Cathy has worked with language impaired children in elementary schools in Needham and Wellesley, Massachusetts, as well as with adults in hospitals in Lynn, Massachusetts and New Haven, Connecticut. In her former career as a Speech and Language Therapist, her focus was on helping people develop strategies to compensate for weak language processing skills and to promote useful pragmatic social skills.
Her work in the field of pragmatic social skills led directly to developing a social competency curriculum for elementary school children. After many years working in the Wellesley Public Schools, Cathy joined the Open Circle Project in 1990, where she is currently its Consulting Director. In this role, she is a mentor and coach to the Open Circle consulting staff as well as the corps of dedicated teachers who make up the project’s Consulting Teacher groups. Cathy is also a member of the Open Circle training and consulting staff. Open Circle currently trains and consults to more than 500 teachers per year—that translates to touching the lives of thousands of students each year. Cathy is excited to be part of this wonderful project and to make a positive difference for children and the entire school community.
At the Centers, Rachel worked on a wide variety of research and evaluation projects. She worked with United Way of Massachusetts Bay as an evaluator on an initiative to build partnerships between afterschool programs and schools. In addition, she worked with the State of Maine researching and writing technical assistance papers on afterschool issues, specifically focusing on inclusion efforts for special needs students. Rachel also focused her time on building a professional development infrastructure for afterschool and youth workers in the Boston area. She worked with a variety of Boston-based organizations and higher education institutions to pilot the first credential for school-age and youth workers in Boston.
Prior to joining Wellesley Centers for Women, Rachel held a legislative research position in Alexandria, Virginia, tracking state health care bills and presenting legislative reports to pharmaceutical companies. She also held a post at the Boston Globe conducting marketing research and designing surveys.
Senior Research Scientist
Work, Families, & Children Research Group
Linda M. Hartling was the Associate Director of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute (JBMTI) at the Wellesley Centers for Women until 2009. The JBMTI is dedicated to exploring and advancing the practice of the Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT), a groundbreaking model of growth that puts relationships at the center of psychological development, recognizing that relationships are highly influenced by culture and the dynamics of power.
Dr. Hartling holds a doctoral degree in clinical/community psychology and has written papers on resilience, substance abuse prevention, shame and humiliation, appreciative inquiry, relational practice in the workplace, and developments in RCT. Building on the work of Jean Baker Miller and the scholars of the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, now a part of the Wellesley Centers for Women, Dr. Hartling explores the specific qualities of relating that encourage growth and examines the operations of power that prevent individuals from participating in these types of relationships. She is co-editor of The Complexity of Connection: Writings from the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at the Stone Center (2004), and she has supervised the publication of over 40 Stone Center Working Papers, project reports, training videos, and home study programs.
One of Dr. Hartling’s special areas of interest is the study of humiliation. In 2004, she joined the board of directors for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS; humiliationstudies.org), a global network of scholars, researchers, and activists dedicated to ending cycles of humiliation that contribute to psychological problems as well as interpersonal and international conflict. She has co-convened and facilitated annual international meetings of HumanDHS in Paris at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, in Berlin at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, in Costa Rica at the UN University for Peace, and in New York at Columbia University. She is on the academic board of the Journal of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, an e-journal that will be launched in March 2007. In addition, she is the developer of Humiliation Inventory, a scale to assess the internal experience of derision and degradation. In one of her most recent presentations, “Humiliation: Real Pain, a Pathway to Violence,” she described social and neurobiological pathways linking humiliation, social pain, and violence. Dr. Hartling strives to expand applications of RCT in the real world. For example, Dr. Hartling suggests, “It’s helpful to conceptualize human dignity as a co-created experience, rather than as an individual, internal phenomena. We encourage dignity in others whenever we build mutually respectful connections in which people feel known and valued, they feel that they matter. RCT encourages the construction of this relational experience for all people.”
Founding Director of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. Served as the first director of the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, now a part of WCW, from 1981 to 1984.
A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst for over 40 years, Dr. Miller was the author of Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston, Beacon Press, 1976), a book which has become a classic in its field and about which a Boston Globe review said: "This small book may do more to suggest the range and scope of female possibilities than anything since Women's Suffrage." The book has been translated into 20 languages and was reissued in a second edition in 1987. A newer book, The Healing Connection (Boston, Beacon Press, 1997) co-authored with Irene Stiver, Ph.D., continues and expands this work. Dr. Miller was also co-author of Women's Growth in Connection (Guildford Press, 1991) and editor of Psychoanalysis and Women (New York, Brunner-Mazel and Penguin Books, 1973) and of numerous papers in professional journals on the psychology of women, depression and studies of dreams. She has been a consultant, leader, and member of several women's groups.
Dr. Miller received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1948, her M.D. from Columbia University in 1952 and her certification in psychoanalysis from New York Medical College in 1959. She also hold honorary degrees of Doctor of Human Letters from Brandeis University (1987) and Doctor Honoris Causa from Regis College (1995). She received her psychiatry training at Bellevue Hospital and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both in New York City and at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.
Dr. Miller was a member of numerous professional societies, including the American College Psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Orthopsychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.
Since 1981, Dr. Miller had been Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. She was also on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and Associate Psychiatrist at Beth Israel Hospital. Prior to these positions, she was a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. In 1972-73, Dr. Miller was a visiting lecturer at the London School of Economics, and at the Tavistock Institute and Clinic in London.
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