» Presenters

Dr. Gordon Neufeld is a Vancouver-based developmental psychologist with over 40 years of experience with children and youth and those responsible for them. A foremost authority on child development, Dr. Neufeld is an international speaker, a bestselling author (Hold On to Your Kids), and a leading interpreter of the developmental paradigm. Dr. Neufeld has a widespread reputation for making sense of complex problems and for opening doors for change. While formerly involved in university teaching and private practice, he now devotes his time to teaching and training parents, educators, and helping professionals. His Neufeld Institute is now a world-wide charitable organization devoted to applying developmental science to the task of raising children. Dr. Neufeld appears regularly on radio and television. He is a father of five and a grandfather to six.
Hannah Beach is an award winning educator and the author of seven books on movement, drama and expression. Her books are used in school boards across Canada as a way for children to explore and express their feelings and the world around them through play and movement. Hannah has been working with families and children for 24 years as a parent consultant, family resource leader and the Founder of Dandelion Dance. She facilitates workshops and speaks across the country at conferences and school boards. A mother of three children, Hannah brings her knowledge of the Neufeld paradigm into her parenting and relationships. She is currently enrolled in (and loving!) the Neufeld Facilitator Program.
Jodi Bergman has spent the last 25 years developing attachments with children as a public and international school teacher, creating individual learning plans for homeschooling families and supporting children and parents in their journey. Currently, Jodi works for Self Design, where she provides in-person and online consultation. She lives in the Kootenays with her husband, and together they are consciously integrating their family of seven children based on the threads of connection, relationship, and attachment. Jodi is committed to making sense of the dynamics of an integrated family (the new blended) to support thriving, not just surviving.
Robin Brooks-Sherriff is a Registered Nurse in Calgary, where she has worked in various capacities with families and clients for over 20 years. Both as a nurse, and as a mother, she has been tremendously impacted by Dr. Neufeld’s paradigm since she happened upon it eight years ago. In particular, the adolescence material has informed her current work with teens and young adults in regards to their sexual health. The insight into these mysterious beings (teenagers) gained through Dr. Neufeld’s approach is immensely helpful when offering a guiding hand through the maze of sexual decision-making our teens and their families face.
Eva de Gosztonyi is a psychologist who has worked for over 40 years in schools across Canada, and is on faculty with the Neufeld Institute. She is the Co-ordinator of the Centre of Excellence for Behaviour Management for the ten English School Boards of Quebec, helping the adults in the school setting to understand how best to work with children with severe behaviour problems. Eva believes that educators can foster the natural processes of development in their interactions and attachments with students in the classroom and in the school. In her presentations, Eva weaves together theory and practice, learning and behaviour, to help those who work with children apply Dr. Neufeld’s paradigm so that they can effectively help children and youth become the “best that they can be.”
Martine Demers is on faculty with the Neufeld Institute and is actively involved in intervention with her school board where she works as a Behavior Consultant, supporting school teams with their most challenging students. She is actively involved in professional development, consultation, class intervention, networking, and accessing resources for children and their parents via various health and social service agencies. Martine has developed a Professional Learning Community for ongoing learning and support. She also facilitates Dr. Neufeld’s parent education courses, understanding the importance of bringing this information directly to the source: the parents. Martine’s most passionate presence is with her own family as a mother, where she lives the paradigm on a daily basis.
Darlene Denis-Friske is a Registered Psychotherapist with the Ontario College of Registered Psychotherapists, a Certified Child and Youth Counsellor, and a Parent Consultant practicing within the Neufeld attachment-based developmental approach. Darlene has worked with children, youth, parents, and helping professionals in a variety of rewarding settings since 1988 including psychiatric hospital, schools, community and private practice. She is currently a psychotherapist with an Ontario health team, a faculty member with the Neufeld Institute where she is a Director of the Parent Consulting Diploma Program, and also conducts a small private practice.
Colleen Drobot is a registered professional counsellor and parent consultant with a private practice in West Vancouver. She works with individuals, families, adolescents and school districts. She also has over 20 years’ experience working with children in the regular classroom and in special needs settings. She is an adjunct faculty member of the Neufeld Institute and has worked with Dr. Neufeld’s approach for many years. Colleen is a mother of two teens and draws from her personal as well as professional experience to support parents and professionals in gaining insight, opening their hearts, and leading by their intuition.
Patti Drobot is a registered professional counsellor, parent consultant, and presenter with an educational background in rehabilitation medicine. Her past experience is in psychiatric occupational therapy where she has worked in both hospital and community settings for 20 years. A faculty member of the Neufeld Institute, she currently works as a counsellor in Vancouver. Patti’s greatest professional passion is working with Dr. Neufeld. Her greatest personal passion is being the mother of her two children.
Heather Ferguson is a Registered Clinical Counsellor, with a private practice in Duncan, BC, and a faculty intern with Dr. Neufeld. She offers presentations on the Neufeld approach as well as consulting for parents, educators, helping professionals, and care providers. Heather has a Master’s degree in Family Therapy and has worked with family service agencies, schools, and community mental health clinics over the last 20 years. As a mother of two, Heather is inspired by the Neufeld relationship-based developmental approach that has so deeply enriched and transformed her personal and professional life. She brings warmth, compassion, and heart-felt understanding to the challenges of raising children in today’s world.
Denise Findlay is a Neufeld facilitator and parent consultant, as well as mother to two highly sensitive, intense, and bright boys. She works extensively with parents in the First Nations community, where she shares her insights to empower them to be their child’s best bet and to look to traditional approaches to parenting that focus on attachment and life-long, whole-person development. Denise has experience training educators, parents, social workers, early childhood educators, mental health practitioners, and other helping professionals. She holds a Master’s degree in education from Simon Fraser University, where she focused on contemplative inquiry and approaches in education. Denise also sits on two Vancouver Coastal Health Advisory Committees, where she provides a parent voice in regards to child and youth mental health services.
Jennifer Gehman is a certified teacher, curriculum writer, coach and a facilitator-in-training with the Neufeld Institute. She has spent the last twenty years working in alternative home-based education, writing a complete 12 year curriculum, and assisting hundreds of parents to better understand the role of attachment-based development in child learning. She is also the parent of five sensitive children – three young adults and two adolescents, all who have been educated at home. All five still live with her and teach her daily about the joys and challenges of being a parent.
Beth Hachkowski has been a Registered Psychologist in Alberta for over 17 years. She has worked in various roles: front line child protection worker and supervisor, Mental Health Therapist, Supervisor and Regional Manager and behaviour consultant in schools. Nine years ago Beth and her husband, Aaron developed an innovative and intensive in-home reunification program for at-risk families in the child protection system in Central Alberta. Also in her private practice, Beth provides counselling and parent consultation to those in need of assistance in making sense of children in their care, using the developmental framework of Dr. Gordon Neufeld as the theoretical foundation of her practice. As a mother of a 13 year-old son, Beth cherishes her time raising him and watching him grow (now taller than her!)
Nancy Keeler is a Neufeld Facilitator and has lived in Raymond, Alberta for 40 years. Those years have been filled to the brim with tears, laughter, scrubbed knees, diapers, wet beds, Lego, music, prayers, Pizza Fridays and all the attendant joys that come with being a mother of five sons and three daughters. Hired as a Parenting Coach with Barons Eureka Warner Family Community Support Services in 2006, she has helped many parents see their children with new eyes. Since 2011, she has since facilitated many Neufeld courses in Raymond and surrounding communities. In her free time, she enjoys genealogy, playing the piano, gardening, and visiting her 14 grandchildren.
Susan Lukey is an educator and theologian who has spent more than 40 years working with children, teaching swimming, directing camps, leading Guides & Scouts, teaching elementary school, and ministering to all ages in the church where she works with her husband, David Robertson. Together they parent two sons, now young adults. Susan’s passion for understanding grief and loss began with the death of her grandfather when she was age five. As part of her journey, she completed a Certificate in Death & Grief Studies through the University of Colorado. Susan began studies with the Neufeld Institute in 2012 and is now a Facilitator as well as offering learning support in the Neufeld online community. The developmental paradigm has enriched and expanded her understanding of the process of grieving. Susan has worked in many varied situations of loss and death; she always watches for the children, remembering clearly her childhood experiences with grief.
Christie Mackie is a Registered Clinical Counsellor working in private practice in Vancouver. She is most passionate about her work with adolescent clients and their families and firmly believes in her role of shedding light upon what seems to be such a difficult and confusing time. She has been involved with the Neufeld Institute since 2008 and currently assists Dr. Neufeld in the role of Director of Advanced Courses. Previously, Christie worked with the Fraser Health Institute to support children and adolescents struggling with developmental disabilities. She brings both personal and professional experience to her work with clients. She is the proud mother of three children (2, 15 and 20 years) and has a strong understanding of the breadth of feelings involved in parenting in today’s world. She makes nurturing connections with her clients and draws from this experience to support parents in gaining insight into their child’s behaviour.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is a Vancouver-based clinical counsellor and educator with more than 25 years’ experience working with children, youth, and adults. She is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, operates a counselling practice, and speaks regularly about child and adolescent development to parents, child care providers, educators, and mental health professionals. She is also the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschooler (Or Anyone Who Acts Like One) which provides a 360-degree developmental walk around the young child. She continues to write, do radio and television interviews, and speak to the needs of children and youth from a developmental science-based approach. Deborah resides in Vancouver, Canada with her husband and two children.
Michele Maurer is a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist and a course facilitator with the Neufeld Institute, with 30 years’ experience working with individuals, couples and families. Michele works in private practice in Langley, BC, and is an instructor for mental health clinicians across BC. Prior to opening her practice in 2013, Michele worked with Fraser Health as a counsellor, supervisor and educator. Michele started her career in the non-profit sector with at-risk youth and their families. Michele earned her Master’s degree in Couple and Family Therapy at the University of Guelph. Married for 20 years, she and her husband enjoy parenting their two teenage children.
David McFall is a Neufeld course facilitator and an experienced in-school administrator with the Western Quebec School Board in Gatineau, Quebec. As a principal of a large urban elementary school, David has committed himself to distilling Dr. Neufeld’s theoretical framework to provide teachers and principals with a unique and transferrable model of re-thinking school organization through the attachment-based developmental lens.
Joy Neufeld is a retired elementary school teacher who has also spent time as an early childhood educator and adolescent counsellor. Her passion for children shaped her university studies in child development and special education. As wife to Gordon, she has been intimately involved in the development of the attachment-based developmental approach as well as the Neufeld Institute. She and Gordon are the parents of five grown children and grandparents of six.
David Robertson is a pastoral theologian with 27 years of experience working with children, families, and adults. He is married to Susan and together they are supporting their two sons who are completing their 1^st and 2^nd years in university. David was first introduced to the Neufeld Institute in 2012. He has completed his facilitator training and continues to offer his time and support to the Neufeld learning community. David is a choral musician who enjoys learning languages, playing flute, photography, and drinking espresso.
Genevieve Schreier has worked for the Neufeld Institute since its inception. With an undergraduate degree in sociology and an MA in international relations, she has always had a passion for exploring human connection and uncovering potential. Genevieve has a variety of roles with the Neufeld Institute that include Director of Training for course facilitators, Event Coordinator and Assistant for Dr. Neufeld, and Course Coordinator for the Alpha Children course.
Tamara Strijack is a Registered Clinical Counsellor working on Vancouver Island and a faculty member of the Neufeld Institute. She has worked with children and adolescents in various roles over the last twenty years – as mentor, counsellor, youth leader, program director, group facilitator – and is herself a mother of two wonderful adolescent girls. She also works as a parent and teacher consultant, helping adults make sense of the children in their care. Connection, relationship, and attachment continue to be central themes in all of her roles, both personally and professionally.
Terry Warburton is a certified professional counsellor who works in southern Manitoba and is a faculty member of the Neufeld Institute. Terry provides education and consultations for professionals in education, public health, childcare, and social services. She is passionate about supporting parents and professionals to help them make sense of children in their care and to improve the quality of relationships for the purpose of helping children achieve their full developmental potential. Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s approach has had a profound impact on her professional work with families, as well as on her own journey of parenting three young adult children. She warmly and sensitively shares her insights with others.