Advisory Council

National Parents Organization prides itself on being a research-based advocacy organization promoting children's well-being by ensuring the continued love and care of both parents when the parents live apart. To assist NPO in its mission, we have assembled an Advisory Council composed of individuals with different areas of expertise. We are fortunate to have the guidance of leading researchers on child well-being, parental alienation, and family violence, as well as guidance from outstanding individuals with a more applied orientation.

    • An adult child of parental alienation, a survivor of domestic violence

    • Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Newcastle, Australia, Ph.D. Candidate, Psychology, University of Tasmania, Australia, MBA, University of California, Los Angeles

    • Founder of Victim To Hero Institute, a company that provides science-based trauma-informed solutions, education, resources, and support for victims of parental alienation and psychological abuse

    • Award-winning film director

    • Passionate about building social impact and advocating for victims through raising public awareness, and championing system and social changes

    • J.D., LL.M (Taxation), Golden Gate School of Law; Masters in Public Administration Cal State University

    • Retired government child support attorney and administrator. with 26 years in county child support services.  Director, Orange County CA Child Support Services.  Frequent lecturer at state and national forums on a variety of family law topics. 

    • Led Orange County CSS Research Team to conduct data analysis on child support guidelines, which led to major revisions in national child support policy; led Team in researching foster care/child support system interaction, which directly led to ending child support in foster care cases.

    • Retired Lieutenant Colonel, Army Reserve Judge Advocate. 23 years service with duty in US and International missions.  

    • Volunteer attorney for Veterans Legal Institute, Tustin CA; Instructor in Humanitarian Law, American Red Cross; Tour Guide, Nixon Presidential Library.

    • Chosen by the Financial Times as one of the world’s top 100 thought leaders. His books are published in over 50 countries, and in 19 languages. They include The New York Times best-seller, Why Men Are the Way They Are, plus the international best-seller, The Myth of Male Power. His most recent The Boy Crisis, co-authored with John Gray, was selected as a finalist for the Foreword Indies award.

    • Pioneer in both the women’s movement (elected three times to the Board of N.O.W. in NYC) and the men’s movement (called by GQ Magazine “the Martin Luther King of the men’s movement”)

    • Conducts couples’ communication workshops nationwide

    • Appeared on over 1000 TV shows and been interviewed by Oprah, Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, Katie Couric, Larry King, Tucker Carlson, Regis Philbin and Charlie Rose and has frequently written for and been featured in The New York Times and other leading publications worldwide

    • Director of Texans for Judicial Accountability

    • Dedicated advocate for co-parenting and family court reform.

    • Instrumental in drafting and advocating for the passage of Texas’ SB-718, the “Time Taken Time Back” bill, which restores lost parental time due to precautionary court actions.

    • Has traveled to over 40 states lobbying legislators, speaking at events like Capitol Hill and CPAC, and raising awareness about issues such as fatherlessness, parental alienation, and false allegations.

    • As a co-executive producer of the documentary “I Stand with John,” Robert can be seen in the documentary “We the Parents” and is a key member of organizations like Texans for Judicial Accountability, NPO, and the John Mast Foundation.

    • B.A., Columbia University

    • Activist filmmaker, public speaker and media strategist dedicated to building large coalitions that support making divorce and separation healthier for children. For her work reuniting families she has been named an Architect of Change by Maria Shriver and featured on CBS, NBC, BravoTV and The Atlantic Magazine.

    • Former Executive Director for National Parents Organization, where she added six new chapters.

    • Third feature documentary, Erasing Family, exposes the trauma children suffer when a loving parent is erased from their lives after divorce and is told from the children's point of view as they reunite. It is streaming on all major platforms. https://www.erasingfamily.org

    • Her previous, Erasing Dad, (Borrando a Papa, 2014) caused joint custody to be enacted in Argentina.

    • Works with parents to help them learn the skills to reunite with their children after parental alienation by using strategies that do not rely on the family courts. https://gingergentile.com/consulting

    • Doctorate of Education, U.C.L.A, Los Angeles, CA, Masters in Public Administration, CALSTATE, Los Angeles, CA.

    • Senior Director of Teaching and Capacity Building with the Good Plus Foundation, focusing a broad range of multidisciplinary activities, from research and program development to training and advocacy for policy change.

    • Works in the health and human services field, with extensive experience as a facilitator and public administrator, for both public and private agencies, for the past 20 years.

    • Brings diverse perspectives to help agencies develop, implement and evaluate interagency systems of care, family partnerships and community programming.  

    • Serves as a Community Advocate to address Disproportionality and Disparity within organizations and systems across the country. 

    • BA, Family and Consumer Sciences, University of Tennessee

    • Founder, VIPStepmom and Blended and Black

    • Member, National Council of Family Relations as a Certified Family Life Educator; member, American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences; member, American Bar Association as a Dispute Resolution Associate

    • Life Coach for The Collective Legal Crisis and Management firm

    • Host of popular podcast, I Know I’m Crazy with Naja Hall and author of the Amazon best-seller Girl, Bye! book series

    • Masters in Social Welfare, U.C.L.A. Ph.D., University of Central Lancashire, U.K.

    • Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Partner Abuse; author and editor of several books, including the groundbreaking Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, 2nd Edition: Evidence-Based Approaches, and the forthcoming Beyond the Gender Paradigm: A Legal Primer on Evidence-Based Criminal Justice Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence 

    • Author of more than 35 research articles and book chapters investigating such topics as female perpetrators and male victims; judicial system responses to domestic violence, including false arrests and "dominant aggressor" laws; domestic violence homicides and the "battered woman" defense; the impact of domestic violence on children, and domestic violence and parental alienation in disputed child custody cases

    • Provides case consultation and expert witness testimony on the subject of domestic violence

    • Works with family violence perpetrators and victims, and is a court-approved provider of batterer intervention and parent programs in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.

    • Associate Professor of Psychology, Colorado State University

    • Ph.D. in Social Psychology, University of Connecticut; two master's degrees in psychological counseling from Teachers College, Columbia University 

    • Research focuses on the topic of power in relationships: power in how intimate partners influence each other for good or bad; for the last decade, her primary focus has been on the study of parental alienation

    • Published many peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has presented her research regularly at scientific conferences around the world. Co-authored numerous books including The Science of Relationships: Answers to your Questions about Dating, Marriage and Family and Parents Acting Badly: How Institutions and Society Promote the Alienation of Children from their Loving Families

    • Regularly conducts trainings for legal and mental health professionals on parental alienation, and serves as an expert witness and consultant on civil and criminal cases involving parental alienation and other forms of family violence

    • Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University

    • Ph.D. Psychology, Boston University

    • Expertise includes the causes, consequences, and prevention of family violence and sexual assault, with a particular focus on under-recognized victims of violence, such as heterosexual men and sexual minorities

    • Former director of the Massachusetts Family Impact Seminars, with a specialization in translating university-based research for policymakers

    • Author of over 70 peer-reviewed articles and two books on issues of family violence, one of which – Family Violence in the United States – was recently published in its third edition

    • Co-founded the CAVE program at Clark University, which was one of only seven programs nationally to be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a model campus sexual assault prevention program

    • B.A., Philosophy, University of California Berkeley; J.D., Southwestern University School of Law

    • Attorney with a background in family law, currently focused on copyright, trademark, and e-commerce law

    • Author of The History of Custody Law, Domestic Violence: The 12 Things You Aren’t Supposed to Know, and the textbook, E-Commerce Law, a comprehensive compliance manual for online businesses, along with a variety of law review articles.

    • Former or occasional counsel for the Fathers Resource Center, R-KIDS, Fathers4Justice, and the Center for Parental Responsibility

    • Echion Education founder, administrator, and instructor. Echion Education provides continuing education courses for attorneys, judges, guardians ad litem, mediators, and other business people and professionals.

    • BS from Umeå Unversity, Sweden; PhD from Cornell University

    • Biostatistician, epidemiologist and Professor of Medicine at Harvard University

    • Academic research on disease surveillance, including disease outbreaks and drug and vaccine safety monitoring and evaluation

    • Human rights observer in Guatemala in the late 1980s

    • Interest in the scientific evidence regarding child custody, domestic abuse and child support guidelines

    • Single father with 50/50 shared parenting

    • MPA, Public Administration, University of Southern California; Presidential Management Fellow

    • Began her 33-year career with the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1979 and, at the time of her retirement in 2012, she had been working in the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) managing the [Child] Access and Visitation Grant – a $10 million per year program authorized by Congress based on the goal of increasing noncustodial parents’ access to and visitation with their children.

    • During her tenure with HHS, served as Associate Director of the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Well-being (1994-1996) which involved holding public hearings throughout the country and preparing a Report to Congress and the President which contained recommendations for removing the obstacles to and increasing the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children.

    • Continued her policy advocacy post-retirement as it relates to child well-being and the unique circumstances facing unmarried parents. Her recent article, We Can Do Better: Establishing On-Ramps for Unmarried Fathers to Court-Connected Parenting Time Services & Orders, published by the Association for Family and Conciliations Courts (AFCC) in June 2022 reflects, in part, her current interest and position on the importance of father involvement in the lives of their children.

    • Currently, Ms. Pontisso manages the Responsible Fatherhood Roundtable List Serve and ad hoc Policy Work Group.

    • Ph.D., Sociology, Bowling Green State University

    • Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia Southern University

    • Published dozens of research articles related to crime, deviance, and juvenile delinquency, many of which focused on the role of family and parenting during adolescence

    • Co-author of The Prescription Drug Problem: A New American Crisis?