Board Members

Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray is a licensed human rights psychotherapist, innovative movement artist, board certified dance/movement therapist, master trainer and educator, Continuum teacher, and public health professional.

In her father’s words, Amber was born “dancing, fighting, and has never stopped”. Her life-long commitment to social justice and planetary, animal, and human rights; her passion for the natural world and everything wild; and her commitment to service have all inspired and shaped her work. An innovator in the use of somatic psychology and movement–based therapies (Dance/Movement Therapy, Yoga, Continuum) with survivors of trauma, torture, war, and human rights abuses, Amber has spent the last 20 years in service of her belief that, “Every human being has the right to inhabit their body in the way they choose”.

Amber’s expertise is represented in many published articles and chapters, keynote addresses, professional collaborations, and presentations around the world. Amber has provided clinical training on the integration of refugee mental health and torture treatment with the creative arts, mindfulness, and body-based therapies. Her work has traveled to more than 30 programs for survivors worldwide since the late 1990s.

Her professional path traverses education, social change, international relations, public health, deep tissue bodywork, cranial-sacral therapy, aromatherapy, and energy medicine. Clinical influences include somatic psychology, dance/movement therapy, eco-psychology, contemplative psychotherapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, somatic experiencing, and narrative exposure therapy.

Amber has originated a resiliency-based framework, The Poto Mitan Trauma & Resiliency Framework, a Restorative Movement Psychotherapy for mind-heart-body-spirit integration. Restorative Movement Psychotherapy integrates somatic, movement, dance, mindfulness and arts-based therapies. Poto Mitan is literally “center post” in Kreyol, meaning the center of all things. Working with survivors of trauma in cross cultural, low resource contexts, the Poto Mitan Framework synthesizes the wisdom of whole-body, moving intelligence of Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory with Haitian traditional medicine and spiritual practice. She is a Sevito Fran Ginee in the Haitian tradition, and has studied with mystics and medicine people in Samiland, Australia, Nepal, Guatemala, and the United States.

Regis Pecos is a citizen of the Pueblo de Cochiti. He is currently Co-Director of the Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School, which he co-founded. He has served as Councilor and Former Governor, Lt. Governor (three terms), and is a lifetime member of the Tribal Council of the Pueblo de Cochiti. Pecos was most recently Chief of Staff to the Speaker of the House, New Mexico House of Representatives. Pecos previously served as Senior Policy and Legislative Analyst to the Speaker, New Mexico House of Representatives; and for 16 years, as Executive Director of the New Mexico Office of Indian Affairs under four administrations.

Pecos is a graduate of Princeton University and is completing his doctorate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Pecos is actively involved in many organizations and was a former trustee at Princeton University and currently is Chairman of the Board of Governors for the Honoring Nations program at Harvard University. He is the co-founder of the Summer Junior Policy Institute at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

Rose B. Simpson (b. 1983, Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) has an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her works are in many museum collections, including the Hirshhorn, Washington, D.C.; Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; ICA Boston; Princeton University Art Museum; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; MCA Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; LACMA, Los Angeles; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; and SFMOMA.  Simpson has enjoyed solo shows at ICA Boston; the Nevada Art Museum, Reno; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Pomona College Museum of Art; the Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia.

Her work has recently been included in group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Cleveland Museum of Art; SFMOMA; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Berkeley Art Museum, CA; and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY. 

Simpson lives and works in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. She is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. 

In 2022, Simpson debuted Counterculture, a twelve-figure public work at Field Farm, MA, which is now on view at the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI. In 2023, she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Institute of American Indian Art by President Biden. 

Photo by Minesh Bacrania. Courtesy of the artist.

Justina Trott, M.D., F.A.C.P. is an internist, health care and health policy consultant, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, and fellow of the American College of Physicians. She serves on the Sex and Gender Health Collaborative of the American Medical Women’s Association.

She is a former senior fellow at the RWJF Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico, former Senior Fellow NM Center for the Advancement of Research, Engagement, & Science on Health Disparities, former faculty member of the Northern New Mexico Family Practice Residency Program, and former president of the New Mexico Chapter American College of Physicians (2011-2012).

She has taught medical students and residents for over 45 years and developed and teaches a women’s health on-line course at UNM for the past 10 years. She was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Congressional Fellow 2008-9 in the office of Senator Jeff Bingaman. Prior to her fellowship she was medical and executive director at Women’s Health Services, a nonprofit organization designated as a National Community Center of Excellence in Women’s Health in 2001 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2006 she was appointed chair of the New Mexico Governor’s Women’s Health Advisory Council.

Born and raised in the Española Valley, Dr. Patricia Trujillo has dedicated her career to improving social engagement via critical education, social justice, and community-building. She is the Deputy Secretary of the New Mexico Higher Education Department. She formerly served as founding director of the Office of Equity and Diversity at Northern New Mexico College since 2013, where she oversaw programming to address access and inclusion for historically underrepresented populations in higher education.

Dr. Trujillo has served on multiple commissions and boards, including the Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area, Tewa Women United, NewMexicoWomen.Org, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation. Trujillo also has more than 15 years of experience in higher education, and is a tenured professor at Northern New Mexico College. She has taught in the areas of Chicana/Chicano studies, Southwest literature, Indigenous history, and New Mexico history, and has published work in multiple academic books and journals.

Trujillo has a Ph.D. in U.S. Latina/Latino Literature from the University of Texas San Antonio, an M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska, and a B.A. in English with a supplemental major in Law and Society from New Mexico State University.