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Our team brings a wide range of professional experience
to our clients:
Together, the principal consultants Katie Kramer and Barry Zack have over 35 years of experience serving and working with individuals, families and community agencies, who have been affected by incarceration. We bring reality-based experience to our work to provide thoughtful answers to difficult questions.
In addition to the principal consultants, The Bridging Group works with a team of affiliated consultants who represent some of the country's leading experts in correctional management, corrections-based research, program development and training and overall, thinkers and practitioners in the field.
"Barry Zack and Katie Kramer's work in the research and application of best practice models for 'continuity of care between correctional settings and the community' has outlined a framework of essential services that supports incarcerated individuals prepare for re-entry into the community and that sets a standard for the nation! I applaud them for continuing this important work with the Bridging Group, LLC."
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John Miles, MPA (ret.)
Special Assistant for Corrections and Substance Abuse Activities,
National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |
Katie Kramer, MSW/MPH
CEO, Corrections, Communities and Families
Katie Kramer has been designing and providing social services since 1990. For the past 15 years, she has focused on the development, implementation, and evaluation of social services and health programs that serve individuals, families and communities affected by incarceration. She is an experienced agency manager with comprehensive knowledge in program oversight, agency policy development, grant writing, and staff supervision. She has experience as a clinical social worker providing direct service for clients and clinical supervision for direct-line staff. Ms. Kramer is also a professional trainer and curriculum developer with over 15 years experience in the creation and facilitation of skills-based training on topics including: HIV/AIDS prevention, community re-entry/transitional services, building effective collaborations with correctional agencies, conflict resolution, peer health education, family reunification, and working with children of incarcerated parents.
Ms. Kramer currently serves as an international consultant and CEO for Communities, Families and Corrections for The Bridging Group, LLC. She provides training, technical assistance and capacity building for community organizations, government agencies and funders working in correctional settings. Previously, Ms. Kramer served as the Associate Director for Centerforce, a community organization providing support, education and advocacy for those impacted by incarceration. In this capacity, Ms. Kramer was responsible for the coordination of all Centerforce program divisions including children and family services, prisoner services, and transitional services.
Prior to her work with incarcerated individuals and their families, Ms. Kramer provided services for children and their families at various community organizations in Chicago, IL and Oakland, CA including child welfare case management, adolescent substance abuse prevention, and group work with youth and parents in community as well as in adult and juvenile correctional facilities.
Ms. Kramer currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Broadway Children's School in Oakland, CA and is a member of the San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership. She has also served as a member of the Community Advisory Board for the University of California, San Francisco - Center for AIDS Prevention Studies and the Chairperson for the Board of Directors for Peace Creations ARK, an organization providing mentoring and support for children of incarcerated parents. 
Barry Zack, MPH
CEO, Corrections and Health
Barry Zack is a national (U.S.) expert and international consultant in the field of correctional and community health. Mr. Zack has over 20 years experience identifying critical gaps in the field of correctional health and has, most importantly, developed evidence-based and collaborative responses to meet these needs. Since 1986, Mr. Zack has engaged at every level of public health programming and research in the prison and jail setting, including his work as a Jail Outreach Worker, a Health Educator, and a Director of Correctional Health Programs. Most recently, Mr. Zack served as the Executive Director of Centerforce, in San Quentin, California. He has also served as the Principal Investigator of multiple national research studies.
Mr. Zack is an innovative researcher with extensive experience in the development, implementation and evaluation of complex collaborative correctional, academic and community research projects. He has been an executive manager with comprehensive experience in program planning, agency management and fund development of over 18 million dollars in the past 5 years. Mr. Zack is a demonstrated leader with strengths in the cross-cultural dynamics between corrections, public health, academia and non-governmental/community-based organizations. He is an insightful grant reviewer with critical thinking and strategic planning experience. Mr. Zack is also an experienced educator and presenter of multiple topics concerning community health and corrections.
Previously, Mr. Zack served as an external consultant for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Prevention and Control of Infections with Hepatitis Viruses in Correctional Settings" as well as the Surgeon General's "Call to Action on Corrections and Community Health." He also served as a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, "Ethical Considerations for Revisions to the DHHS Regulations for Protection of Prisoners Involved in Research."
Currently, Mr. Zack is an international consultant and CEO for Health & Corrections for The Bridging Group, LLC. He has worked with many governments, non-governmental organizations and academia throughout the United States and internationally with projects in Australia, England, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Mr. Zack is also currently an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, in the Department of Community Health Systems and serves on the Editorial Boards of Infectious Diseases in Corrections Report and the Journal of Correctional Health Care.
Harold Atkins
Health Education Coordinator,
AIDS Community Research Consortium, Redwood City, CA
Harold Atkins has worked in the field of health education for the past 12 years. While incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, he worked as a Peer Health Educator. Through these efforts, Mr. Atkins worked diligently to help the community to understand and practice effective prevention strategies both during incarceration and after release. Currently, Mr. Atkins serves as the Health Education Coordinator for the AIDS Community Research Consortium (ACRC) in Redwood City, CA. In this role, he works with high-risk youth and people living with HIV and/or HCV to provide prevention education workshops, street outreach, and support for infected individuals. Previous to his work at ACRC, Mr. Atkins served as a Youth Outreach Worker at ARIS in San Jose, CA serving high-risk youth and as the Director of the Community Health Outreach Program at Free At Last, a substance abuse treatment program in East Palo Alto, California. While working at Free At Last, Mr. Atkins was instrumental in bringing a Harm Reduction focus to the agency that included implementing its first ever needle exchange program. Since 1999, Mr. Atkins has served as a member of the Centerforce Board of Directors where he was elected Board President from 2003 to 2006. Giving back to the community through volunteering is a passion for Mr. Atkins. Thus, Mr. Atkins takes pride in teaching football and life skills to youth in his role as the head coach of the Redwood City 49ers Pop Warner football team.
Megan Comfort, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS), University of California, San Francisco, CA
Megan Comfort has a longstanding interest in and commitment to exploring how incarceration affects incarcerated individuals' relationships with their family members and loved ones. From 1995-1997 she worked for Centerforce and the Marin AIDS Project providing health education and other services to women visiting incarcerated men. For her doctoral research in sociology in 2000, Dr. Comfort conducted ethnographic field work in the visitor waiting area at San Quentin State Prison and in-depth interviews with women with incarcerated husbands, fiancés, or boyfriends. Her book based on this research, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison (University of Chicago Press, 2008) analyzes how the incarceration of a partner results in the "secondary prisonization" of women as the correctional facility infiltrates and transforms their personal, domestic and social worlds. Currently Dr. Comfort is the Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-funded R01 study of HIV risk among male-female couples recruited in Oakland, California following the male partner's release from prison. Dr. Comfort also is a CAPS Methods Core Scientist with expertise in ethnographic methods, qualitative interviewing, and conducting research with vulnerable populations.
Mick Gardner
Founder and Chief Operations Officer, Communities-N-Concert, LLC Oakland, CA
Mick Gardner has worked for 22 years in the fields of corrections, substance abuse, and public health. He has developed and facilitated multiple individual and community-level interventions including prevention case management, violence prevention, incarcerated/community forums, and family reunification programs. Mr. Gardner has implemented multi-million dollar projects that require working in collaboration with federal entities including: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Resources Services Administration, Department of Justice and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In addition, Mr. Gardner has partnered on several projects with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the City of Oakland. Since 2003, Mr. Gardner has served as an independent consultant providing technical assistance, grant writing, and organizational development. He currently serves as the Chief Operations Officer for Communities-N-Concert. Prior to his work with Communities-N-Concert, Mr. Gardner served as the Re-entry Services Manager for the City of Oakland, California, supervising a nationally recognized project he helped implement in 2002. Mr. Gardner has served as a member of several prisoner and community advisory groups and is the former Board Secretary for Re-Entry Solutions, a prisoner re-entry organization. Mr. Gardner is also one of the founders of No More Tears, an ongoing forum of concerned incarcerated individuals at San Quentin State Prison and community leaders, focused on exploring the roots of violence and crime and developing ongoing solutions for local Bay Area communities.
Olga Grinstead Reznick, Ph.D., MPH
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS), University of California, San Francisco, CA
Olga Grinstead Reznick conducted a series of studies from 1990-2008 to develop, implement and evaluate behavioral HIV, STI and hepatitis prevention programs for incarcerated men and their female partners. She was the recipient of multiple federal research awards and conducted this program of research in collaboration with various community-based agencies including Centerforce, Inc., the Center for Health Justice and the Forensic AIDS Project. From 2000-2008, Dr. Grinstead Reznick directed CAPS' Technology and Information Exchange (TIE) Core which is responsible for 1) disseminating CAPS' scientific findings to other researchers, community service providers, policy makers, funders and the general public; 2) providing technical assistance services for program development and evaluation to researchers and community service providers; and 3) promoting community collaborative research and conducting research on the process and best practices of community collaborative research in HIV prevention. From 2006-2008, Dr. Grinstead Reznick directed the Collaborative HIV Prevention Research in Minority Communities Program, a NIH-funded training program with the goals of: 1) increasing the number of minority scientists receiving federal funding; and 2) increasing the amount of HIV prevention research being conducted in communities of color. Her duties included supervising program staff and faculty, curriculum development and teaching the summer in-residence program, and mentoring individual participants. As Emeritus Professor Dr. Grinstead Reznick serves as a mentor and consultant to CAPS, working with the Collaborative HIV Prevention Research in Minority Communities Program and on several ongoing research projects involving the development of HIV prevention interventions for incarcerated individuals and their families.
Yolanda Najera
Administrative Services Coordinator,
Kaiser Permanente, Walnut Creek, CA
Yolanda Najera has worked in the public health sector since 1995 providing a wide range of services including community health outreach, psychosocial case management, corrections-based peer health education, and currently as an Administrative Services Coordinator for Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek, CA. From 2000-2008, Ms. Najera provided both direct service and program management for multiple educational and social service programs at San Quentin State Prison and the California Medical Facility as the Prisoner Services Program Manager for Centerforce. Ms. Najera translated all of the Centerforce peer education materials into Spanish and was the first to provide a peer education training to the mono-lingual Spanish speaking community at San Quentin State Prison. Ms. Najera is also a Master Trainer for the Reach One Teach One Prison Peer Health Education Training Program and has conducted trainings throughout the country in both English and Spanish for many Departments of Corrections, Departments of Health, and community services organizations. Ms. Najera is currently a Board Member for the Latino Advisory Board-State Office of AIDS and for the National Hepatitis in Prisons Advisory Board.
Jeanne S. Woodford
Retired Chief of Adult Probation, City and County of San Francisco, Former Undersecretary and Director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Former Warden of San Quentin State Prison
Jeanne Woodford retired as the Chief of the San Francisco Adult Probation Department on May 30, 2008 completing 30 years of work at the state and county level of government in the field of criminal justice. Ms. Woodford has extensive experience in Corrections and Rehabilitation. She began her career at San Quentin State Prison in 1978 following graduation from Sonoma State University with a Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice. Ms. Woodford promoted through the ranks and was appointed Warden of San Quentin State Prison by Governor Davis in 1999. She remained Warden of San Quentin until called upon by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2004 to serve as the Director of the California Department of Corrections. Her mission was to bring reform and rehabilitation to the California Department of Corrections. She was appointed to the position of Undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the largest correctional system in the United States, in July of 2005. Ms. Woodford is considered a national expert on Prison Management and Administration. She is also recognized for her leadership skills and ability to lead staff toward a shared vision. She brought mission-based management and data-driven decision making to the California Department of Corrections. She is an expert in community corrections having implemented new and innovative programs to improve community outcomes and public safety. Ms. Woodford has been featured in many newspapers and magazines including the New York Times Magazine in an article titled, The Good Jailer, published in March of 2004.
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