Janice Wagner, President

I have been a member of the CSGSS since 1998. After attending a residential group relations conference in France, I became curious about the nature of the unconscious as it unfolds in groups and systems and decided to continue my exploration of this phenomena through participation in the Center. I am interested in the tension, both conscious and unconscious, between the individual and the group, and the implications this has for functioning in a so called "free society". Questions about authority, representation and responsibility are natural extensions of this interest. I am practicing psychotherapist in the Boston area and I also hold a role as faculty advisor to graduate social work students at Boston University. I enjoy reading, traveling and the usual leisure time activities.

Jerry Fromm, Past President

My career has been primarily devoted to the Austen Riggs Center, where I have treated seriously disturbed patients in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and directed the therapeutic community program for many years. Riggs is an unusual treatment center, especially in today's world. Its program of intensive psychotherapy and community immersion takes place in a completely open setting on the Main Street of a small New England village. The open setting for treatment fundamentally recognizes the distinct authority of the patient group and requires the ongoing negotiation of, and dynamic attention to, the partnership between patients and staff. A fascination with institutional life comes with this territory.

More recently, my role at Riggs has been to direct the Erikson Institute for Education and Research. The Institute has a range of programs, including a program of organizational consultation and training. We began the latter a few years ago as an effort to link the learning from the open setting/therapeutic community to organizational problems in other human service institutions. Beyond this component, the Institute itself, true to the work of its namesake, exists on the boundary between psychoanalytic clinical work and the larger society and attempts to bring a dynamic perspective into interaction with societal issues. For me, this connects to the work of CSGSS.

My roles in other organizations include: faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, guest faculty of the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute, and, a few years back, Visiting Fellow in the Psychological Medicine and Psychotherapy Department, University College Hospital, London. In addition to my work on the Board of CSGSS, I have been a member or on the staff of a number of group relations conferences in the Tavistock tradition, both in the United States and in Europe, including conference work with Group Relations Nederland. The latter has been very enriching, given the international character of the staff, with whom I share a sustained interest in using a systems psychodynamic perspective to reflect on societal problems. I feel that group relations is the most powerful application of psychoanalysis we currently have and that it has enormous potential for having an impact on the organizations that mediate the relationship between individuals and an increasingly complex and troubled society.

Margaret Parish, Secretary

I am currently a staff psychologist at the Austen Riggs Center, a private, psychoanalytically oriented psychiatric hospital, where I am an individual psychotherapist, a consultant in the therapeutic community, and the manager of the community center. I am also part of a developing consultation group that studies organizational life and offers consultation to other institutions. I have a small private practice in psychotherapy and psychological assessment.

My educational past includes studying liberal arts in the “great books” program at St. John’s College and studying psychology, first from an existential-phenomenological perspective, and then from a psychoanalytic perspective, culminating in the four-year postdoctoral fellowship at Austen Riggs. I worked for many years in community mental health and taught psychopathology and social psychology at the undergraduate and graduate level. I am interested in the interface between psychoanalysis and social systems, and in the potential of group relations activities for providing conditions in which people can “learn from experience.”

Kevin Wilson, Treasurer

is a Division Chief for Poudre Fire Authority in Fort Collins, Colorado currently serving as the Fire Marshal. He entered the fire service as a volunteer firefighter in 1972 and joined the Poudre Fire Authority in 1976. He began his leadership role within the first 16 month of his career by promotion to Lieutenant, and then promotion to Captain by his third year in the service. In 1991 he was promoted to Assistant Fire Marshal followed by promotion to Division Chief in 1995. In his 30 year career with Poudre Fire Authority he has served as Training Officer and Publication Education Officer. In 1981, he published the first Driver Operator Handbook. Currently he is the President of the Northern Colorado Fire Marshal’s Association which he founded in 2002. He has served for the past 10 years as the only external member of the Colorado State University Safety Committee and Housing Safety Committee, being appointed by the University President.

He received his Bachelors of Science in Adult Education and Masters of Education in Human Resource Development/Organization Development from Colorado State University. Kevin is a Certified Performance Technologist with the International Society of Performance Improvement. He is also a voting member of the National Fire Protection Association, International Code Council and International Fire Marshal’s Association. He holds membership in the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), International Society of Performance Improvement (ISPI), Organization Development Network (ODN), American Society of Quality (ASQ) and the Future Search Network (FSN). He is a member of the Boston Center, and an associate of AKRI.

Anat Hornung Ziff, Member-at-large

Anat is an organizational consultant with extensive experience working with international organizations, military forces, government agencies, universities, NGOs and the private sector. From 1984 to 1991, she applied the Tavistock methodology while working as consultant and later on Commander of the Team Development Unit of the Israel Defense Forces Leadership School, developing curricula for workshops and integrating group relations concepts with OD consultancy, with particular focus on enhancing authority, leadership and team effectiveness.

Anat co-founded two non-profit NGOs for social change based on group relations concepts and work, integrating the spiritual, psychological and local sociopolitical dimensions of organizational life: Besod Siach (since 1992), an Israeli organization promoting dialogue between groups in conflict, and Innovación (since 2002), a Peruvian group focusing on leadership training for institutional transformation. Anat has served on staff of Group Relations conferences as Consultant and Director in Israel, Europe, Peru and the U.S

Life for Anat has been a process of personal and professional regeneration. Born and raised in Haifa Israel, she married a U.S. diplomat and has thus spent the last 15 years living throughout Latin America, Jerusalem, the U.S., and currently in Venezuela. Anat feels privileged to serve on the Board of the CSGSS, and looks forward to working with all members.

Marc Kessler, Member-at-large

Marc Kessler, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Vermont where he was on the psychology faculty for more than 30 years. He also served in various administrative positions over that time. He has been active in AKRI and CSGSS for more than 20 years and has served as Treasurer of CSGSS in the past. He worked on a number of conference staffs in both administrative and consulting positions, and was instrumental in creating a web presence for both AKRI and CSGSS. He is a member of CSGSS, an associate and Fellow of AKRI.

Sondra Elice Solomon, Member-at-large

Dr. Sondra Elice Solomon received her BA from Long Island University, her MA from New York University, and her doctorate from the University of Vermont (UVM). She completed a post-Doctoral Residency in Medical Psychology at the Oregon Health Sciences University. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the College of Medicine at UVM, and is on the medical staff of Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vermont.

Dr. Solomon is the Coordinator of the Fall Institute on Racism, Heterosexism, Bias and Oppression at UVM. Since 1998 this initiative has gathered the UVM community and the Vermont community at-large in a scholarly and provocative discourse regarding racism, heterosexism, stigma and other forms of oppression in educational, institutional and community settings. Additionally she is Chair of the university-wide Diversity Curriculum Review Committee, an initiative geared towards curriculum transformation.

Dr. Solomon is Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Mental Health funded project "Rural Ecology and Coping with HIV Stigma. She, along with her colleagues Dr. Carol Miller and Dr. Rex Forehand are testing a theoretical model of how the stigma associated with HIV disease affects people with HIV/AIDS in rural settings.She sits on the Advisory Board of the Vermont People with AIDS Coalition, Vermont CARES, Inc. and is Member-at-Large on the CSGSS.