Davis Y. Ja, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Washington, and has been in the forefront of minority mental health services for the past 25 years. Dr. Ja was formerly director of the Richmond Maxi-Center of RAMS, and served as the founding chair of the Asian American Mental Health Task Force in 1982. In 1991, he left his position as Executive Director of Asian American Recovery Services (AARS, Inc.) of San Francisco to establish the independent consulting firm of Davis Y. Ja, Ph.D. & Associates. In 1998, the firm incorporated and became known as Davis Y. Ja and Associates, Inc. (DYJ, Inc.). Dr. Ja is also currently a Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology/Alliant University, where he teaches research and program evaluation. In addition, Dr. Ja continues to provide consultation to federal agencies including NIDA, NIAAA, CSAT, CSAP, and SAMSHA and serve as a grant reviewer for a number of these agencies. Dr. Ja has also served as the Principal Investigator on numerous local, state, and federal grants on criminal justices, substance abuse, AIDs, homelessness, and interventions with early childhood populations.

Lastly, Dr. Ja is also on the planning group for the CSAT National Summit on Recovery and was also previously a member of the CSAP National Advisory Council and chair of the CSAP evaluation subcommittee (1995-98). From 1996-2003, he was appointed by the Executive Office of the White House to be a member of the Drug Control Research, Data, and Evaluation Committee (DCRDEC) of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Dr. Ja has extensive clinical and research experience working with Asians and other ethnic groups. In the past 27 years, Dr. Ja has provided guidance and leadership in the field of substance abuse, mental health, and AIDS in the ethnic minority community to both youth and adult populations.

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Mary Gee
Project Coordinator / Vice President

Mary Gee has been employed as a Project/Research Coordinator with DYJ, Inc. since 1995, following completion of her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and was promoted to Vice-President in 2004. In addition to project management and administrative responsibilities, Mary has also written evaluation grant proposals which have been funded on state and federal levels, including SAMHSA/CMHS, OJJDP, and California State Board of Corrections.

Since 1998, she has also been active in numerous national organizations addressing the prevention, treatment and advocacy for eating disorders, including the Academy for Eating Disorders and Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy and Action (EDC). In 2000, the Family Action Council (FAC) was formed as the internal advocacy arm of EDC. Currently, Mary is co-chair of the FAC and also a member of the EDC Board of Directors.

Lastly, Mary is also a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco - Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her research interests include Asian Americans, eating disorders, access to care, and socio-cultural risk factors. She is a member of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and recipient of a two-year pre-doctoral NIMH/ASA Minority Fellowship as well as the 2005-2007 UCSF Graduate Dean's Health Science Fellowship.

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Jamie Chang
Senior Research Assistant

Jamie Chang started with DYJ in 2008 and is the senior research assistant for the TASH evaluation project (SAMSHA). Jamie received her BA from U.C. San Diego in 2002 and her MA from San Francisco State University in 2005 in Political Science (with an emphasis in research methodology). Since 2003, she has worked as a staff researcher at U.C. San Francisco. She works on multiple NIH funded studies on improving MRI diagnostic and monitoring tools for imaging patients with brain tumors.

Jamie Chang is currently a doctoral student in Sociology of Health and Illness at the University of California, San Francisco. She is interested in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Her graduate research is on the perceived health care needs of women with mental health and substance use issues experiencing homelessness, and the barriers and facilitators that exist in meeting those needs. In addition to this project, she has also worked on a number of projects on housing, disability, and long-term care.

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Bruce Cooper, Ph.D.
Statistician

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Frank Davis, Ph.D.
Consultant

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Elisabeth Dosa, MSW
Senior Research Assistant

Ms. Dosa is committed to participatory client focused evaluation and community based research methods that build community and organizational capacity. As a researcher and program evaluator for several non-profit organizations in Detroit, Michigan and Oakland, California, she focused on the issue areas of early care and education, mental health services for underserved populations, at risk youth, immigrant rights, environmental injustice, community development and organizing strategies to address the displacement and disinvestment faced by urban communities. Ms. Dosa's evaluation and research was selected for presentation at the Council on Social Work Education's 52nd Annual Symposium in 2006. Ms. Dosa received her M.S.W from the University of Michigan, School of Social Work in December of 2006. As a graduate student, she was a recipient of the Community-Based Initiative Fellowship, the Ginsberg Center Award for social service and social action, and a Merit Scholarship award for outstanding dedication to the field of social change. She is a registered Associate Clinical Social Worker with the Board of Behavioral Sciences in California.

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Cailin LaVallee
Research Assistant

Cailin LaVallee has been employed as a Research Assistant with DYJ, Inc. since 2007. Cailin received her Bachelor of Science in Communications from Boston College in 2005, and came to DYJ with extensive volunteer experience serving homeless youth and families. Her work at DYJ, Inc. involves evaluating programs serving San Francisco youth, including a SAMSHA-funded substance use treatment program for adolescents and an alternative school for juvenile offenders. She has been involved in multiple phases of the evaluation process, including research design, data collection, analysis, and reporting.

Cailin was a co-founder of StandUp for Kids San Francisco, a nationally recognized non-profit dedicated to serving homeless and street youth by providing outreach and preventative services. She has also served youth in her community through volunteering at public schools and peer mentoring. Cailin's research interests include children exposed to trauma and abuse, cultural issues surrounding mental health treatment, and the role of family in recovery for at-risk youth.

Outside of her work with DYJ, Inc., Cailin is actively involved in the San Francisco performing arts community. She has been a member of several semi-professional ballet companies performing at collaborative events, fundraisers, and choreographer festivals in the Bay Area.

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Eduardo Morales, Ph.D.
Consultant

Dr. Morales is a clinical and consulting psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology where he co-founded and coordinated the Multicultural and Community training program. He is also Executive Director of AGUILAS, an HIV prevention program for Latino gay/bisexual men, and has served as the Program Evaluator for the Epiphany Center in San Francisco for the past ten years. His current research and program evaluation areas include interventions with drug-exposed infants and their mothers, HIV prevention interventions for Latino and African American gay/bisexual men, and interventions with high-risk juvenile offenders. With high-risk youth, Dr. Morales developed and was director of an outpatient day treatment program for Latino youth in San Francisco, as well as the Program Evaluator of CADRE, a drug prevention program serving a variety of ethnic minority youth through a collaborative of eight community-based agencies.

In addition, Dr Morales has founded many programs and organizations in the areas of substances and HIV/AIDS, especially research and service programs addressing HIV within minority communities. He was also founder and first director of the AIDS Health Project of UCSF.

Dr. Morales was elected as President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues of the American Psychological Association (APA) (2003-06) and was one of the founders of Division 45 of APA (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues). He is also a member of various APA committees, boards and divisions, as well as a fellow in four APA Divisions. He received his B.S. degree at Fordham College in NYC and his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Texas Tech University.

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Oliver Rollins
Senior Research Assistant

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Zachary Smith
Research Assistant

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Daniel Taube, J.D., Ph.D.
Consultant

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Danny Huang, Ph.D.
Statistician

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Monica Molina
Research Coordinator

Monica Molina has been employed as a Research Assistant with DYJ, Inc. since 2005. Monica earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2005. She received additional recognition at USC as a member of Psi Chi, the National Honors Society in Psychology, and was a recipient of the Latino Honor Society Scholar Award. As an undergraduate, Ms. Molina gained research experience in the areas of youth social development and HIV/AIDS service quality. She has also gained experience in the area of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention by serving as a research assistant in the Organizational Research Department at Kaiser Permanente. Ms. Molina intends to continue her education in the field of Public Health. Her current research interests include community and international health, and culture and health psychology.

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Jason Savolainen
Senior Research Assistant

Jason Savolainen graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 and has been employed with DYJ, Inc. as a Research Assistant since 2006. Jason received an additional honors distinction from the UCLA Department of Anthropology in recognition of his undergraduate research thesis. Funded by the President's Undergraduate Fellowship, his work focused on the Mexican Day of the Dead as celebrated in Los Angeles. His research interests include issues of cultural identity, religious syncretism, contemporary and historic Mesoamerican civilizations, and archaeology. Since graduating, Jason has traveled throughout Spain, England, and the United States. He has also volunteered at the Cotsen Institute Zooarchaeology Lab at UCLA, sorting and identifying specimens of a variety of species of California fauna. Currently, in addition to his position with DYJ, Inc., Jason also freelances as a DJ, a billiard service tech, a set designer for stage and television, and as an artist. His future plans include taking the GRE, becoming a better photographer, achieving the fluency in Spanish required to read Don Quixote in its original context, and continuing to live in such a way that he has remarkable and compelling stories to tell when he is an old man.

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Stacy Wu
Senior Research Assistant

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Norma Timbang
Research Coordinator-Seattle

Norma Timbang is the Research Coordinator for DYJ's Seattle Office. She has extensive experience providing community program development and evaluation, cross-cultural services development, and participatory research methods for grassroots social change organizations and community-based human service providers. She is also one of the founding mothers and former executive director of Asian & Pacific Islander Women & Family Safety Center (Seattle) and former executive director of Asian Pacific AIDS Council (Seattle). She is currently serving on the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF - national board member and program committee chair); "Transforming Silence Into Action"; and the planning committee for Asian Pacific Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Network's 2006 national convention. Norma has also previously served on the Minority Executive Directors Coalition in King County; the King County Coalition Against Domestic Violence board of directors; and the national Violence Against Women Online Resources advisory board. She has provided consultation and briefings on committees and panels contributing to publications and policy on human trafficking and violence against women, such as the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues in Washington D.C., the Ford Foundation's publication on Asian Women's Issues and Concerns, and the Washington State Task Force on Human Trafficking. Norma's current research is on juvenile justice, bride trafficking, and human trafficking in Washington State. Norma has also served as a peer reviewer for scholarly journals such as Sage's Violence Against Women Journal and grants for NIJ, SAMSHA, Office on Violence Against Women, and the Pride Foundation.

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