Impact Stories & Proof of Healing
When the headlines fade, real healing begins. Here are stories of how JG CoLab supports communities to move from crisis to resilience—through art, listening, leadership, and care.
280+ communities • Federal consultant • Featured on the TODAY show
Each story below represents real work we’ve done with survivors, communities, and leaders navigating tragedy. We use a Challenge → Approach → Outcome framework so you can see not just what we did, but how it created lasting impact.
Healing Through Art After Crisis
Challenge
Following multiple disasters and mass violence incidents, communities were looking for ways to support survivors emotionally while staying connected long after first responders left. But many healing efforts were short-term or lacked trauma-informed leadership that honored both emotional care and sustainable systems.
Approach
I partnered with Stars of HOPE to build sustainable models for art-based healing, scalable program expansion, and trauma-informed community partnerships. We restructured operations, designed repeatable activation models, and created accessible programming for communities processing grief and trauma, embedding clinical partnerships and peer support structures.
Outcome
Impact: Stars of HOPE scaled by over 250%, serving more than 280 communities impacted by crisis. Costs were reduced while impact grew, establishing a national model for creative expression as an emotional recovery tool.
Centering Survivor Leadership in Long-Term Recovery
Challenge
Survivor communities often carry the emotional and logistical weight long after media attention fades. National survivor-led groups require structure, trust, and trauma-informed practices to collaborate effectively across incidents while preserving dignity and honoring lived experiences.
Approach
As a founding member of STOP, I worked alongside survivors and advocates to co-create peer-led frameworks for cross-community collaboration, remembrance planning, peer engagement, and long-term advocacy efforts. My role supported operational structure, trauma-informed advisory processes, and systems that centered survivor voices while protecting emotional integrity.
Outcome
The STOP Coalition now operates as a trusted national voice supporting survivor-led recovery and advocacy across mass violence events. Survivor leaders have tools to engage ethically with funders, media, and public systems while protecting emotional safety.
Training + Technical Assistance
Challenge
Communities impacted by mass violence needed both immediate crisis response and long-term trauma-informed care structures. Federal and national response teams lacked trauma-informed guidance on peer support, survivor advisory, remembrance planning, and emotional safety frameworks that honored the lived experiences of survivors.
Approach
I consulted with national networks and provided subject matter expertise to federal agencies, national hotlines, victim service providers, and remembrance planners. This included developing training content, survivor-centered operational guidance, and emotional care protocols for leadership and frontline responders.
Outcome
Federal-level victim assistance teams, community responders, and remembrance planners now have access to trauma-informed training that integrates peer voice, ethical survivor engagement, and long-term system sustainability, while protecting providers and responders from compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma.
Community Year-Mark Healing: Post-Tragedy Support
Challenge
After a mass violence incident, one community faced the difficult task of honoring loss while creating space for survivors and families to safely process ongoing grief. Public events and remembrance activities often risk retraumatization without proper emotional care frameworks in place.
Approach
I partnered with local leaders, survivor families, remembrance organizers, and support teams to co-design a trauma-informed year-mark plan. We balanced public visibility with private space for survivors, trained staff in vicarious trauma protocols, and facilitated creative healing opportunities that provided survivors and their families with safe outlets for reflection.
Outcome
The remembrance event offered multiple access points for those impacted, both publicly and privately, while respecting survivor autonomy. Media engagement was carefully managed, peer support networks were activated, and healing art sessions provided a compassionate and hopeful space for families to reflect at their own pace.