Choose Love Team23

The Hearts Behind The Movement

Jesse Lewis, Hero
Meet Our Team
Board of Directors
Major Supporters

our team

Scarlett Lewis

Founder & Chief Movement Officer
About Me

Claas Ehlers

CEO
About Me

Betsy Carlson

Director of Data & Support

Erin Masotta

Operations Assistant

Jean Rossi Wergeles

Marketing Associate

Julia Richter

Implementation Coach
About Me

Kyle Davis

Program Consultant
About Me

Kim Harrison

Curriculum Writer, Certified Trainer
About Me

Lisa MacKenzie

Curriculum Writer, Certified Trainer
About Me

Jan Pierret

Director of Marketing & PR

Shannon Desilets

Director of Advocacy
About Me

Daryn Rowley

Graphic Designer
About Me

Lauren Sloan

Intern

Dr. Spyros Smith

Resident Advisor
About Me

Jackie Dunne, APRN

Resident Advisor
About Me

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Board of Directors

Doug Harrison

Chairman
About Me

Ty Bongiovanni

Treasurer
About Me

Robert Haines

Board Member
About Me

Colleen Haines

Board Member

Dr. Chris Kukk

Board Member
About Me

Dr. Maria Ortner

Board Member
About Me

Craig della Penna

Board Member

Chin Rodger

Board Member
About Me

Paul Barkan

Board Member

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Partners & Major Supporters

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Advisory Committee

Ric Calvillo
Laura Emerson
Ingrid Gerrits
Carol Gormin

Brooke Grau
Sarah Obuchowski
Maya Soetoro-Ng
David Romanelli

Jacqueline Simpson-Dunne, APRN
Danielle Rathey, Ph.D.
Norman Hauffman

Consultants & Volunteers

Diane Alena,
Copy Editing

Erin Birden,
Writer, Elementary Morning Meeting Infusion Activities

Barbara Boller,
Psychologist, Elementary and Middle School Editing

Jennifer Bondaldo,
High School Consultant

Lynn Bowers,
Middle School Forgiveness Unit Contributor

Mary Ellen Cummings,
Middle School Forgiveness Unit Contributor

Jennifer Dauphinais,
Program Research

Laura Emerson,
Lead Educator Elementary (3rd-5th Grades)

Lindsay Fruehauf,
Citations – Positive Psychology

Brooke Gau,
Middle School Program Contributor/Support

Barbara Georges,
Graphic Design

Dan Giella,
Video Animation and Design

Peri Giella,
First and Second Grade Program Writer

Christopher Harris,
Website Hosting & Development

Savannah Jay,
Graphic Design

David & Beth Lewis,
Video and Editing

Kate MacKinnon,
Compassionate Touch

Chris Parrott,
BPS Chartered Counseling Psychologist – Co-founder – Your Self Series

Krislyn Petti,
Middle School Program
Contributor/Support/Piloting Educator

Paula Prentis,
LMSW, CWP, Licensed social worker, Co-founder – Your Self Series

Allison Querro,
Fundraising Coordinator – LinkedIn

Coley Ricci,
Middle School Forgiveness Unit Contributor

Peej Ricci,
Middle School Forgiveness Unit Contributor

Allison Morgan,
Zensational Kids

Liz Shaw,
WCSU, Evaluations

Marcia Delcourt,
WCSU, Evaluations

Fish Stark,
Fellow-in-Residence, Peace First Organization-provided resources for 8th Grade/HS Compassion lessons

Lisa Swain,
Ed.S. Pre-K Program Writer

Chris Vary,
Website Development

Alex Wile,
Citations, Neuroscience

Carin Winter,
Mindfulness Contributor

Ambassadors
Youth Ambassadors
Recruited by jesse lewis to spread

Nurturing healing love

Until every child has access to social emotional learning & Character Education

https://www.cigna.com/legal/compliance/machine-readable-files
This link leads to the machine-readable files that are made available in response to the federal Transparency in Coverage Rule and includes negotiated service rates and out-of-network allowed amounts between health plans and healthcare providers. The machine readable files are formatted to allow researchers, regulators, and application developers to more easily access and analyze data.

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THE STORY BEHIND THE MOVEMENT

Choose Love Movement is inspired by 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, his final acts of love, and his mother’s path of forgiveness after Jesse was killed in a school shooting.

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© 2020 Choose Love Movement All rights reserved

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CONNECT

Contact

Meet our Team

Meet our Ambassadors

FAQs

LEARN

Subscribe

The Latest

Speaking & Media Requests

GET INVOLVED

Join the Movement

Donate

Shop

THE STORY BEHIND THE MOVEMENT

Choose Love Movement is inspired by 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, his final acts of love, and his mother’s path of forgiveness after Jesse was killed in a school shooting.

READ MORE

© 2021 Choose Love Movement All rights reserved

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About Shreya Yedave

Shreya is the Chief of Staff & Content for the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement. She started off working on the Movement’s social media and has slowly grown her position to include, graphic design, website updates, managing content, and more. One of the best parts of her job is getting to work with Shannon Desilets, our Director of Advocacy, to support the growing team of Choose Love Ambassadors around the world and seeing the impact of their hard work. 

Shreya attended Western Connecticut State University and graduated from the Kathwari Honors Program with a BBA in MIS and a minor in Accounting, Finance, and Philosophy. She loves being able to bring creativity to the table and work with the most incredible team of inspiring, caring, and loving people she’s ever known. She looks forward to seeing Choose Love in every school. home, and community around the world.

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Email Shreya

shreya@jesselewischooselove.org

Connect With Shreya

@Shreya Yedave

About Nicole Lyons

As Director of Engagement for the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, Nicole brings more than 20 years of sales, marketing and market research experience to the task of measuring and optimizing all points of customer engagement with the Choose Love brand, with the goal of increasing adoption of the Choose Love For Schools program – and extension programs, including Choose Love For Home, Choose Love For Communities, and Choose Love For Athletes – across the United States and abroad.

Prior to her role here, Nicole’s career included sales and marketing leadership positions at web-based CRM solutions and customer insights companies Informative, Inc. and CRM Metrix, and market research companies FIND SVP and the Dialog Corporation where she provided online consumer engagement solutions to global CPG brands including Coca-Cola, Huggies, and Tide. She was recognized as a “40 Under 40” business leader in Fairfield County and awarded “2010 Volunteer of the Year” by the Darien, CT Chamber of Commerce in recognition of her support of local businesses and residents through the creation of a community website and interactive strategy workshops for small businesses. Nicole received her BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Email Nicole

nicole@jesselewischooselove.org

Connect With Nicole

@Nicole Lyons

About Alexis Koukos

As Chief Operating Officer for the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, Alexis oversees all financial matters and operations to ensure sustainability and growth of the organization, developing short-term and long-term strategic goals and managing progress, overcoming challenges and offering solutions.  Combining her passions of educational equity and bettering society through compassion-based learning, Alexis aspires to extend the Choose Love Movement into higher education, reaching the next generation of leaders, inspiring them to lead with love and compassion. Alexis graduated with a BBA in Financial Accounting from Western CT State University and currently attends the University of Pennsylvania in pursuit of a Master’s in Education Entrepreneurship.

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Email Alexis

alexis@jesselewischooselove.org

Connect With Alexis

@Alexis Koukos

About Pamela Brown

Pamela graduated from Western Connecticut State University with a BS in Justice & Law Administration and a minor in Political Science, and a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in American Literature. She’s a former adjunct professor of English at Western and author of Faithful Love, a romance-adventure novel. A journalist with Hearst Connecticut Media Group for 20 years, Pamela writes a monthly food column, Chef’s Special, in Connecticut Magazine; writes features for Arts & Leisure and Arts & Style; and writes about a wide spectrum of subjects for Hearst’s weekly newspapers and special supplements, as well as contributing to other publications.

Pamela is the Editorial & Marketing Strategist for the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement. She manages and creates content for social media, the website, and various marketing campaigns; proactively fosters and maintains key media relationships; collaborates with the Marketing team to develop and create PR content; works with the Director of Engagement, the Content and Web Manager, and the Chief Movement Officer to further the Movement’s mission; oversees blog posts; and enacts numerous initiatives to increase the Movement’s visibility and raise awareness of its vast programming.

In addition, Pamela is Regional Sales Director for Choose High Performance (CHP), introducing a vast selection of educational and coaching products and services, establishing business relationships to help individuals and teams flourish through high business performance. 

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Email Pam

pam@jesselewischooselove.org

Connect With Pam

@Pamela Brown

About Marlene Kurban

Marlene Kurban is a freelance grant writer who joined the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement in 2019. She assists with researching and applying for grants to support the Movement’s programs.

Previously Marlene worked in nonprofit management roles for over 25 years. She lives in Sarasota, Florida.

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Email Marlene

marlene@jesselewischooselove.org

Connect With Marlene

@Marlene Kurban

About Doug Harrison

Doug Harrison is the Chairman of the Board for the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement and the founder of multiple businesses with successful exits.

Doug built and sold a top global market research and consulting company working with 100’s of the greatest brands in the world. His company built the leading source of insights of wealth and affluence globally and guided the go-to-market strategies for many firms in and outside of that space. Harrison Group was Vendor of the Year at Coca-Cola, and was a finalist at Microsoft.

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About Ty Bongiovanni

Ty is an owner and partner is his family’s insurance / financial firm in Meriden, CT. He holds a license in several states for health, accident and life insurance as well as securities licenses Series 7 and Series 65. He has also been certified as an Investment Advisor Representative and Chartered Tax Professional.

Ty is also very active in his community having been the President of the Meriden Rotary club as well as serving on the boards of the local United Way, Rotary club, chamber of commerce and several other organizations. He currently lives in Rocky Hill with his wife Andrea, daughter Mia and son Jack.

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About Robert Haines

Robert is responsible for cultivating strategic relationships that allows Mastercard and partners bring data products and capabilities to market. Partnerships span many verticals beyond Financial Services including Retail, Telecom, Media, Sports and Entertainment.

Robert’s specific areas of expertise include but not limited to, Sales Leadership, Big Data & Data Analytics, Partnership Development, Consultative Selling/Presentations, and Go-to-Market Strategies.

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About Dr. Chris Kukk

Dr. Kukk is the HarperCollins author of The Compassionate Achiever, co-host of The Compassionate Achiever Podcast, member of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement’s Board of Directors, founding Director of the Center for Compassion, Creativity and Innovation, and previous Professor of Political Science/Social Science at Western Connecticut State University. He currently serves as the Dean of the Cormier Honors College for Citizen Scholars at Longwood University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Boston College and his B.A. in political science from Boston University. He was also an international security fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. His research and publications combine neuroscience with the social sciences and focus on education issues, the political economy of natural resources, and the creation and sustainability of civil society.

Dr. Kukk was also a counter-intelligence agent for the United States Army, a research associate for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and has provided the Associated Press, National Public Radio, The Economist magazine, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, and other media outlets with analysis on a wide range of topics and issues. His forthcoming books are based on the idea of weaving values such as compassion into our learning, civic, and business communities.

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About Dr. Maria Ortner

Dr. Maria Ortner served as a school psychologist in Danbury, CT for 27 years prior to beginning her work with The Tapping Solution Foundation. Dr. Ortner is committed to promoting Tapping as an effective technique for teachers and students to deal with anxiety, stress and trauma in the school setting and beyond.

Dr. Ortner holds degrees in Clinical and School Psychology, as well as a Doctorate of Education. She has extensive experience in education in the United States and abroad. Dr. Ortner is the Director of the Tapping Solution Foundation and travels the world to bring EFT/Tapping to people of all ages.

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About Chin Rodger

Chin has been working as a personal assistant to a Portland philanthropist and her family for the last 15 years. Chin and Scarlett connected after both experienced the most profound loss from opposite ends of their tragedies – both working to bring character and social emotional development to children and adults in schools, workplace, and communities – to choose love and kindness over fear, anger, and hate. Chin has also collaborated and supported organizations and individuals working on threat assessment and prevention. She is continuing to focus her effort on understanding the pathway to targeted violence and the path forward for assessment, prevention, and intervention.

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About Nick Ortner

Nicolas Ortner is CEO of The Tapping Solution, LLC, a company with a mission to bring into the mainstream a simple, effective, natural healing method known as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or “Tapping.” Tapping is a healing modality that combines ancient Chinese acupressure and modern psychology. Nick’s goal is to empower people to create healthy, abundant and stress-free lives through his books, films, CDs, online events and speaking engagements attended by participants from all over the world.

He is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Tapping Solution: A Revolutionary System for Stress-Free Living,” and “The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reducing and Eliminating Chronic Pain.” Prior to that, Nick created and produced the breakthrough documentary film “The Tapping Solution,” which follows ten people who used tapping to overcome significant challenges, including chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, insomnia, devastating grief and more. Nick’s books and film document real and extraordinary results that have inspired tens of thousands to follow suit by successfully applying tapping to their lives.

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About Michael Lawrence

Michael Lawrence works in Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley. Michael works for one of Morgan Stanley’s Global Sports and Entertainment Directors and Alternative Directors.. Michael assists in delivering the full resources of Morgan Stanley to our clients that include aspirational goals such as philanthropy, business development, and monetizing revenue streams from their work. Michael started with Morgan Stanley private bank as an associate where he worked directly with the head of Morgan Stanley private bank in San Diego and had the opportunity to address complex lending, liquidity and commercial needs to solutions that complemented an overall wealth strategy. On the alternatives side Michael assists entrepreneurs and startups with securing growth or expansion capital by leveraging Morgan Stanley’s large network and vast resources.

Outside of Morgan Stanley, Michael, serves on the board of Traveling Stories where they help transform reluctant readers into confident ones by create engaging, social reading experiences that help kids fall in love with reading by the fourth grade. He also serves on the board of the San Diego Girl Scouts and San Diego Sports Innovators. Michael has 20 years of Sales and Marketing experience. Michael is a Veteran of the U.S. Army serving as an Infantry Soldier. He was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the first American unit under NATO command since WWII. He lives in San Diego with his Wife, Christie, and their 2 kids and lives a very active lifestyle fully enjoying Americas Finest City!

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