All times Pacific
Karen is the Director of Windz Centre. She is an institute faculty teaching many of the Windz workshops and certificate programs. She organizes and designs training, oversees research projects, provides narrative therapy supervision and consults and trains walk-in clinics. For over 16 years, Karen supervised and provided single session therapy at a walk-in therapy clinic. Karen has provided consultation and clinical training to many organizations in Ontario, across Canada, and internationally regarding re-structuring service pathways to include brief services such as walk-in clinics. She has been teaching narrative and brief narrative therapy for over 30 years and is a therapist with 36 years of experience working with children and families. Karen has contributed numerous publications regarding applications of brief narrative therapy and research in brief services and walk-in therapy. She co-authored the Brief Services policy paper for the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health (Duvall, J., Young, K., Kays-Burden, A., 2012), No more, no less: Brief Mental Health Services for Children and Youth. Karen was the lead in the first in Ontario Brief Services Evaluation Project, 2014, a multi-organization evaluation of brief services. Karen has a great deal of knowledge and passion for narrative practices and is one of the few trainers who can teach the traditional aspects of the approach and new evolutions in the thinking. She has particular expertise in the application of narrative in brief and walk-in therapies. Karen is regarded as a trainer who conveys narrative ideas in very clear and useable ways.
Akansha Vaswani Bye, PhD, is an Acting Assistant Professor in the SPIRIT Lab (stands for Supporting Psychosis Innovation through Research, Implementation and Training) at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She grew up in Mumbai and her first learnings as a professional came from individuals and families navigating developmental disabilities. Early in her career, she was introduced to the principles of family-centered care, early intervention, and community-based advocacy. Her interest in narrative practices and systemic change has been at the forefront as she moved into spaces as a researcher, clinician, consultant, and trainer. Her doctoral work focused on drivers of institutional corruption in psychiatry and solutions for reform, particularly the practice of deprescribing and rational prescribing grounded in informed consent. Her current research and implementation work is focused on supporting communities impacted by psychosis, building the family peer workforce, and developing and disseminating culturally responsive principles and practices. She is particularly interested in non-pathologizing interventions and interventions that account for the impact of structural and social determinants of health. Currently, her clinical work is located at the Madison Clinic, a primary care clinic for people living with HIV/AIDS.
