, Bettina assists families of children exposed to trauma in obtaining appropriate educational services, supports the clinical education of law students, and collaborates with the leadership team on achieving systemic progress growing the safe and supportive school culture movement. Prior to joining TLPI, Bettina was a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School investigating what fuels systems change in anti-poverty work, and an affiliate at Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, where she led the School Food Interventions project and focused on food literacy education and school food culture overhauls in applied settings. Before coming to Harvard, Bettina was a fair housing attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid in Oakland, California, serving low-income clients with disabilities and specializing in accommodations where housing was threatened due to mental health issues. Previously, Bettina worked for the International Crisis Group documenting war crimes in Kosovo, and at the United Nations Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court.
Bettina received an A.B. in Comparative Literature and History from Washington University in St. Louis, and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where she worked at the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic’s Mental Health Project and served on the editorial board of the Roundtable Journal for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies. Bettina clerked for the Honorable Daniel T.K. Hurley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, and for the Honorable Susan S. Beck, Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Court of Appeals. She is a member of the bars of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of California.
Joel Ristuccia, M.Ed.
Joel Ristuccia, M.Ed., an educator and school psychologist, is the Director of Professional Development for the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative. Joel co-authored both volumes of Helping Traumatized Children Learn and has over 35 years of experience providing training and consultation to schools and districts. Joel played a lead role in designing and implementing TLPI’s Inquiry-Based Process to guide schools toward trauma-sensitive school culture change. He has expertise in organizational change theory as well as in the impacts of traumatic experiences on students and the creation of trauma-sensitive schools.
Alex Jaramillo
Alex Jaramillo is the Youth Advocacy and Policy Lab (Y-Lab) Program Administrator. Alex joined the team in 2022 as a Program Administrator. He previously worked as a victim advocate in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office Family Protection and Sexual Assault Bureau. He completed his undergraduate education at Tufts University and holds a Master’s Degree.
Margo Strucker
Margo Strucker is the Youth Advocacy and Policy Lab (Y-Lab) Program Associate. Margo joined Harvard Law School in 2010. Previously she worked in early childhood and special education, residential mental health counseling, and non-profit communications and project management. She is an alum of the HLS Emerging Leaders Program and the Center for Workplace Development’s Leadership Essentials Training.
Margo is a 2002 graduate of Harvard College.