meet the team

Dr. Cassie Yackley is a master trainer and trauma-responsive practice content expert. Dr. Yackley has spent her professional career committed to understanding and effectively addressing the impact of traumatic exposure on children, families, and systems by bringing together recent discoveries from developmental neuroscience, attachment, & implementation science to help professionals learn how reflective practice leads to better working environments and outcomes for professionals and those they serve.

Dr. Yackley’s company (Cassie Yackley, Psy.D., PLLC) was formed in 2016 to meet the profound need for expert training and consultation in trauma responsive practices/systems in human service agencies throughout the state faced by impact of the opioid epidemic and the crisis in the children’s mental health and child protection systems.  Dr. Yackley has extensive experience consulting with agencies to develop system-wide cultural shifts and to implement organizational change toward trauma-responsive policies and practices.  She leads learning communities in trauma responsive care by conducting foundational training and facilitating monthly reflective supervision/consultation to professionals across disciplines and has developed assessment and implementation tools and toolkits to support trauma responsive change.  

As a trainer, Dr. Yackley provides keynote presentations at association conferences and offers an array of single event training sessions to audiences of all sizes throughout New England and nationally.  Over the past four years, she has presented hundreds of times to more than 75 different agencies, associations, and/or school districts for professionals across human service sectors that include: mental health clinicians, home visitors, early childcare providers, law enforcement agents/emergency first responders, psychiatric providers, integrated health network associates, medical professionals, educators, and substance use disorder providers.

In collaboration with the Behavioral Health Improvement Institute at Keene State College, Dr. Yackley has led (as project director/principal investigator) several statewide projects supporting the implementation of trauma responsive practices across systems by obtaining grant funding through state agencies and private endowments/foundations.  Through project GROW (Generating Resilience, Outcomes, and Wellness), Dr. Yackley and the NH Department of Education Office of Student Wellness are working with six NH school districts over a four-year period to align school policies and practices with the principles of trauma-informed care.  As director of the NH Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) Provider Network, Yackley has built a statewide, sustainable system of CPP providers across the state by conducting endorsed CPP learning collaboratives to roster mental health clinicians, providing ongoing consultation to CPP supervisors, and by building awareness and providing advocacy for CPP at the state level.

While with the Dartmouth Trauma Interventions Research Center, Dr. Yackley served as administrative director for an Administration for Children, Youth, and Families (ACF) grant transforming New Hampshire’s Division for Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) into a trauma-informed system through the Partners for Change project.  Over a three-year period, Dr. Yackley trained all of NH’s child protection and juvenile justice professionals and was embedded in each of the state’s district office consulting with staff  implement trauma responsive practice, including instituting universal screening for trauma and mental health for all adjudicated youth.

In addition to more than 25 years as a mental health clinician, psychological evaluator, and program manager, for nearly a decade Dr. Yackley was the Director of Training for an American Psychological Association accredited doctoral internship training program in psychology within a community mental health and integrated primary care setting.  In that role, she prepared doctoral interns to serve unserved populations (primarily children with severe emotional disturbances (SED) and adults with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI)) with a focus on trauma and autism spectrum disorders.

Dr. Cassie Yackley is deeply passionate about addressing the epidemic of violence in our society and to mitigating the impact of traumatic exposure on children, families, and systems.  Her true hope is foster compassion, reflection, and community in others so that, together, we can build a more connected hopeful society.  As such, Dr. Yackley has become a state leader and well-known expert in building trauma responsive communities of care who can count on a vast number of partners and collaborators throughout New England to engage in efforts towards trauma responsive care.