2025 Creative Arts Therapy Retreat

TRAINING DIRECTOR

Tami is the founder of Gatta Creative Arts Therapy, ​PLLC and co-founder of Curious Rebels, LLC. ​Over the years, she has chosen to further her ​studies in both the US and abroad. In 2013, she became the first American to complete a 3-month ​externship with Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor ​in respite care and alternatives to hospitalization ​for individuals navigating voices, visions and ​other experiences deemed “psychosis”.

In 2015, she began speaking more openly about her ​own history, ultimately becoming a Certified Peer ​Specialist and working in a NY-based crisis ​respite center. In 2016, Tami graduated from the ​Institute for Arts in Psychotherapy, where she went ​on to become Associate Director. In 2017, she was ​presented with the World Hearing Voices ​Congress Award for “Outstanding Contribution ​to the Growth and Development of the ​International Hearing Voices Movement”.

Tami specializes in building out strong academic and professional coursework and consultations geared toward developing the peer workforce, combatting fat discrimination, supporting traumatized staff and clients, utilizing creative arts therapies, and incorporating the tenets of the Hearing Voices Movement into clinical spaces. Tami is also interested in the ​meaningful use of self-disclosure, particularly as ​it pertains to power and privilege.

TRAINING FACULTY

As a licensed creative arts therapist, group facilitator, actress, advocate, and psychotherapist, Chantal Georges has become passionate about creating spaces for exploration, change, and development of skills in a creative and an embodied manner. She has designed and delivered trainings in various sectors both in-person and virtually. She provided corporate trainings with Bloom Education, ConnectNY, and Restaurant Opportunity Center of NY to name just a few. Her advocacy work and lived experiences led her to represent restaurant workers at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland sharing experiences of gender discrimination in the restaurant industry in 2006 with the UN special rapporteur. Chantal Georges is currently the director of the Therapeutic Rehabilitation department at Kings County Hospital.

TRAINING DIRECTOR

Adam Reynolds is a drama therapist and clinical social worker. Dr. Reynolds is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and most recently Adjunct Faculty in the graduate program in Drama Therapy at NYU. He is the Training Director for the DvT program in Taipei, Taiwan (發展性轉化法). He has a private practice working primarily with children, adults, and adolescents who have had experiences of interpersonal trauma as well as with LGBTQ+ clients.

Adam’s work in clinical settings initially focused on acute psychiatric care, working within Mt. Sinai Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center, and Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center; and during his doctoral studies, he worked at a number of community-focused clinics and organizations dealing with young people and helping to implement and research trauma-informed practices. His doctoral research focused on mutuality within the clinical encounter as expressed through the phenomenon of vicarious resilience – experiences of transformation, growth, and meaning that clinicians can have when working with people who have experienced traumatic events.