PIRTEE Curriculum Advisory Team

Bob Burns

Angel Hale

  • Title: Director of Rehabilitation Services
  • Organization: Oregon Commission for the Blind
Angel Hale has been with the Oregon Commission For the Blind since 2010, first as the Independent living Director, then Director of the Orientation and Career Training Center and finally, as the Director of Vocational Rehabilitation Services. Prior to working for the Commission, Angel managed her own small business as a Trainer/Speaker/Consultant. Before starting her own business, Angel worked for the State of Oregon in several capacities. She was a program analyst and Trainer/Consultant with both the Department of Labor and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.

Cedric Woods

Cedric Woods

  • Title: Director
  • Organization: Institute for New England Native American Studies

Cedric Woods is a citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. He combines over a decade of tribal government experience with a research background, and has served as the director of INENAS since 2009. The institute's purpose is to connect Native New England with university research, innovation, and education. Currently, Cedric is working on projects with tribes in the areas of tribal government capacity building, Indian education, economic development, and chronic disease prevention.


Chaz compton

Chaz Compton

  • Title: Director
  • Organization: Workforce Innovation Technical Assistance Center

Chaz Compton has been working in the field of Vocational Rehabilitation for 35 years.  He has been an Administrator of a large Community Rehabilitation Program and worked as a Counselor, Supervisor and Administrator in the public vocational rehabilitation program in California for over 20 years.  Chaz has been providing technical assistance and training to VR programs through the Interwork Institute at San Diego State University for ten years.  He currently directs the Workforce Innovation Technical Assistance Center (WINTAC), a national center whose role is to help VR programs and their partners to effectively implement the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (www.WINTAC.org).


JOhn Marchioro

John Marchioro

  • Title: Public Service Administrator
  • Organization: Illinois Department of Human Services, Division of Rehabilitation

Mr. Marchioro is a 20 year veteran of the Illinois Department of Human Services, Division of Rehabilitation. From 2000 through 2007 he worked as a Senior Rehabilitation Counselor assisting adults and youths with disabilities. For the past 12 years he has worked as a Public Service Administrator providing policy staff development training for the agency. In 2011, John was appointed to be the Illinois Point of Contact for the National Employment Team (the NET). In this role he helped to build and sustain relationships with businesses by providing customized vocational rehabilitation services in partnership with a national team of publicly funded vocational rehabilitation experts. Since 2015, Mr. Marchioro has been one of the agencies lead committee members on several Illinois Workforce system committees, including the Service Integration Policy Workgroup, Integrated Business Service Committee and the Illinois WIOA State Summit Committee. Mr. Marchioro has also been involved with several national technical assistance center partnerships and employer engagement committees, including the Job Driven Vocational Rehabilitation Technical Assistance Center (JDVRTAC), The Workforce Innovative Technical Assistance Center (WINTAC) and the Disability Employer Taskforce.


Kathleen Murphy

Kathleen Murphy

  • Title: Principal Researcher
  • Organization: American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Kathleen M. Murphy, PhD, a principal researcher at AIR, is principal investigator for the Center on Knowledge Translation for Employment Research (KTER Center) and the Center on Knowledge Translation for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, both funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR). She also directs AIR’s disability business development. Since 2010, through her work with the KTER Center and in partnership with the Council on State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation (CSAVR), she has overseen several systematic and scoping reviews and studies testing KT strategies for audiences including vocational rehabilitation (VR), businesses, people with disabilities and policymakers. With the Southwest ADA Center and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, she directs a pilot study of a tool to refer young adults with cancer to VR and has coauthored peer-reviewed articles with several NIDILRR grantees. A member of the executive committee of NARRTC, the professional association of NIDILRR grantees, Dr. Murphy was its vice president from 2016 to 2017.


Kathy West-Evans

Kathy West-Evans

  • Title: Director of Business Relations
  • Organization: The NET @ CSAVR

Kathy leads the National Employment Team (NET) which is a team of 78 Business Consultants representing the VR agencies in every state, the territories and D.C. The NET is built on a dual customer strategy working with business at the national, state and local level to build the company capacity and talent pipeline of candidates with disabilities, in addition to retaining the valued workforce of employees who have acquired a disability. The information shared by business customers is used to assist individuals with disabilities in building their career strategies and employment outcomes in a competitive, integrated setting. Kathy has been in the field of vocational rehabilitation since 1978 working at the community, state, federal and national level using her range of professional and personal experience to support the success of business and individuals with disabilities.

 

Laurie ford

Laurie Ford

  • Title: Interim Director, Center for Continuing Education in Rehabilitation
  • Organization: University of Washington

Laurie Ford, M.S., is the Interim Director and former Director of VR Projects at the Center for Continuing Education in Rehabilitation (CCER) which is part of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington. She has been involved in continuing education and technical assistance for VR agencies and community rehabilitation programs for over thirty years, and has served on national advisory committees including the Adequacy of Incentives Committee for the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act.  She is also the author of a book on employment services for people with psychiatric disabilities.  Before coming to CCER, Ms. Ford helped start and develop one of the first supported employment programs for adults with developmental disabilities.


Libby Stone-Sterling

Libby Stone-Sterling

  • Title: Director
  • Organization: Maine Division of Vocational Rehabilitation

Libby Stone-Sterling, PhD has served as director of the Maine Division of Vocational Rehabilitation since 2018. Prior to becoming director, she served as the assistant director for eight years. Libby has led efforts to adopt and adapt the dual customer Progressive Employment model in Maine. Libby currently serves as staff to the Governor’s Children’s Cabinet and as chair for Maine’s IDEA State Advisory Panel.


sheila fesko

Sheila Fesko

  • Title: Associate Dean and Director 
  • Organization: The School of Global Inclusion and Social Development 

Sheila L. Fesko Ph.D. is the Associate Dean and Director of the School of Global Inclusion and Social Development and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Community Inclusion in the University of Massachusetts Boston. Dr. Fesko has 35 years of experience working on the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in the workplace. Dr. Fesko is the project director for the ICI’s online curriculum called College of Employment Services. Areas of her research include employment outcomes for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities, disclosure of HIV status in the workplace, the aging workforce and universal strategies to support inclusion of all employees in the workplace. 


Tonia Peterson

Tonia Peterson

  • Title: Project Manager
  • Organization: Michigan Rehabilitation Services

Tonia Peterson is a Program Manager with the Business Network Division. Her professional interests focus on Reasonable Accommodation Evaluations, Job Analyses, Assistive Technology and Work-Risk Assessments to retain and obtain employment.  Her current projects include educating and empowering metro Detroit businesses by providing them with disability awareness training and hiring incentives to assist in diversifying their workforce with people with different abilities.  She was honored with the MRS Champion Award – Employee in September 2016.  Tonia earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and occupational therapy and a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling and community inclusion from Wayne State University.