Unlocking Transformation: The Power of Habit Formation in the Behavior Change Process

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Rachel Goldstein is a Senior Associate at JSP. She has 14 years of experience in the community corrections space. She has dedicated her career to collaboratively building a more equitable, just criminal legal system. She spent a year serving her country as an AmeriCorps member with the Rochester Police Department, where she advocated and stood alongside survivors of crime through the court process. After her year of service, she began her government career as a probation officer working at the county and federal level. She found her niche learning and incorporating core correctional practices and principles of effective intervention into her daily work with people on supervision. She became a Staff Aimed at Reducing Rearrest (STARR) coach and a national coach for the Criminogenic Needs and Violence Curriculum (CNVC), a manualized curriculum that creates a common language and set of materials for the officer, person on supervision, their support network and treatment providers. Rachel transitioned into a probation administrator role at the Administrative Office of the United States Courts where she began to tackle how to address the segmented evidence-based programming and training into a comprehensive approach that defines what it means to do community supervision work well. This is where she was introduced to Implementation Science! Rachel immersed herself in implementation work within the government, in addition to legislative implementation efforts at REFORM Alliance, an advocacy agency focused on transforming probation and parole. She sees implementation as the foundation to ensure that agencies have the needed infrastructure and capacity to support change. She is a proud member of the Global Implementation Society and the American Probation and Parole Association. She completed a Certificate Program in Implementation Practice through the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Social Work. Rachel obtained a Master of Public Administration from the University of Illinois and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Knox College.

Kosean Kokeh is a Research Associate at Justice System Partners (JSP). He has 13 years of experience in the criminal justice system and higher education. His years of experience have allowed him to observe the system’s various components and engage in work focused on behavioral, social, and system change. Kosean began his career in treatment and educational services for the Rhode Island Department of Corrections before transitioning to recovery and reentry coordination for non-profit organizations. After gaining experience with and insight into the impact of substance abuse, inadequate mental health services, and the consequences of limited social resources, Kosean started working in the probation officer capacity on the state and then the federal level. In his role, he continued to work towards helping individuals, his places of employment, and the surrounding communities move towards prosocial, equitable, and just actions. Specifically, Kosean was instrumental in developing and implementing a drug court program, created the Careers in Federal Government Program, served on the workplace conduct committee, and assisted in developing and delivering the first-ever Social Justice Conference in the federal judiciary. His commitment to engaging and impacting the criminal justice system led him to start work as an adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island, where he developed and taught criminal justice courses focused on ethics and criminal theory. Kosean graduated from the University of Rhode Island and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in psychology. He completed his Master’s in the Administration of Justice in 2018 and is in his third year as a criminal justice doctorate student at Saint Leo University. Kosean completed a Certificate Program in Leverage Diversity and Inclusion for Organizational Excellence and is a National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education member.

Dylan Norris is an Associate at Justice System Partners. She is a dedicated professional with a strong background in the nonprofit sector specializing in project development, implementation, and curation of various justice programs. In her most recent role as Justice Coordinator for a nonprofit in Louisiana, she was responsible for the facilitation of the Lafayette Reentry Coalition, two Justice and Mental Health Collaborative grant funded projects — Pre-Arrest Diversion Program and a Judicial Diversion for Mental Health Intervention Project, as well as managing the Department of Corrections Community Incentive Grant for Lafayette Parish called The Community Care Hub for Reentry. Dylan holds her Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and her Master of Social Work from New Mexico State University. Dylan’s passion for social and restorative justice approaches when working within the criminal justice space is what ultimately led her to JSP.