Webinar: Cultivating Our Best Selves in Response to COVID-19 | Tuesday, March 17 at Noon PDT

Elaine Miller-Karas is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute and author of the book, Building Resiliency to Trauma, the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models® (2015). She has worked internationally to bring healing to the world’s community. Her models to date have been brought to 39 countries in Asia, Africa, North America, the Mid-East, South America and Europe. Ms. Miller-Karas is a recognized international speaker and author and has presented the Community Resiliency Model® at the Skoll World Forum and the United Nations. Her book was recently selected by the United Nations curated on-line library as one of the innovations that can help meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Ms. Miller-Karas is a founding member of the International Transformational Resilience Coalition and a leading advocate with regard to the impact of climate change on the human condition. She is a Senior Consultant to Emory University’s SEE Learning program, inspired by and launched by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New Delhi, India in April 2019. Ms. Miller-Karas contributed to the trauma-informed and resiliency-informed chapter (Chapter 2) in this curriculum, which is based upon the Community Resiliency Model®.  She is also on faculty at Loma Linda University’s School of Social Work.  

Ms. Miller-Karas has traveled internationally and trained mental health, health professionals and community leaders in social service agencies, hospitals and community organizations. She was TRI’s Project Manager for a State of California Innovations Grant in San Bernardino County, training community members in CRM® skills. Her work has taken her to Thailand after the tsunami of 2004, to Louisiana after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, to San Bernardino County after the 2008 Fires, to China after the Sichuan earthquake, to Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake and to Kenya, Africa after the post-election violence.   Ms. Miller-Karas has led TRI’s Global Trainers to Guatemala, Nepal, Germany, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Tanzania, Rwanda, Turkey and the Philippines to continue to expand the mission and vision of TRI, bringing biological-based skills to the world community. 

Ms. Miller-Karas' father served in the US Navy and she has a strong commitment to our military to destigmatize the impact of combat-zone trauma and other traumas that can occur while serving. She has presented TRM® and CRM® Skills to Edwards Air Force Base, Fort Drum and the Marine Base in Barstow, California. Ms. Miller-Karas is working on projects to bring CRM® skills to other military installations. She presented CRM® at the Wounded Warrior Chronic Pain Conference in San Diego and Washington D.C.  

Ms. Miller-Karas was the Associate Director of Behavioral Sciences at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center’s Family Practice Residency Program from 1994 until she resigned in 2006 to start TRI.  Earlier in her career, she did her graduate internship at Stanford University’s Perinatal Outreach Program and worked there as clinician and lecturer. She was the founder of Helping after Neonatal Death in Santa Clara County, California and directed it for six years. She now lives in Claremont, California with her husband, Jim. She has a wonderful family that includes, two children, Erik and Jessica, their spouses, Tanja and John, and a granddaughter, Madison.

Dr. Linda Grabbe is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner and Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. Her intellect and commitment to evidence-based research has made her a leader in pursuing research about models of intervention that can help the most marginalized of our society. Her clinical expertise is in primary care and mental health care for homeless or incarcerated women and youth, providing Community Resiliency Model (CRM) training to these populations in group settings.

Dr. Grabbe has many accomplishments and is a passionate advocate for the underserved. She is a healthcare provider with Community Advanced Practice Nurses, a small non-profit organization that operates a network of clinics in Atlanta homeless shelters for women, children, and youth. Her heart has no limit in how she cares for her community. She has expanded the reach of CRM within Georgia and beyond by helping to sponsor teacher training programs through Emory University. TRI, through her efforts, has trained chaplains of the juvenile justice system, nurses, physicians, social workers, psychologists, chaplains of Children’s Hospital, individuals who were once homeless and more.

Dr. Grabbe’s current research includes measuring the impact of a brief Community Resiliency Model training on the wellbeing of women in substance abuse treatment, as well as on wellbeing, resiliency, burnout, and effects of secondary traumatic stress in nurses, first responders, emergency department staff, and nursing students.

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