Service Leadership

Service Leadership

Heather Byrns, MA, LMHC, is Co-Director for INTERFACE Referral Service  at William James College.  She received her master’s degree in counseling psychology from Boston College and has been a licensed mental health counselor for 12 years. She has worked in clinical settings providing care to adolescents and their families struggling with a range of issues with particular expertise in eating disorders.  She has also worked on program design for local and state initiatives and has served on the city of Newton Youth Interagency Task Force and the Newton Youth Commission Advisory Board. Heather continues to promote access to care and education about mental health by providing local trainings, and in supervising the INTERFACE staff team.  She has worked with the INTERFACE Referral Service since 2010, and has helped the program expand to serve a growing number of communities and statewide initiatives in Massachusetts.

Tanya Snyder, M.Ed., LMHC is Co-Director of the INTERFACE Referral Service at William James College. She earned her M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology, with a specialization in Marriage & Family Therapy from Springfield College, and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor.  She has over 20 years of experience in the mental health care field, providing direct clinical care to individuals across the lifespan in a variety of settings. Additionally, she has served in a number of leadership positions within various mental health care organizations, has co-authored a workbook, and has presented both locally and nationally.  She has specialties in treating sexually abusive and inappropriate behaviors in juveniles, working with men who have engaged in sexually offending behaviors, and proudly serves on the MASOC Board and on the ATSA Juvenile Practices Committee. In her work with INTERFACE she is an advocate for access to care, provides training and education to community partners, engages in program development, and supervises INTERFACE Resource & Referral Counselors.

Kelly Anne Weaver, M.A. is the Operations Manager and has been working at the INTERFACE Referral Service since 2008. Kelly received her master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, and for many years Kelly worked as an LGBTQ Advocate at MassBay Community College.  In that role, Kelly led campus wide advocacy programs such as National Coming Out Day and Guest Speaker Panel Discussions to promote increased awareness of LGBTQ issues.  As a Team Leader for the INTERFACE Referral Service, Kelly supervises, trains and manages referral counselors and is passionate about providing the best customer service to clients in order to improve access to mental health services.  Kelly is also currently on the Speakers Bureau for Greater Boston PFLAG, which provides opportunities for dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity in order to increase understanding and respect for human diversity.

Renee Rejent-Bowser, LMHC is the Clinical Manager for the INTERFACE Referral Service at William James College.  She received her master’s degree in Expressive Therapies at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.  Prior to joining the INTERFACE Referral Service, she worked in various clinical settings including providing community-based service to children and families in the greater Lowell community, and provided individual and group therapy to adults with intellectual disabilities.  She is a trained art therapist and brings her creative background combined with her passion to help others in order to connect them with the care they need.  

Advisory Board

Margaret Hannah, M.Ed, GCEC, is the former Executive Director of the Freedman Center for Child and Family Development at William James College and now serves as a Senior Consultant to the Freedman Center at Teachers21.  She received her master’s degree in education with a concentration in community counseling and psychology from the University of Miami. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Executive Coaching from William James College and has completed two years of coursework in the Doctoral Program for Leadership Psychology at William James College. Ms. Hannah has worked in schools and agencies for over 25 years, designing and developing programs and facilitating teacher and parent education programs and support groups. She has served as a project director for three federal grants for the delivery of mental health services within schools, and a grant to integrate mental health services between schools and community agencies. She serves or has served on many committees and task forces within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts advocating for mental health services, including the Massachusetts Academy of Pediatrics Mental Health Task Force, serving as a Commissioner on the Governor’s Commission on Post-Partum Depression and the Commission on Behavioral Health and Upstream Prevention, Stakeholder group for the Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative, and the City of Newton City-wide Emergency Response Team (CERT).  In addition to having served as the Executive Director of the Freedman Center at William James College, she taught in the School Psychology Department as Adjunct Faculty.

 Per Dutton a management consultant who has 25 years' experience working in strategy, marketing, and data analytics with companies ranging from small start-ups to Fortune 50 companies. Per received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College and MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He lives in Newton with his wife and three children.

 

Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD is a forensic and clinical psychologist and an attorney. He is Associate Vice President for Community Engagement with oversight of key service-providing programs including the Freedman Center, Brenner Center, and PATHWAYS.  He is also Teaching Faculty for the Doctoral Clinical Psychology Program and for the Doctoral School Psychology Program.  He was instrumental in establishing the doctoral Concentration in Forensic Psychology and the doctoral Concentration in Children and Families of Adversity and Resilience (CFAR). Dr. Kinscherff is also Faculty at the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and Senior Associate for the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice.  During 2015-16 he will be a part-time Senior Fellow in Law and Neuroscience at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.  He is a member of the Massachusetts Governor's Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee and the Special Commission on Sexual Offender Recidivism. Dr. Kinscherff has previously served as Assistant Commissioner for Forensic Mental Health (MA Department of Mental Health), Director of Juvenile Court Clinic Services (MA Trial Court), and Director of Adult Forensic Services (Psychiatry and Law Program, Massachusetts General Hospital). His many publications include the co-authored book APA Ethics Code: Commentary and Case Illustrations (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 2009) and more recent publications on topics including mental health practice in juvenile justice contexts, special ethical and practice considerations in work with offenders, and international human rights law implications for forensic psychologists of the 2012 US Supreme Court case of Miller v. Alabama regarding mandatory life imprisonment without possibility of parole for offenses committed as a juvenile.