Our Advisory & Board Committees

Guidelines for the NYWE Advisory Committee

The NYWE was established with the mission of improving employment opportunities for NYC's adults recovering from a mental illness. This mission is advanced by providing a variety of assistance to existing provider agencies and programs, clinical as well as vocational.

This assistance takes many forms and includes: education of program staff on interventions proven effective in helping individuals secure competitive jobs; technical assistance to stimulate an organizational culture supportive of vocational services; directories of programs offering vocational services and other employment-related resources; using seed money to sponsor preferred best practices interventions; education of employers about the benefits of employing the recovering mentally ill and others.

The Work Exchange is most successful with the presence of an informed, active Advisory Committee, a committee equipped to set priorities on the use of the NYWE's finite resources.

It is expected that the committee members will be generous in their sharing about information they acquire in the course of their professional lives:

• new policy directives, statistics, program trends from SOMH, DMH, VESID etc,
• funding opportunities
• research findings and related information from the professional literature
• identifying service gaps in the NYC mental health/employment system.

In this role they provide extra eyes and ears for the NYWE staff to remain on the cutting edge of the employment field, which in turn flows to better training and technical assistance for NYWE clients.

It is also anticipated that from time to time the committee will develop working groups or task-oriented sub-committees to address immediate informational or programming needs — to which sub-committees additional external individuals may be added.

Advisory Committee

Barbara Adler, VESID Manhattan District Office
Sheila Akabas, Columbia University School of Social Work
Celia Brown, NYS OMH
Barbara Cohen, MHA of NYC
Michele Fontaine, Project Renewal
Nicole La-corte-Klein, Corporation for Supportive Housing
Susan Lally, Services for the Underserved
David Lehman, Venture House
Tamar Martin, Hunter College Dept. of Educational Foundation
Laverne Miller, Community Access
Ed O’Donnell, Goodwill Industries
Alysia Pascaris, New York Work Exchange
Marilyn Sachar, NYS OMH

Board Committee

Susan M. Bear, Jewish Board of Family & Children’s Services
Mark Bernstein, Transitional Services for New York, Inc.
Isaac Brown, Baltic Street Mental Health Board
Kenneth Dudek, Fountain House, Inc.
Joyce M. Pilsner, Riverdale Mental Health Association, Inc.
Edward Ross, International Center for the Disabled
Pamela D. Straker, Brooklyn Psychiatric Center, Inc.
Jonas Waizer, F.E.G.S
Robert Yankowitz, The Bridge, Inc.