Our People

Faculty —

Douglas Balder, is an architect, designer and activist. Balder has worked with some of the world’s leading designers to create internationally recognized museum exhibitions and learning environments. Among his designs are the All Stars Project’s youth development and performing arts center on 42nd Street, the New Jersey All Stars Scott Flamm Center for Afterschool Development, the Russian Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, the Dinosaur Halls at the American Museum of Natural History, the Indiana State Museum Permanent Exhibition, and the Museum of Prehistory in Taiwan. Doug co-leads the Developmental Philosophy Group.

David Belmont is a musician, community organizer and long-time activist with political reform efforts. Since the 1970s as part of Manhattan’s rock and performance art scenes, Belmont has composed music for poetry, mime, theatre, film and dance and has independently produced 21 albums of his work. He currently serves as musical composer and arranger for the Castillo Theatre and The WindWater Ensemble, and co-leads Live Music Continuum workshops with Mary Abrams. He studied philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Elena Boukouvala, M.A. is a drama therapist and psychologist working in schools, mental hospitals, rehab wards and refugee camps in Europe, Asia and Africa. Founder of “Play Is Hope,” she links refugees with local residents and NGOs. Elena received an M.A. in Counseling from Univ. of Nottingham and in Drama and Movement Therapy from the Univ. of London. She has a B.A. in Psychology from Aristotle Univ. in Greece. Elena is on the Board of London All Stars and an organizer for Performing the World.

Jessie Fields M.D. is a Harlem-based internist, physician educator, poet and political activist. Growing up in poverty in the Black community of Philadelphia, Jessie set out on a career to bring better health conditions to poor urban communities. Awarded a National Public Health Service Corps medical scholarship, she attended Bryn Mawr College and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She has served as a primary care physician in the Harlem community for over three decades and currently sees patients from across New York City’s diverse communities. She is a member of the All Stars Project, Inc., Board of Directors, a champion of youth development, and active in the grassroots movement to safeguard public housing in New York City.

Alvaader Frazier, Esq., is a long time community organizer politicized by the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. She received her law degree from Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, California and has worked as a human rights attorney. Frazier is also a prolific poet, writer and patron of the arts.

Dan Friedman, Ph.D. is project manager of Let’s Learn! a global online learning community, created in partnership with Lloyd International Honors College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is managing producer of the “All Power to the Developing,” podcast series and artistic director of the Fred Newman Project — a documentary video series exploring the philosophical and political contributions of the late ESI co-founder Fred Newman. Friedman is author of the 2021 text, Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers, and is the author/co-author of 17 theatrical plays. He serves as Artistic Director Emeritus of the Off-Off-Broadway Castillo Theatre, which has produced progressive, community-based political plays for over 30 years. Read more.

Mary Fridley is co-creator and leader (with the late Susan Massad) of The Joy of Dementia (You Gotta Be Kidding!) and coordinator of Reimaging Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice. An accomplished teacher and workshop leader, Mary practiced social therapy for 12 years and uses the social therapeutic approach as an Institute faculty member. Additionally, Mary is a guest blogger for agebuzz.com and a playwright and theater director. She makes her living as a non-profit fundraising consultant.

Lenora Fulani, Ph.D. — is co-founder of the All Stars Project and its “Operation Conversation, Cops and Kids,” and “UX,” a free, university-style school for working class and poor adults. For decades, she led community organizing efforts across the country — including several runs for President (“Lenora B. Fulani Campaign for Fair Elections”), and in 1988 became the first woman and first African American to appear on the presidential ballot in all 50 states. Beloved in poor communities from Harlem to Compton, Fulani sparked controversy in her unflinching commitment to the development of all. She earned her doctorate in developmental psychology at the City University of New York and as a guest researcher at Rockefeller University, investigating the interplay of social environment and learning. She is the editor of the The Psychopathology of Everyday Racism and Sexism, and her seminal papers with Fred Newman include, Let’s Pretend: Solving the Education Crisis in America.

Christine Helm, M.Ed., leads philosophy / methodology seminars for an international assortment of students studying the social therapeutic approach and is co-leader of its Developmental Philosophy Group. She earned an M.A. in Anthropology and Education and M.Ed. in Applied Anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Raquell Holmes, Ph.D., biologist, educator and talented improviser, is founder and director of improvscience, a consulting firm that offers a social therapeutic approach to leadership development in the sciences, mathematics and tech communities. Among the initiatives she has spearheaded, is the multidisciplinary Cultivating Ensembles conference, that seeks to build community and conversation across the arts, humanities and STEM. Her grassroots initiatives include Uncomfortable Independent Conversations (across race and class) and the improvscience Freedom Festival. Trained as a cell biologist at Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Harvard Medical School, and later at the East Side Institute in social therapeutics, she brings her relational-human development skills to support scientists to build collaborative learning and research environments. Raquell is the author of A Cell Biologist’s Guide to Modeling and Bioinformatics.

Maureen Kelly, M.A., is a principal with Performance of a Lifetime. She has extensive experience working with Fortune 500 companies as an executive leader and management consultant, and previously held positions with Citibank and JPMorganChase. She earned her M.A. in organizational psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and B.S. in finance and international relations from the University of Delaware.

Gwen Lowenheim, M.S. Ed., is a learning design specialist and TESOL instructor. She is co-founder/co-director of The Snaps Project, an educational consulting firm. Gwen trains and supervises educators and social entrepreneurs around the world in a social therapeutic, performance-based learning approach that brings creativity and innovation into classrooms and community-based programs. Her programs introduce theatrical improvisation, philosophical exploration, remix and group play as part of developing collaborative teams, language learning and stress management.

Susan Massad, M.D., (1938-2021) a physician with 51 years of practice and teaching in internal medicine, was co-creator and leader (with Mary Fridley) of The Joy of Dementia (You Gotta Be Kidding!) and a founding member of Reimagining Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice. In 2006, Susan launched a senior theater workshop for the All Stars Project and was a faculty member of the East Side Institute, where she led conversations on health, wellness and growing older. She is the co-author of several articles on the Joy of Dementia, including a chapter that appears in The Applied Improvisation Mindset published in August 2021. Dr. Massad was passionate about the medical conversation and has been widely recognized for bringing improvisation and performance into the medical education of resident physicians. Her book, Medicine Across Borders, The Subjectivity of Health and Healing, presents a collection of essays and presentations on doctor/patient conversation and medical methodology. Susan also wrote a play, Remember? Remember!, that deals with aging and memory loss, as well as a short opera, The Crisis. Read More.

Marian Rich is a performance activist, comic educator and play revolutionary. Trained as an actress, comedic improviser and theatrical director, Marian has spent over 30 years designing and delivering improvisational workshops and programs in which people come together to grow and develop. Her playful / philosophical sessions during International Class residencies have impacted activists, educators and scholars who are looking for ways to infuse their work with the power of performance. She is the co-author (with Carrie Lobman) of “Playing Around with Changing the World,” which appears in The Applied Improvisation Mindset, to be published by Bloomsbury Press. Her recent article – “A Year of Creating Heart in a Havenless World” appears in POIESIS: A Journal of the Arts and Communication. She is a founding member of the Global Play Brigade.

Cathy Salit is a social entrepreneur, speaker, coach, improviser, and performance activist. She is the founder and lead organizer of the Global Play Brigade, a newly formed coalition of performance activists that is offering free play sessions around the world during the pandemic. As a founder and now CEO Emerita of the award winning leadership consultancy Performance of a Lifetime, she led the growth of the company for over 23 years, working with thousands of leaders and teams in top brand companies across the globe. She has been active as a community organizer since she was a teenager; working on many grassroots projects including alternative schools, teen pregnancy prevention programs, independent political campaigns, the All Stars Project and the Performing the World and Applied Improv Network global conferences. Cathy is the author of Performance Breakthrough: A Radical Approach to Success at Work (Hachette 2016). She’s an artistic associate at the Castillo Theatre in NYC, on the advisory board of the Freestyle Love Supreme Academy and an occasional jazz singer; recent performances include The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, LI and the San Sebastian Jazz Festival in Spain.

Janet Wootten, M.Phil., is a member of the Institute’s Board and a leader of its community fundraising. A senior public affairs and communications professional, she advances its web and social media initiatives and, alongside the social and emotional development faculty, leads the study group for the Study Program in Social Therapeutics. Jan received her M.Phil. in developmental psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College.

Social Therapy and Emotional Development Faculty —

The Institute is privileged to have on our faculty long time practitioners of the social therapeutic approach to emotional development. As therapists and coaches, they bring to their teaching, training, public speaking and writing an expertise in the group building process and a wealth of experience helping adults, children, teens and families to emotionally develop. The Social Therapy and Emotional Development “department” is headed up by Joyce Dattner.

Christine LaCerva, M.Ed. (1950-2022) for many years, led the Social Therapy Group’s clinical practice, supervising therapists and students, leading groups, and organizing community programs. Under her leadership, staff conducted surveys of passers-by in multi-racial Brooklyn communities asking, “Does Our Community Need Therapy?” Using the social therapeutic approach, she pioneered a multi-family group approach to helping children and adolescents diagnosed along the Autism spectrum. She studied community psychology and special education (including education of the deaf) at Teachers College, Columbia University, and came to therapeutics with a performance background in modern dance. Read More.

Majo Castrillo, currently based in Aguacalientes, Mexico, is a social therapist, activist and entrepreneur specializing in supporting individuals, couples and groups to create environments for re-awakening their creativity, humanity and capacity to build and grow. Born and raised in Costa Rica, Majo completed her studies in psychology at the University of Costa Rica. She later completed her graduate studies at the Institute. With ESI Associate Miguel Cortes-Vasquez (founder of the Centro Fred Newman para la Terapia Social in Ciudad Juarez) Majo spearheaded the emerging Latin American hub for Social Therapeutics, dedicated to ongoing research, development and dissemination of the social therapeutic approach in Spanish speaking communities. One of her first projects was the completion of the Spanish-language edition of Lois Holzman’s “The Overweight Brain,” to be published in 2023.

Murray Dabby, LMSW, is a social therapist, trainer, relationship coach, performance activist and performing musician. He founded the Atlanta Center for Social Therapy and the Atlanta All Stars Performance Project and serves as director of the Society for the Integration of Spirituality and Psychotherapy. He met social therapeutics in the late 1970s while a researcher at Cornell Medical Center at New York Hospital. Unhappy with the limits of traditional psychotherapeutics, he trained in social therapy in 1981, and began his practice at the Long Island Social Therapy Center. At professional conferences, in college classrooms and as a supervisor of practitioners, Murray advances a philosophically-oriented, thoroughly improvisational approach to emotional development for families and groups. A program innovator, he co-founded two skills and improv-based therapeutic programs, ‘Couples College’ and ‘Curtain-Up, Anxiety Down.’ He is co-author with Carrie Sackett of Social Therapeutic Coaching: A Practical Guide to Group and Couples Work (Routledge, 2024). He received his MSW from Columbia University.

Joyce Dattner is a life performance coach who has led groups and practiced social therapeutics for over 40 years. Joyce directs Life Performance Coaching and leads in-person and virtual social therapeutic coaching groups from coast to coast. While a NYC public school teacher in the 1970s, she joined East Side Institute founder Fred Newman and other educators and helping professionals in developing social therapeutics. A faculty member of the Institute’s Social Therapy and Emotional Development Department, Joyce is an accomplished teacher and facilitator who has travelled the globe to help advance social therapeutics. She is founding director of the All Stars Project (ASP) of the San Francisco/Bay Area and a former member of the ASP national board.

Ann Green, PMHNP, is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and social therapist in private practice in NYC. She is the East Side Institute’s director of professional outreach and produces the Institute’s Conversations with Practitioners, a series designed to introduce clinicians, coaches and peer counselors to Social Therapy and social therapeutics. Ann received a Master’s degree from Hunter College, where she was awarded the Certificate of Merit for Demonstrated Commitment in Professional Leadership.

Elyse Mendel is a social therapeutic coach for Developing Across Borders. She has 40 years experience as a community activist with the All Starts Project’s youth development and community theatre programs. Elyse recently retired from her position as Director of Career Services at Baruch College where she utilized improvisational play and other group building approaches with graduate students. She has a Masters Degree in education from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Rachel Mickenberg, L.C.S.W., is a social worker and social therapist. She is a co-founder of the High School for Public Service, a unique and innovative public high school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn where young people grow and develop emotionally in groups. A graduate of the Hunter College School of Social Work, Rachel received her advanced training at the Institute. She has a social therapy practice in Manhattan.

Hugh Polk, M.D., is a psychiatrist and social therapist with decades of experience in bringing the social therapeutic approach to community mental health centers and hospitals throughout New York City. He was unit chief of the inpatient treatment program at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell Medical Center, Westchester division, staff psychiatrist at the Furman Counseling Center at Barnard College, and currently serves as medical director for Emblem/Health. He completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, his M.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and his psychiatric residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Barbara Silverman, L.C.S.W., founded and leads Developing Across Borders, a virtual, international group activity with a focus on emotional growth and community building. Throughout her career as an educator and clinician, she has created self-organizing, group-based activities — bringing social therapeutics and a focus on development into community-based agencies, mental health centers and schools. Silverman has a large, social therapy practice in Manhattan. She received her Masters of Social Work in 1974 from Adelphi University.