Meet the team

Dan Grupe is a Research Assistant Professor at the UW-Madison Center for Healthy Minds. Originally from St. Louis, Dan has spent over 15 years at UW-Madison as a grad student, post-doc, scientist, and research professor. Dan leads the Cultivating Justice CoLab, which conducts research on community-engaged, contemplative approaches to promoting mental health and well-being for individuals impacted by the criminal legal system. A few of Dan’s favorite things: gardening, fermentation, bicycles, curling, road trips with Molly, and long walks with Harry.

Curriculum vitae

Chad McGehee is the Director of Meditation Training for UW Athletics and an and honorary affiliate of the Center for Healthy Minds. He is a long-time collaborator on research and training efforts surrounding mindfulness and policing. Chad trains regularly in law enforcement environments including with the FBI Academy, FBI SWAT Teams and the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team through Inner Edge Meditation.

Virginia Medinilla is an Addiction Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UW-Madison and Core Faculty at the Center for Healthy Minds. Her passion and expertise are in working with individuals in recovery from co-occurring mental health and addictive disorders. Virginia’s research interests include the use of meditation and other contemplative approaches for the understanding and treatment of psychiatric illnesses, particularly substance use and other addictive disorders.

Brendon Panke is the Operations and Community Resource Coordinator at the Center for Healthy Minds. He has a particular interest on the use of narrative to make meaning and cultivate self-understanding. His approach to narrative is informed most strongly by improv and narrative medicine. In addition to his work at the Center for Healthy Minds, he leads personal narrative storytelling classes at Columbia Correctional with the Odyssey Beyond Bars program.

Christy Wilson-Mendenhall is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Healthy Minds. Her highly interdisciplinary research draws on perspectives from situated cognition, constructionist approaches to emotion, and contemplative philosophies to investigate well-being as an active process of life-long learning, practice, and transformation. She brings expertise in measures development and well-being frameworks to our research on mindfulness for reentry.

Carmen Alonso is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified mindfulness instructor, and Tae Kwon Do instructor. Her nonprofit organization, Just Mindfulness, works to develop and implement mindfulness-based interventions with a social justice orientation. She is a collaborator on research initiatives to bring mindfulness practices to police officers and formerly incarcerated individuals, and is a volunteer with the Wisconsin Prison Mindfulness Initiative and the Prison Ministry Project restorative justice program.

Aaron Hicks is the Assistant Director for Reentry Services at the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, the leader of the Man Up group at Nehemiah, and a violence interrupter at Focused Interruption. He co-facilitates community advisory board activities and collaborates on mindfulness and reentry research.

Deb Mejchar is a Chaplain with certification in grief counseling who worked for 17 years in the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. Having failed at retirement, she serves as the Chaplain for EXPO (Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing) and works with the Prison Ministry Project on the restorative justice program. As a Certified Peer Specialist, she walks alongside incarcerated peer specialists who serve others while serving time, and she has received additional Train the Trainer certification. She co-facilitates our community advisory board and works on research projects related to restorative justice and mindful reentry.

Karen Reece is the Vice President for Research and Education at the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, where she provides program evaluation, research, and strategic support and does strategic planning for Justified Anger, an initiative designed to reduce systems-level racial disparities. Karen coordinates community advisory board activities and collaborates on research on mindfulness and reentry.

Pajarita Charles is an Assistant Professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work and director of the Lab for Family Wellbeing and Justice. Pajarita collaborates with us on our research on mindfulness and reentry.

Mike Christopher is a Professor in the School of Graduate Psychology at Pacific University. He directs the Mindful Health and Resilience Lab where he leads research on Mindfulness-Based Resilience Training with law enforcement officers.

Mike Koenigs is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry where he directs the Incarceration and Mental Health Lab. He partners on community advisory board activities and our research on mindfulness and reentry.

Valerie Nguyen is a Research Specialist in the Incarceration and Mental Health Lab whose research interests involve interventions that help to alleviate public and self-stigma surrounding mental health, incarceration, and homelessness. She is a collaborator on research on restorative justice and other diversion efforts.