Boudreau is a Master Social Worker MSW, trainer with the Child Welfare Academy, and proud Yup’ik Eskimo from the village of St. Mary’s, Alaska. Her Yup’ik name is Apugen, after her maternal grandmother. She is the president of a non-profit, Arctic Winds Healing Winds. She served on the Alaska Children’s Trust board and a workgroup member within the Capacity Building for Tribes. In the past, she helped establish an Alaska Native Unit within Alaska CARES, a child advocacy center. In that role, she conducted forensic interviews with children, and provided advocacy services and therapy for Alaska Native and American Indian families whose child(ren) have been severely physically or sexually abused. As a prior Children’s Justice Act Project Coordinator for the Tribal Law & Policy Institute, she helped develop an educational video project highlighting child sexual abuse in Alaska, grasping the wisdom of Elders and identifying ways for healing to apply to traumatic experiences.

Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD is a licensed psychologist, trained as a Harvard Medical School Fellow. She is a trauma survivor, who has worked for twenty-five years with the complex issues of trauma, integration and behavior change across every level of system from individuals, to groups, to large systems and countries, including her role as the expert consultant for documentary film The Silence which aired on April 19, 2011 on Frontline regarding priest sexual abuse in a Native Alaskan Village to ensure adequate resources for viewers and for proper follow on support for trauma survivors. She has worked with individuals and groups in large clinics, and clinics in housing projects, in residential treatment facilities, on psychiatric units and medical hospital units, and in private practice. Her work includes over a decade of working with traumatized children and adolescents in residential treatment and psychiatric units.