Aly Frei, M.N. is a Project Manager for Public Strategies with over 17 years of experience in the HMRE and curriculum development and dissemination fields.  She has served as project director and implementation strategist for several multi-site federal subcontracts, including randomized-controlled clinical trials of HMRE interventions, and is a seasoned leader in implementation design, training and technical assistance.  Ms. Frei also serves as the Director of Becoming Parents Program, Inc., an agency focused on equipping expectant parents with the knowledge, skills, and support they need to be great partners over the transition to parenthood and beyond. Ms. Frei has authored and co-authored more than seven adaptations of HMRE curricula targeted at improving relationship and health outcomes for new parent couples and their children, including adaptations for cultural relevance among Spanish-speaking, married and unmarried, and socially and economically disadvantaged populations.

Alan J. Hawkins, Ph.D. is the Camilla E. Kimball Professor of Family Life and Director of the School of Family Life at Brigham University in Provo, Utah. Professor Hawkins’ scholarship and outreach efforts focus on educational and policy interventions to help couples form and sustain healthy marriages and relationships and to help fathers be involved in the lives of their children. He is widely cited for his work that examines the overall effectiveness of marriage and relationship education, as well as fatherhood education, including nearly ten peer-reviewed meta-analytic studies of the overall effectiveness of these educational programs. He has been intricately involved in state and federal policy efforts to strengthen families.

Philip Young P. Hong, Ph.D. is the Lucian and Carol Welch Matusak Endowed Professor, Associate Dean for Research, and the Director of the Doctoral Program in the School of Social Work at Loyola University Chicago. He also heads the Center for Research on Self-Sufficiency (CROSS) as the Founding Director and is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis. His main academic interest is in poverty and workforce development.  Dr. Hong’s research program has focused on structural poverty and social exclusion in the United States and international / comparative social welfare. He is currently partnering with local workforce development initiatives to develop bottom-up strategies for empowering low-income individuals and families in their quest to achieve self-sufficiency.

Ruthie Liberman, MSA is the Vice President for Public Policy at Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath) an organization whose mission is to help people move out of poverty and to provide the tools for other organizations to do the same.  Ruthie has a Bachelor’s Degree from Pomona College in government and public policy as well as a Masters Degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. With 25 years of experience in nonprofit strategy, policy and program management, Ruthie has spent over fifteen years at EMPath (formerly known as Crittenton Women’s Union), and previously worked in major hospital settings such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She also ran a Pediatric and Family AIDS program at Dimock Community Health Center.  A native of California, Ruthie served as a Senate Fellow in the California Legislature and as the Director of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

Galena Rhoades, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Denver. Her research is on romantic relationship development and functioning, and the related implications for children and adults. Her research projects and collaborations include 1) basic science studies on commitment, cohabitation, intimate partner violence, infidelity, family background, relationship processes and psychopathology, military families, and adolescent and child adjustment as well as 2) studies on the effectiveness of community-based preventive relationship interventions for couples and individuals. In these areas, she has authored more than 100 publications. She is working as a PI, Co-I, evaluator or consultant on several foundation and federally-funded projects. She has specific training and expertise in data analyses related to longitudinal and intervention effectiveness data and has taught doctoral level courses on multilevel modeling and structural equation modeling. She has served as the statistician or statistical consultant on a number of projects, many of which involve the evaluation of relationship education programs and their impacts on child and adults.

Scott Stanley, Ph.D. is a research professor at the University of Denver. A scholar in the field of family psychology, Stanley conducts research focusing on commitment, relationship development, cohabitation, conflict, and the prevention of relationship distress. Stanley, Dr. Howard Markman, and colleagues have conducted research on relationship education since the early 1980s, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Stanley, Dr. Galena Rhoades, and colleagues have conducted in-depth research on relationship development, cohabitation, and commitment. With another grant from NICHD, they created a large, national, longitudinal sample of unmarried individuals in serious romantic relationships, following this sample for 11 waves over 5 years. As one of the founders of PREP, Inc., Stanley heads up a team that produces, disseminates, and refines relationship education materials that are used worldwide by those seeking to help others succeed in their relationships (e.g., The Prevention and Relationship Education Program (PREP) and Within My Reach). Stanley writes a popular blog on relationship development, commitment, cohabitation, and relationship education at slidingvsdeciding.com.