SURVIVORS INTERNATIONAL is honored to announce our Executive and Clinical Director, Dr. Uwe Jacobs, is a recipient of the 2009 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders Award. The award honors 10 individuals who have overcome daunting odds to improve the health and quality of life for disadvantaged or underserved men, women and children across the United States. Dr. Uwe Jacobs is one of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2009 Community Health Leaders Award recipients!
Executive and Clinical Director Uwe Jacobs, Ph.D.,recipient of the 2009 Community Health Leaders Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Jacobs has been working with Survivors International for the past 15 years and has provided services for hundreds of survivors of torture from many different countries and has developed and implemented a variety of programs for survivors. He is both a clinical neuropsychologist and a psychotherapist. He is an expert on the psychological and neuropsychological assessment of asylum seekers and has written and published guidelines on this topic (see SI publications). Dr. Jacobs drafted the chapters on the psychological and neuropsychological sequelae of torture for the currently existing international guidelines for the examination of torture published by the UN High Commissioner (Istanbul Protocol) and for the handbook on assessment of asylum seekers by Physicians for Human Rights. Prior to becoming Director of SI, Dr. Jacobs developed other programs for disadvantaged populations. He founded and directed the Homeless Assessment Program through the Wright Institute, Berkeley. He served as the psychological consultant in developing the Life After Exoneration Project (LAEP), a national program for wrongfully convicted ex-prisoners. He conducted workshops and needs assessments with exonerees in New York and Chicago. Dr. Jacobs has also published in the area of psychotherapy process research.
Associate Director Katie Hymans coordinates case management and social service referrals for all Survivors International clients. She also assists the Director with community outreach, program improvement, and fundraising. As the Senior Case Manager, she utilizes her unique background that combines adult education, immigrant and refugee advocacy, employment counseling, case management/student advising, program development/management, and business. She has worked with various populations of people who fall into low-income categories in the Bay Area to work towards accessing self-sufficiency through career training and by working with community partners for supporting community resources. Prior to her work in the Bay Area, she taught English in Taiwan for two years. Ms. Hymans has a Masters degree in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies, for which the focus of her research was refugee resettlement. She is committed to working against oppression in its myriad formats, is involved with anti-racist and anti-heterosexist efforts in the Bay Area, and has been training to facilitate Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed methods. Katie is proficient in Spanish and speaks a bit of Mandarin from her three years in Taiwan.
Director of Development Andrea Kneelandis the Director of Development with Survivors International. Prior to joining Survivors International, Andrea did fundraising and program work in a number of different non-profit fields, including the arts, education and in health services. Before her career in fundraising, she worked in real estate sales and marketing. She has a BA from San Francisco State University in Anthropology, where she focused on human rights and urban studies.
Administrative Coordinator Farzana Fakhry is Administrative Coordinator, and brings her background including a Master's in Public Administration, emphasis in Public Management, from Cal State East Bay; she earned her BA in International Relations and Political Science at the University of Toronto, on a sponsored scholarship program. After leaving Afghanistan during the civil war in 1993, Farzana worked with numerous NGOs in Pakistan, including the International Rescue Committee and the SAB (Solidarity Afghanistan Belgium) in finance and administration positions. In Toronto, she also worked for the Consulate General of Afghanistan as an executive assistant to the Consular. Farzana is fluent in Farsi and speaks Pashto.
Development and Communications Associate Dimple Patel is working for Survivors International as an Americorps VISTA Volunteer. She just graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in May of 2009 with her B.A. in Political Science. Upon completing her year of service with Survivors International she will be attending law school to study international human rights law &/or immigration law. She has previously interned for the Capital Alliance Lobbying Firm in Sacramento, Ca and has held several sales positions. Dimple can speak and understand Gujarati.
Post Doctoral Fellow Annika Hacin Sridharan, Psy.D is a clinical psychologist with a degree from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She has over ten years of experience providing clinical and psychosocial services to international, immigrant and refugee populations. She has worked at the Roberto Clemente Family Guidance Center in New York City, a community mental health clinic for Latino and Caribbean immigrants and refugees; at the Trauma Center for Survivors of Violence and Torture in Cape Town, South Africa, where she coordinated the Sub-Saharan Africa refugee program; and at the Independent Bureau for Humanitarian Issues in Geneva, Switzerland, where she prepared a refugee emergency handbook. Dr. Hacin Sridharan has a B.A. in Comparative Religions and African American Studies from Princeton University, and a M.S. in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University. She has worked and studied in different parts of the world including Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, and Mexico. She is fluent in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
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