About Us

Rick Greenberg, Ph.D., LCSW, Director, Martha K. Selig Institute
Brenda A. Rombach, Coordinator

Faculty

Amy Chase, LCSW, is Associate Director for Westchester Foster Care Support Services at The Children's Village , Dobbs Ferry, NY and a member of the faculty of the JBFCS Martha K. Selig Institute. Prior to that, she worked  as a Social Work Supervisor and then as an Administrative Supervisor at  JBFCS' Hawthorne Cedar Knolls facility in Hawthorne, NY.
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Lisa Blitz, PhD, LCSW, is the Director of Genesis Domestic Violence Shelter, a program of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York City. She is on the faculty of JBFCS Martha K. Selig Institute, where she teaches assessment and treatment planning to master’s level counselors and therapists, and the JBFCS Adult Milieu Services Training Program, teaching assessment and intervention skills to residential direct care workers. In addition to her work in the domestic violence field, she has a background in mental health, specializing in trauma recovery and psychiatric rehabilitation with young adults with serious emotional disturbance and mental illness. Her research focus is on the intersections of social justice and trauma recovery issues. She has a private psychotherapy and consultation practice in New York City.
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Ann Kearney-Cooke, PhD, is the Director of the Cincinnati Psychotherapy Institute in Cincinnati,
Ohio. She is the author of Change Your Mind, Change Your Body: Feeling Good about Your Body and Yourself after Forty. She has been named Distinguished Scholar for the Partnership for Gender Specific Medicine at Columbia University. She developed the Helping Adolescents Become Strong Adults curriculum.
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Ann Kearney-Cooke, PhD, is the Director of the Cincinnati Psychotherapy Institute in Cincinnati,
Ohio. She is the author of Change Your Mind, Change Your Body: Feeling Good about Your Body and Yourself after Forty. She has been named Distinguished Scholar for the Partnership for Gender Specific Medicine at Columbia University. She developed the Helping Adolescents Become Strong Adults curriculum.
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Veronica Csillag, MA, LCSW, is Clinical Supervisor at the JBFCS MBCS on Staten Island and Instructor at the JBFCS Martha K. Selig Educational Institute. She is candidate, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. She is also in private Practice in New York City. Her article, The child patient of this particular therapist was published in the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy in Fall 2005.
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Owen Mason, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He has also worked at JBFCS for 12 years, specializing in group and has experience running agency-based groups as well as private groups. He has taught for the agency’s in-service training program for five years and is currently on the faculty of the agency’s Advanced Training Program. He is a graduate of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis and the JBFCS Advanced Training Program.
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Amy Meyers, LCSW, is a private practitioner and training psychoanalyst. She is an Adjunct Professor at Fordham and Yeshiva Universities and has supervised at Washington Square Institute. She leads Divorce and Bereavement Groups for JBFCS.
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Caroline Peacock, LMSW is the Co-Director of the JBFCS CPTI Sanctuary® Project. She is a member of the ACS LGBTQ Action Committee and the CWLA/Lambda Legal National Advisory Taskforce to improve care for LGBTQ youth nationwide. Caroline has co-created a 12-week psychoeducational group curriculum for LGBTQ youth in residential treatment.
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David Billings, DMin, is a Core Trainer with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. In
that capacity he has conducted Undoing Racism/Community Organizing workshops nationally and
internationally for twenty-five years. He is also a consultant at Fordham University’s Beck Institute
on Religion and Poverty and the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services.
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David Ferguson, LCSW, is an administrative supervisor at the Manhattan West/Greenberg
Counseling Center of JBFCS and founder and coordinator of the clinic’s GLBT Counseling Unit.
He is a clinical consultant to GMHC and the Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the GLBT synagogue.
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Deborah Langosch, PhD, LCSW, is a clinical coordinator for the JBFCS Loss and Bereavement Program and project director at JBFCS’ Center for Trauma Program Innovation. She has over twenty years of clinical experience with bereavement work in both agency and private practice settings.
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Donald Fleck, LCSW, is a Senior Social Worker for the JBFCS Morris Black Counseling Center. He has extensive experience in working with trauma, anxiety and depression. The methods of affect
regulation he teaches are based on his thirty years practicing meditation and ten years working as a
psychotherapist at JBFCS.
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Frank Delano, LMSW, is director of the JBFCS Institute for Child Care Professionalization and Training and adjunct faculty at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. He has also previously served JBFCS as associate director of Hawthorne Cedar Knolls and as director of its Herschel Alt Day Treatment Center. He is a member of the CWLA National Residential Advisory Board and recently served on a national task force that revised the CSLA Standards of Excellence for Residential Group Care in America. He has also served on the Board of Directors for the American Board of Examiners in Clinical Social Work. He has trained at numerous agencies nationally and internationally including France, Israel, Scotland and Canada.
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Janet A. Geller, LCSW, EdD, is the director of JBFCS Family Violence Prevention Center and is the author of Breaking Destructive Patterns: Multiple Strategies for the Treatment of Partner Abuse.
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Jill Shah, NCC, MA, is a Team Leader at a Domestic Violence Shelter in New York and a training
consultant with JBFCS. Ms. Shah has presented at the Child Welfare League of America’s National
Conference, throughout the northeast U.S. and in Canada. She is the co-creator of the “professional
package” concept and has published an article on constructive confrontation in the CYC journal.
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Judith Levitan, CSW , iis the Director of Divorce Support and Single Parent Family Programs for the Jewish Connections Division of JBFCS. Since its inception, this program has served over 800 divorcing individuals and their families. The principal researcher on a study of Post Separation Reaction being conducted by the JBFCS/Columbia University School of Social Work Center for the Study of Social Work Practice, she also contributed a chapter entitled Divorce: The Caregiver’s Challenge to the book, Jewish Relational Care from A to Z, edited by Jack Bloom, PhD, Haworth Press, 2005.
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Todd Schenk, LCSW, is the Director of the Morris Black Community Counseling Center on Staten Island which includes an array of mental health programs providing outpatient clinical services, case management, crisis intervention, crisis respite, family-based treatment and family support services. He is the past-President of the New York State Casesei Management Coalition and formerly on the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Certified Care Managers.
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Daniel Sieber, LCSW, is a clinical supervisor and Family Therapist at the JBFCS Pelham Office and a graduate of the Martha K. Selig Institute’s Advanced Training Program in Family Therapy. He is a consultant mediator for the Nassau County Family Court and for the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution (IMCR) in the Bronx where he mediates custody-visitation, landlord tenant, PINS, and harassment disputes.
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Judith Ruskay Rabinor, PhD, is the Director of the American Eating Disorder Institute of Long Island with offices in Lido Beach and Manhattan. She is the author of A Starving Madness: Tales of Hunger, Hope and Healing in Psychotherapy and is a consultant to the FEGs eating disorder prevention project: NoBody’s Perfect.....
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Brenda Mamber, LCSW, is the Project Director for The Shira Ruskay Center at JBFCS. Ms. Mamber has over 20 years experience working in Hospice and Palliative Care with a expertise in providing care to dementia patients. Ms. Mamber is also an independent consultant specializing in education and training to interdisciplinary health care professionals.
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Arnold Markowitz, LCSW, is the Director of the Cult Hotline and Clinic operated by the JBFCS. He is a founding member of the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults. A member of the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults, Jewish Relations Council. Mr. Markowitz was on the planning committee for the Cult Awareness Network’s 1989 Annual Conference and is an advisory board member of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Bergen County New Jersey and the American Family Foundation.
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Kathleen McGlade, PhD, a licensed social worker and graduate of Fordham USSW, has extensive experience in the practice and supervision of family and children services as well as in administration and community organizing. As Director of Corporate Compliance for JBFCS, she encourages the use of social work ethics to guide therapeutic and administrative decisions.
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Linda Payne, LCSW, ACSWis a practicing psychotherapist, group therapist, and speaker/ trainer, specializing in bereavement and trauma in adolescents. She holds the position of Coordinator of the Crisis Consultation Unit for the Center for Trauma Program Innovation. She has extensive clinical experience in bereavement and trauma therapy, including ongoing 9/11 based projects. She has worked with adolescents at JBFCS for the past nineteen years.
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Michael Altshuler, LCSW, CGP, is Director of the JBFCS Bronx REAL Center (a psychiatric treatment, rehabilitative and residential program for adults with severe mental illness). He is also on the training faculty of JBFCS and maintains a private practice in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.
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Rebecca Wulf, LMSW, a graduate of Hunter College School of Social Work, is Director of JBFCS’ Coney Island Community Support Services, which provides out-patient mental health and continuing day treatment services to adults. Rebecca has extensive experience as a social worker and administrator in diverse settings that include mental health, criminal justice, residential, and family and children’s services.
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Roni Berger, PhD, MSW, BSW, was born and raised in Israel and holds degrees from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and from Tel Aviv Medical School. A consultant to JBFCS, he serves as a
Professor at Adelphi University and conducts a private practice. Dr. Berger’s fields of expertise
include stepfamilies, immigrants, qualitative research, group work and parent education. Prior
to her immigration to the United States in 1990, she worked in Israel in academia, direct practice
with individuals, families and groups in the fields of health and mental health, and supervisory and
administrative positions in diverse social, medical and educational settings. Dr. Berger serves as a
consultant to various organizations and has published and presented extensively nationally and internationally.
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Julie Kipp, PhD, LCSW, is an administrative supervisor at JBFCS, working with clients with serious mental illness in both agency and private practice. She has a doctorate in Social Work from New York University.
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Benjamin Kohl, PhD, LCSW, is Director of Multicultural Practice and Research and Program Director of Southern Brooklyn Family Services at JBFCS. Dr. Kohl is a lecturer at NYU School of Social Work and regularly consults to human service agencies in New York City.
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Ruth Kreitzman, LCSW, is a clinical supervisor at JBFCS in the Loss and Bereavement Program for Children and Adolescents. She is also a faculty member of the Selig Institute.
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Hillel Hirshein, LMSW, MPH, an expert in test preparation for several years. Hillel received his undergraduate training in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and his graduate degrees in Social Work and Public Health from the University of Michigan. He has nine-year's experience as a teacher, tutor and trainer I the for-profit sector, preparing more than 2000 students for a broad range of standardized tests including the Social Work Licensure examination, SAT I, SAT II, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, DAT and MCAT. As an instructor for JBFCS and as an independent educational consultant he has helped dozens of clinicians pass the Masters and Clinical Level ASWB Licensure examinations.
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Susan Paula, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the Clinical Program Administrator for the JBFCS
Center for Trauma Program Innovation. Her responsibilities include trauma treatment program
development and providing training on the impact, assessment, and treatment of trauma. She
has given numerous conference presentations on child trauma, childhood aggression, cognitivebehavioral therapy, and behavior management, and has published on the topics of child sexual abuse and childhood aggression.
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Sherri Donovan, Esq., is Matrimonial attorney for the National Organization for Women’s divorce
and law clinics. A member of the Women’s Bar Association matrimonial committee, she is recipient
of the Sylvia B. Garland Award for excellence in civil litigation.
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Steven Demby, PhD, is a New York State Licensed clinical psychologist. He evaluates divorcing families for New York, Kings and Richmond County Supreme Courts; is co-President of the New York chapter of the Association for Family and Concilation Courts; Chairman of The New York Freudian Society Divorce Committee; and a member of the faulty of the Family Forensics Program at the Washington Square Institute.
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