Top Row: Dr. Barbara Plested, Dr. Pamela Jumper-Thurman
Bottom Row: Dr. Irene Vernon, Martha Burnside, Andrea Israel

Currently not pictured: Dr. Norberto Valdez, Dr. Richard Breaux and Dr. Maricela DeMirjyn

Dr. Pamela Jumper-Thurman - pamela.thurman@colostate.edu

Pamela is an enrolled member of the Western Cherokee tribe and is a Senior Research Scientist with CA7AE: HIV/AIDS Prevention Project. She brings 15 years of experience in research on such topics as cultural competence, mental health, substance abuse, violence and victimization, rural women's concerns, HIV/AIDS prevention, solvent abuse, and partner violence as well as an additional 15 years in the provision of program evaluation and direct treatment and prevention services.

She is a co-developer and co-author of the Community Readiness Model and has directly applied the model in over 800 communities Nationally as well as Internationally. She has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator for federal grants that examined intimate partner violence, methamphetamine prevention, rural drug use, American Indian substance use/epidemiology and solvent use among youth. She is currently Principal Investigator of a Center for Disease Control and Prevention project, "Advancing HIV/AIDS Prevention in Native Communities" and serves as the Project Director/Team Leader of the Evaluation Component for Native Aspirations II, in collaboration with Kauffman and Associates, Inc., who leads a project funded by SAMHSA to prevent suicide in Native communities. She has served as a member of the National CSAT Advisory Council and a Board Member for the Society for Prevention Research. She was a special appointee to the Cherokee Children's Commission by former Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller, a member of Roslynn Carter's Caregiving Panel, and a team member of First Lady Laura Bushs' initiative "Helping Americas Youth".

On a personal note, she is a published photographer, an artist who has exhibited throughout the United States, and an award winning jeweler who has had several one woman art shows.

Back to Top

Dr. Barbara Plested - barbara.plested@colostate.edu

Barbara Plested is a Research Scientist who has worked extensively in the provision of direct services to various special populations including American Indian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, Native Alaskan, child and adolescent, female, and jail-based programs. She has twenty years of experience, serving both as an administrator as well as a therapist in the fields of mental health and substance abuse in addition to her 15 years of research experience.

She serves as an evaluator and grant writer for several Native American programs and is one of the co-developers of the Community Readiness Model. She has applied the model in over 800 communities both National and Internationally. She has conducted research using the model on a variety of issues: intimate partner violence, HIV/AIDS prevention, methamphetamine prevention, drug and alcohol prevention, prevention of head injury, and environmental trauma. The Community Readiness Model has been used successfully in urban areas, Alaskan villages, and Native reservation areas throughout the United States as well as internationally to effect community change.

Barbara has published extensively and has served on Roslynn Carter's panel on intergenerational caregiving and participated as a team member of First Lady Laura Bushs' initiative "Helping America's Youth". She was a recipient of the first Indian Health Service Director of the Year award in 1989, an award voted on by Program Directors throughout the United States.

Back to Top

Dr. Irene Vernon - irene.vernon@colostate.edu

Dr. Vernon is the Department Chair of Ethnic Studies, and a Co-Project Director for CA7AE: HIV/AIDS Prevention Project. Dr. Vernon specializes in Native American Studies, Multicultural Studies, and Theories of Ethnicity. Her intellectual interests and research include Native American health disparities, particularly HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Vernon has written the definitive book Killing Us Quietly: Native Americans and HIV/AIDS, as well as other monographs, resource manuals, and articles. She has co-authored several articles with Dr. Thurman and one with Dr. Plested on HIV in Native communities. She is a tireless advocate for healthier Native communities and also authored the National Congress of American Indians resolution to recognize the first National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, held March 21, 2007.

Irene Vernon is of Mescalero-Apache, Yaqui, and Mexicana descent.

Back to Top

Dr. Richard Breaux - richard.breaux@colostate.edu

Richard M. Breaux is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies. His areas of research and interest include Race and Higher Education, African American History and Studies, Black Queer Studies, and social constructions of Black Manhood and Womanhood. He has published in the Journal of African American History, the Great Plains Quarterly, the History of Education Quarterly, and a number of anthologies on the subject of African American education, civil rights, and cultural expression. In ETST 412 African American Siutation, Breaux explores African American politics, gender, and sexuality in the Post Civil Rights Era and the politics and stigma surrounding the Black sexuality, politics, religion, and the HIV epidemic.

He previous work outside of academia includes work as a STI/ Teen Pregnecy Prevention advisor for Booth Memorial Center in Oakland, Califronia.

Back to Top

Dr. Maricela DeMirjyn - maricela.demirjyn@colostate.edu

Maricela DeMirjyn is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Perspectives from the University of California, Santa Barbara while lecturing as a Chicana Dissertation Fellow in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department. Her training is in the narrative analysis of life stories and her research interests include gender, sexuality and Chicana/Latina mixed identities. Maricela's teaching expertise is in social justice and equity issues, feminist and queer theories, critical pedagogies and alternative research methodologies within higher education.

Her social service experience is in the fields of family violence and addiction counseling within Latina/o communities. Maricela has served as a director and program manager for two emergency treatment centers, as well as a prevention educator and counselor for a drug abuse and alcoholism center. As a community facilitator, she has also worked in a teen & toddler program and in an art therapy program for developmentally disabled. Maricela holds a M.A. in Women’s Studies with an emphasis in Art Therapy, as well as a B.S. in Biopsychology.

Back to Top

Martha Burnside - martha.burnside@colostate.edu

Martha Burnside is a Research Associate who serves as a Tribal Liaison and a Community Readiness Trainer for CA7AE: HIV/AIDS Prevention Project. Martha has also served as the Field Director on two projects: 1) The "Indian Epidemiology" project which has tracked patterns, trends, causes and consequences of drug and alcohol use among American Indian youth throughout the United States; and 2) "Protecting Native Youth, Honoring the Next Seven Generations", a five year tribal collaborative project to develop and test methods that will produce a successful, culturally sensitive, longitudinal study of risk, protective and resilience factors related to delinquency among Indian youth.

Martha graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and received her B.A. from Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Martha is also a published poet, an artist, and an enrolled member of the Sac & Fox Nation of Oklahoma.

Back to Top

Andrea Israel - andrea.israel@colostate.edu

Andrea Israel is a Research Associate for CA7AE: HIV/AIDS Prevention Project. As a CBA Specialist and an Evaluation Assistant, she provides our team with computer graphics, travel preparations, Community Readiness phone interviews, and she assists with Community Readiness Trainings.

Andrea has coordinated the development of resource materials such as fact sheets targeting American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian populations, as well as CA7AE's Community Mobilization Toolkit.

Andrea is an alumnus of Colorado State University, having graduated in 2005 with a Bachelors of Arts in Sociology and Liberal Arts, and she has also received a certificate in Native American studies from Ethnic Studies. Andrea is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.

Back to Top