Ursula Volwiler is Director of Community Engagement with CRI. While she is relatively new to the CRI Team, she is not new to the study of trauma and resilience. As a linguist and educator, her work with CRI takes her into the many sectors of Walla Walla, Washington (home of the infamous Paper Tigers documentary), and around the country.

She believes that it is essential to look at protective factors and resilience through the whole system. If you want to increase resilience within a community a “one size fits all” approach simply won’t cut it. Thus, one of her key roles at CRI is to take their national trainings and concepts and adapt them so that the training fits the various sectors – like educators, juvenile justice centers, foster support, colleges, and more.

She asks questions like: “What is your major concern?”; “What kind of risk factors do you deal with?”; “What protective factors are you trying to arrive at?”; “What are you trying to build in terms of resilience?” The answers to these questions give her insight into what the group is dealing with and how brain science can become practical and understandable in order to serve the group and build resilience. She focuses on outcomes that everyone within the group can recognize.

Her approach to making this all work is brilliant (spoiler alert): She works to identify ambassadors wherever she goes. This is critical because at some point the information about trauma informed approaches, brain science, and resilience needs to reside within the group to be sustainable. She tries to make the knowledge that comes from CRI courses a part of what the group is doing. This is crucial because if these principles aren’t adopted, then nothing will change. But more than that, change must be across multiple groups and sectors for the whole community to benefit and grow.

Why should you attend Ursula’s workshop at the 7th Annual Community Resilience Conference? Because if you are reading this, you are likely just the ambassador that your group or community needs!