ACE Foundation Leadership
Board Members & Officers
Marsha Wineburgh, DSW, LCSW-R
President
Michael Crocker, Ph.D.
Treasurer
As Founder and Clinical Director of the SAT Project, Michael Crocker is a passionate advocate for shame reduction in the treatment of sexual compulsivity. He works with patients to explore the emotional and historical roots of interpersonal relationships, intimacy, and sexual behavior. Dr. Crocker’s clinical approach is informed by his research on childhood trauma and attachment, including his doctoral dissertation on out-of-control sexual behavior in men, published in the Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions. He has seen through research and practice how emotional neglect impacts sexual behavior and relationships in adulthood. Trauma robs us of choice. Michael helps people rediscover their capacity for joy, play, and intimacy.
Jerry Floersch, PhD, LCSW
Member-at-large
Jerry Floersch is an associate professor of social work at Rutgers University. Dr. Floersch is the author of Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness, published by Columbia University Press (2002), where, utilizing ethnographic and socio-historical methods, he examined the rise of community support services, the rise of the case manager and case management. He is a NIMH K08 recipient (2004-2009) for training in and development of qualitative methods to study youth subjective experience of psychotropic treatment. Dr. Floersch conducted a follow-up ethnography to Meds, Money & Manners, which led to a second book, On Having and Being a Case Manager (2010). His research/practice methodology is developed in a book Qualitative Methods for Practice Research (2013), published on Oxford University Press. From 2010 to 2017 he was the director of Rutger’s DSW program, where he developed a case study method and curriculum for advanced clinical training. He is the past co-president (2017-2019) of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work. In 2019 he was inducted as a fellow in the Society for Social Work and Research, the flagship society for social work research.
Dr. Floersch has practiced across many settings: in-patient hospitals, outpatient substance abuse, and community mental health centers and has expertise with adolescents and young adults, especially among those having difficulty making transitions from home to college, home to work, or from home to independent living.
Helen Goldberg, LCSW-R
Member-At-Large
Jaimee Arnoff, Ph.D.
Member-At-Large
Jaimee Arnoff, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist with extensive experience across hospital systems, community mental health programs, and residential treatment settings. Her clinical work focuses on adolescents and young adults with high-risk clinical presentations, including internalizing disorders, suicidality and self-harm, complex family dynamics, and chronic pain. A graduate of Gallaudet University and fluent in American Sign Language, Dr. Arnoff also brings a strong commitment to accessibility and cultural responsiveness in mental health care for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing individals.
Dr. Arnoff has spent many years working in family court as a forensic evaluator and expert witness, completing court-ordered psychological and parenting evaluations to support real-world decisions affecting children and families. She has also held roles as a clinical supervisor and clinic supervisor, contributing to the training and development of clinicians working in complex treatment settings, and is a nationally active clinical educator who develops and delivers professional trainings for mental health professionals.
In addition to providing psychological assessment and therapy services through private practice, she serves as the psychologist for James’s Warriors, a not-for-profit focused on youth mental health and suicide prevention, and sits on multiple advisory and editorial boards focused on clinical education, digital health innovation, and ethically grounded mental health program development.
Shaun Peknic, LMSW
Member-At-Large
Shaun Peknic is a therapist and the SAT Project Director, managing client intake, staffing, and educational programs for clinicians. For twenty years, he explored the human condition onstage as a theatre director, developing work centered on queer identity, family trauma, and the subconscious. Most notably, he served as Associate/Resident Director for Once the Musical on Broadway and all national and international tours. He now brings this background into his clinical work, supporting clients as they tell their own stories offstage. Shaun integrates his deep understanding of storytelling and relationship dynamics into his therapeutic approach with clients, focusing on compulsive sexual behavior and attachment issues.
Beth Pagano, MSW, LCSW-R
President, New York State Society for Clinical Social Work
Karen Kaufman, Ph.D., LCSW-R
Past President, New York State Society for Clinical Social Work
Shannon Boyle, LCSW
Past President, New York State Society For Clinical Social Work
Advisory Board
Karen E. Baker, MSW
Advisory Board Member
Karen E. Baker is a clinical social worker-psychoanalyst who maintains a full-time
private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Ann Arbor, Michigan with
children, adolescents and adults. She is the previous Child Development Director
of Allen Creek Preschool, Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is a preschool whose curriculum and philosophy is predicated on psychoanalytic developmental principles. She is on the faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work (ICSW) currently serving as a clinical consultant and dissertation committee member. Karen is a Consulting Editor of Psychoanalytic Social Work. She is the Past-
President of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work
(AAPCSW) and continues to serve on this National Board as the co-chair of the Child and Adolescent Committee
Arthur A. Gray, PhD, CGP
Advisory Board Member
Arthur A. Gray, PhD, an honorary member of the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (IPSS), is faculty, supervisor, and serves on its Coordinating Committee. Other faculty/supervisory positions are: the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society’s Group Therapy Department, the Training Institute for Mental Health, and Adelphi University. He is: Council Member of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPS), on the Institute Committee of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and on the editorial board of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Journal. He consults with self psychology groups in South Africa and in Japan, and conducts supervision online using his group supervision model. His published articles apply self psychology and subjectivity theory to individual, couples, group, and supervision. He has a specific interest in how improvisation informs the therapeutic process. His latest publication is, “Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: Improvisation in Psychoanalysis,” in Psychoanalytic Dialogues 2015. In private practice in New York City, Arthur treats adults using individual, couples, and group psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
Susan A. Klett, Ph.D., Psy.D., LCSW-R
Advisory Board Member
Our Programming Team
Kara Dean-Assael, DSW, LMSW
Director of Professional Development
Dr. Kara Dean-Assael has been working in the social work field since 1997. As an innovator, she develops, coordinates, manages, produces, and facilitates various programs, projects, and trainings both locally and nationally. From 2006-2013, she was a collaborative member of the research team that developed, tested, and disseminated the nationally known evidence-based treatment, the “4 Rs and 2 Ss for Strengthening Families Program” and currently trains mental health practitioners on the model.
In 2012, she co-founded the 501c3 Fareground, Inc., an anti-hunger program focusing on food justice in Dutchess County, NY, and surrounding areas. Dr. Dean-Assael is passionate about collaboratively creating and disseminating programs and practices to improve mental health and outcomes for youth, families, and adults and centering human rights. She served on the Commission on Human Rights in the City of Beacon, NY from 2020-2024.
Dr. Dean-Assael holds a BA in Psychology with Minors in both Sociology and Women’s Studies from West Virginia University (1996), an MSW degree from Columbia University School of Social Work (2001), and a Doctorate in Clinical Social Welfare from New York University (2020). As a native of West Virginia, she’s attached to her roots of family and resilience.
