Meet the BPAR Team

BPAR has built a team of mental health professionals who are passionate about our mission. As specially trained adoption competent therapists, we have a unique understanding of how challenges or behaviors may be connected to the adoption experience. We believe the relationship between client and therapist is the most important piece of our therapy, and we will work at your pace, meeting you or your family wherever you are on your adoption journey.

"At BPAR, my children do not need to justify their life. The therapists and staff welcome the complexity of adoption, identity, and loss and walk with my children on their journey to learn, explore, and heal."

—LORI, ADOPTIVE PARENT

"I think it’s about the really thoughtful approach that you take. And I think that this is the first time I’ve ever gone to a place where listening seems to be the first objective. What is really steadfast, honest, clear-sighted, intentional, thoughtful advice and just love towards me sort of rubs off and helps my own development."

—DAN, FOSTER PARENT

Jennifer Eckert, LICSW
Founder

As an adoptee myself, my life turned around when I found a source of specialized post adoption therapeutic support. Inspired by my experience and aware of a shortage of similar resources, in 2003 I returned to school and earned my Masters Degree in Social Work at Simmons University, where I currently serve as a member on their Board of Trustees. I made it my mission to increase awareness of post adoption challenges through education and training, building and offering resources, and providing a safe space for therapeutic support to all those touched by adoption and foster care. After training with adoption and post adoption agencies, in 2012 I founded Boston Post Adoption Resources to work with adoptees of all ages, adoptive parents, foster parents, and birth parents. BPAR's strength-based and person-centered approach stems from my belief that adoptees have the capacity to live healthy and whole lives, with the understanding that challenges may ebb and flow throughout the entire lifespan. I am here to support you as you move through your own unique journey.

KC Craig, LICSW
Executive Director, Clinical Director

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I am a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. I am passionate about working with children and families, and most of my career I have focused on helping individuals and complex-blended families who are adopted, divorced, experiencing major life changes or have a history of trauma. My work often centers on depression or anxiety related to relationships. Since 2011, I have specialized in working with adopted individuals and families, including identity work around loss and parent consultations. I focus on empowering the family system by incorporating cognitive-behavioral, narrative and solution-based techniques as well as some art and play interventions. I value self-care and meditation. I am EMDR trained, Reiki Level I trained, and completed an MBSR course. I love the way BPAR encourages wellness both for our families and for our staff!

Darci Nelsen, PhD, LMHC, BC-DMT
Assistant Clinical Director, Clinician

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I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Dance/Movement Therapist with over a decade of experience providing clinical services to clients across multiple settings including inpatient psychiatry, community based outpatient therapy, and special education. My clinical work has been centered around supporting children, teens, and their families in navigating the complexities that result from developmental trauma, foster care, and adoption. In 2023, I completed my doctoral education, where my research concentrated on amplifying the voices of individuals with lived experience in foster care and adoption, specifically exploring the concept of relational permanence. In my work with clients, I draw on a variety of therapeutic approaches informed by training in expressive arts, as well as attachment, relational-cultural, and family systems theories. I always aim to co-create a supportive space with my clients where curiosity and self-exploration can support movement toward deeper connection to self and others.

Mirela Caron, MA
Clinician

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Mirela Caron, MA
Clinician

I earned an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Lesley University and am working towards LMHC licensure. I have experience providing trauma-informed clinical care for youth in DCF group homes. Additionally, I’ve worked for several years with K-12 students in public and private school systems. I am also part of a Boston Children’s Hospital’s volunteer group that provides clinical consultation to a nonprofit supporting at-risk/abandoned youth and Ukrainian refugees in Romania. My passion for working with individuals touched by foster care and adoption originates from my experience as an international adoptee from Romania. Over the years, I have been fortunate to receive helpful support in navigating the challenges and complexities of adoption. Now, I am grateful to be a part of the BPAR team that offers similar support to others in their unique, lifelong adoption journeys. My therapeutic approach is rooted in the complex trauma framework, Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC). I acknowledge the importance of customizing my collaborative and culturally sensitive treatment to meet individual needs and preferences. Accordingly, I have a holistic treatment style that involves therapeutic modalities, including Play Therapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Therapy, ABA, CBT, and Animal-Assisted Therapy.

Lisa "LC" Coppola, M.Ed, LMHC, Addictions Specialist, MA PGS
Clinician, Voices Unheard Program Coordinator

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I am a licensed mental health counselor with over a decade of expertise counseling adult adoptees and others touched in any way by adoption as well as the experience of addiction and its fallout. I myself am a domestic adoptee through the department of children and family services and before all else, I consider myself an advocate for those relinquished. I believe strongly in the healing power of peer-to-peer connections and work through BPAR to create opportunities for these connections through the Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories speaker series and writing workshops. In 2022 I wrote Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adult Adoptees, a 52-week journal with prompts based on core themes that emerge in therapy with adult adoptees. I find that writing one’s story and sifting through fears and hopes on paper can be incredibly powerful. My process with clients often involves using a narrative lens combined with Parts theory to help clients work their way through difficult and confusing emotions and memories, to identify common threads throughout their lives, and ultimately to connect to the truth of their uniquely personal stories.

Lillian Hexter, MA
Clinician

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I am a masters-level clinician, working toward becoming a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. I graduated from Boston College with a Masters in Mental Health Counseling and completed my clinical internship at the Simmons University Counseling Center. Prior to entering the mental health field, I worked as a high school literature teacher in Seoul. I bring my own identity as a Korean transracial adoptee to my therapy work and am passionate about supporting adoptees at all stages of life and identity development. I use a collaborative, trauma-informed, feminist, and relational-cultural approach.

Madison Janke, LMHC, R-DMT
Clinician

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I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Registered Dance/Movement Therapist. I have worked in outpatient, therapeutic day schools, milieu and residential settings, utilizing trauma-informed therapy, relational-cultural therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, play therapy, mindfulness, developmental theories, dialectical behavior therapy, group therapy, dance/movement therapy and expressive therapies. I specialize in working with children and teens who are addressing adoption trauma, identity and attachment, emotional regulation, complicated family dynamics, anxiety, loss, depression, and behavioral diagnoses. I am interested in how the body holds memory, history, sensations and experiences and how past and current relationships can shape an individual's identity and contribute towards healing. I use a creative, holistic, and relational approach with my clients to encourage self-discovery and growth. I believe that the clients with whom I work have unique qualities and strengths that they can further develop, refine, and utilize through the therapeutic relationship. I am very excited to join the BPAR team and work with everyone touched by adoption.

Seana Peterson, LICSW
Clinician

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I am a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, and I am thrilled to be joining the BPAR team as a group therapist. I provide therapy that is relational, affirming, and trauma-responsive. My work centers on healing one's relationship with the self, lineage, and community, and is informed by my lived experience as a Black, queer, transracial adoptee. I work intuitively and creatively, weaving together evidence-based approaches (EMDR and IFS), somatic approaches (EFT Tapping), and the cosmic language of astrology and the tarot.

Sahita Pierre-Antoine, MA
Clinician

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I am a Registered Dance/Movement Therapist and a Master’s level clinician, working toward Licensure. My previous professional experiences in the nonprofit sector in my home country of Haiti, my clinical experience with survivors of domestic violence, and my personal experiences as a multilingual Black Haitian immigrant woman play a big part in my approach to counseling. Through a trauma-informed, intersectional feminist, relational-cultural, and movement and expressive therapies-based lens, I encourage and accompany the individuals I work with to hold a spirit of curiosity as they explore the different ways in which they exist in the world as adoptees. Together, I am looking forward to co-creating a therapeutic space where they can address their trauma, losses and grief, identities, relationships, and their multicultural and intercultural experiences.

Angela Smith, LICSW
Clinician

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I am a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. I started my journey working with families and children after completing my MSW from New York University in 2015. I have welcomed the opportunity to work in multiple settings, with clients from all stages of life, providing individual and group therapy as well as advocacy and support to survivors of abuse within the legal and child welfare systems. I specialize in working with children, teens, and adults to address a wide range of issues such as anxiety, parenting skills, depression, life transitions, foster care, adoption, attachment difficulties, relational issues and trauma. In sessions, I utilize a holistic approach which includes a trauma-informed lens, cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, as well as systems and structural approaches. I am deeply interested in amplifying the strengths and creativity of each person, and the most rewarding part of my work is the progress I see in my clients.

Alyson Summer Del Castillo
Clinician

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As a lifelong artist, I know the power of the artistic process, and am grateful to be able to bring it into the therapeutic process where it is beneficial to my clients. I have worked in residential, community-based, therapeutic afterschool and summer camp, school, and hospital settings with children and adolescents experiencing behavioral and mental health challenges. I graduated in 2023 with my MA in Mental Health Counseling and Art Therapy and am persuing licensure as a Mental Health Counselor. As a neurodivergent, queer, Afro-Latina, I enjoy considering the intersections and complexities in every situation. I am passionate about using my personal and professional experience and a trauma-informed, systems-focused lens to meet clients from all walks of life wherever they are in their journeys.

Ahmad Butt
Clinical Intern

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I am a clinical intern in the final year of my Master's in Mental Health Counseling program at Boston College. Before beginning my Master's, I earned a UK CPCAB Diploma in Integrative Counseling in Pakistan, which included training at an outpatient counseling center. During this training, I supported clients across the lifespan with various challenges, including trauma, depression, and anxiety. Prior to transitioning into the mental health field, I spent six years as a high school and middle school teacher in Pakistan. I employ a trauma-informed integrative approach to therapy, drawing from family systems, psychodynamic, and person-centered therapies, among others. My practice is rooted in a collaborative approach, emphasizing the therapeutic relationship as a foundation for clients to feel empowered and safely express themselves.

Naomi Learson
Operations & Communications Manager

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As the operations and communications manager, I do all that I can to ensure operations run smoothly. This can mean fundraising, assisting with content creation, billing, or just keeping our snacks stocked. I believe in the phenomenal work that our clinicians offer and see how tireless their efforts are at providing the best care possible to the entire adoption community. I have worked for and on the behalf of various nonprofits in the past and I am proud to be a part of this passionate and hardworking team of caregivers.

Larry Kramer, MBA
Outsourced CFO

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I began my role as BPAR’s outsourced CFO on Day #1 in summer 2012. With over 35 years of finance, accounting, and operations experience, I serve this organization as well as a dozen other for-profit, venture firm, and non-profit clients in my role as a Managing Partner at Foundation Management Associates. My philanthropic interests include fundraising for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, the Pediatric IBD Foundation, Walks for Hunger, and various pediatric cancer causes. Since 2009 I have raised over $2 million through my three Boston-area cover bands. I also served on Boston’s Chapter Board of Financial Executives International and ran the organization's Career Services and Career Planning Committee.

Lucy Davis, MBA
Director of Marketing & Communications

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I’m the lucky one who gets to shine a spotlight on all the amazing work performed by the BPAR team. On an outsourced basis, I help develop educational content and find creative ways to connect the adoption constellation to BPAR’s resources and to attract prospective donors. I grew up on a block with nine adoptive families. Yes—nine! Whether I’m designing a new feature for the BPAR.org website or compiling a book about post adoption mental health, I can’t help but wish that I could take BPAR back with me in a time machine to help my friends and their families. My background includes corporate advertising and communications; digital content marketing; author services; and non-profit leadership and fundraising.

"BPAR holds a very special place in my heart because of staff who go above and beyond in making sure that their clients feel comfortable and cared for."

—ADULT ADOPTEE CLIENT

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