Dr. Cavell is a clinical child/family psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Arkansas interested in developing more effective interventions for high-risk, school-age children. He has a particular interest in interventions that involve parents, teachers, and mentors. Guiding his research is an integrated life-course-social-learning model of children. He is interested in how to support children’s development as they move toward adolescence and young adulthood. 

Renée Spencer, EdD, LICSW, is a Professor at the Boston University School of Social Work. She specializes in the study of relational processes at work in youth mentoring and has conducted in-depth examinations of the development of youth mentoring relationships to identify what promotes close and enduring relationships and how such relationships can support positive youth development. She has also studied innovative approaches to mentoring, such as youth-initiated mentoring, and the tailoring of programs to meet the needs of special populations of young people, including youth in foster care and military-connected youth. Her work has been funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), and the U. S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

Dr. Slep is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Cariology and Comprehensive Care at NYU. Dr. Slep co-directs the Family Translational Research Group focusing on understanding violence in families. Her research focuses on many different aspects of conflict and violence in families. Dr. Slep has been conducting research with military families since 1998, and her work involving prevention and outreach in military communities began in 2002. Her research has involved service personnel from different branches of the military, and she has worked closely with military leaders to affect policy changes drawn directly from her findings.

Dr. Herrera is an independent consultant who was most recently a senior research fellow at Public/Private Ventures. Dr. Herrera has published numerous reports and articles on school-based, community-based, and group mentoring over the past 25 years. Her studies have helped inform the field about the relationships that develop in these programs, the experiences of youth, and mentors, how and which youth benefit and how program practices may shape these experiences and benefits.

Dr. Heubach was most recently a Senior Program Officer at Mentor Washington. For the past five years, she has managed the implementation of a $4.5 million project on youth mentoring. The project includes seven mentoring agencies across the state of Washington. She has been responsible for financial and programmatic reporting and for ensuring that project outputs are achieved. She has worked directly with the funder’s program officer and assisted the principal investigator in the decisions regarding data management and analysis. Dr. Heubach also manages MWW’s Quality Mentoring Path Initiative, which is a quality assurance and continuous improvement project for youth mentoring programs. Heubach has also managed a Department of Justice (OJJDP) appropriation grant and 13 small grants to mentoring agencies funded by Bank of America through Mentoring Works Washington. 

Debby Gaffney, M.Ed. is a member of the Military Kids on the Move team and serves as the liaison to North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey, Washington.  Debby was an educator and administrator in the NTPS for 36 years before retiring.  She graduated from Washington State University with a degree in elementary education, a masters in education from Antioch University and education leadership/administration credentials from Saint Martin’s University.   Debby has been part of the team for two prior grants that worked with military connected students.  Currently she is helping connect military families who are moving with the Military Kids on the Move profile tool.  She sees the value in helping classroom teachers get to know their new students in a deeper, meaningful way.

Alison Drew is an Assistant Research Scientist with the Family Translational Research Group at New York University. Her research interests include the development of healthy relationships for children, specifically in the contexts of the family and formal youth mentoring programs. Dr. Drew began conducting research with military families in 2018. She earned a PhD in Sociology and Social Work from Boston University.

Forest Moore is a third-year Clinical Psychology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arkansas. Forest is a part of the CRAV Lab working under Dr. Cavell. Forest’s primary research interests include working with military children and understanding how schools can best serve them. Forest grew up in an Army family which helped spark his interest in both studying military children and helping them. Forest received his B.S. in Psychology from Texas Christian University and his M.S. in Applied Psychology from Tarleton State University in 2022.

Lily Eagan is a first-year Clinical Psychology Ph.D. candidate. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Arkansas where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. Her undergraduate research investigated physical appearance as a predictor of perceived aggressive behavior in fathers. This research primarily focused on the “Cinderella Effect”, or the proclivity of stepparents to abuse stepchildren at a higher rate than biological children. She plans to continue her interest in how perception influences interpersonal relationships in her future research with Dr. Cavell.