Staff Profiles

Carole Warshaw, M.D.
Director

Dr. Warshaw is Director of the Domestic Violence and Mental Health Policy Initiative and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Hospital Crisis Intervention Project, a collaborative program of the Chicago Abused Women Coalition and the Cook County Bureau of Health Services that provides training for health care providers on domestic violence and on-site intervention and advocacy for battered women.

Dr. Warshaw chaired the committee that wrote the AMA Guidelines on Domestic Violence and co-authored the Family Violence Prevention Fund manual, “Improving the Healthcare Response to Domestic Violence” and the AMA “Guidelines on the Mental Health Effects of Family Violence”. She was a member of the National Research Council Committee on the Assessment of Family Violence Interventions and served on the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Violence Strategic Planning Oversight Committee, where she co-chaired the domestic violence work group. She is also a member of the Chicago Domestic Violence Advocacy Coordinating Council, the AMA Advisory Committee on Family Violence, the Family Violence and Abuse committee of the American Psychiatric Association and the Illinois Psychiatric Society Council. She is on the faculty at Rush University and at the University of Illinois

Susan Blumenfeld, LCSW
Director of Operations, Training and Outreach

Susan Blumenfeld brings more than 30 years of clinical, supervisory, and administrative experience in the area of community-based children’s mental health services. Prior to joining our staff in August, 2003, Susan was Senior Vice President of Clinical Services at Metropolitan Family Services and an active participant in and advisor to the Initiative since its inception. She has been instrumental in implementing new program and policy initiatives to build a responsive array of services in Illinois for children with serious emotional disturbance and their families.

Holly Barnes, M.A.
Research Associate

Holly Barnes has a Master of Arts in community psychology. She has research experience in both sexual assault and domestic violence, and experience working with sexual assault survivors and people with chronic and severe mental illness. Holly manages the research components of the project, including project evaluation, needs assessments with mental health providers and domestic violence survivors, and a literature review on domestic violence and mental health.

Interested persons can contact Holly with questions regarding research literature on domestic violence and mental health, and for information on the trauma assessment tools developed by DVMHPI..

Terri E. Pease, Ph.D
Adult Trauma Specialist

Throughout her professional career Dr. Terri Pease, has focused on creating clinical and programmatic responses to sexual assault and domestic violence. She is a trauma specialist at the Domestic Violence and Mental Health Policy Initiative in Chicago, and was formerly the Clinical Director of the Mental Retardation Residential and Support Division of ServiceNet, Inc. She has devoted much of her work to addressing trauma and abuse of people with disabilities. She has been especially interested in enabling and broadening collaborations between victim service providers and victims with mental health, cognitive and learning disabilities. Her exceptional work to better the safety and health status of battered women was recognized in 2000 by the Family Violence Prevention Fund with the Health Care and Domestic Violence Advocate Leadership Award. Dr. Pease was appointed to the faculty of the National Academy for Equal Justice for Persons with Disabilities at Temple University.

Thea Crum
Office Manager

Thea Crum brings more than six years of administrative and social justice experience to the Initiative. Prior to joining our staff in July 2004 she was the Associate Director of Operations at the Women’s Economic Agenda Project in Oakland California. Thea plans and coordinates the collaborative efforts of the Initiative, and manages daily operations.

Shaye Hall
Office Coordinator

Shaye Hall brings more than three years experience working with survivors of both sexual assault and domestic violence, serving most recently as a Child Advocate with the YWCA of the Sauk Valley Domestic Violence Program in Sterling, Illinois. Shaye is responsible for providing administrative support to the DVMHPI staff.

Mary Malefyt Seighman
Senior Program Associate - National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma and Mental Health

Mary Malefyt Seighman joins DVMHPI with more than 12 years of work in the DV movement. Immediately prior to beginning work with DVMHPI, she served as a consultant to four Washington, DC-based national domestic violence projects. In her consultant role, Mary worked to develop and promote policies and practices to assist courts, law enforcement, advocates, attorneys, and others with critical issues affecting battered women, including economic justice, firearms, and the enforcement of protection orders.

Before beginning work as a consultant, Mary was the Director of Grant Programs for the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority for three years. From 1998 to 2001, Mary was Senior Attorney and Staff Attorney for the National Center for Full Faith and Credit, where she provided training, policy development/promotion, and technical assistance on the enforcement of protection orders, as well as state and federal firearm laws. Mary also served for three years on the staff of the STOP Grants Technical Assistance Project, where she helped state STOP Grant administrators and local agencies to develop and improve their criminal justice system’s response to victims of domestic violence and stalking.

Prior to earning her J.D. degree from the George Washington University Law School, Mary was a student attorney in the Domestic Violence Advocacy Project. Mary earned her B.A. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.