Team Members

Maya Coleman is a Clinical Child Psychologist in Washington, DC. Maya provides support for preschoolers and their families as they tackle both common and complex parenting challenges. She enjoys working with families of children who are growing along a wide range of developmental trajectories, and with families formed in a variety of ways including through adoption, foster care, and kinship care, as well as with multiracial and LGBTQIA families. Maya helps families navigate a range of issues including aggression and dysregulation in child-care and pre-school settings; sleep challenges: fears and anxieties; sibling relationships; and difficulties in attachment.

Maya holds an AB in Psychology from Bryn Mawr College, an MA in Special Education/Learning Disabilities from American University, and PhD in Clinical Psychology from The Catholic University of America. She is a Certified Instructor of Hand in Hand, and a member of the Building Resilience through Relationships in Early Childhood Educational Communities Research Team (a Portfolio Program of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child Frontiers of Innovation Program).

Angela Sillars is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and is concurrently working on her Master’s in Education, Society, and Culture. Her research focuses on children’s socioemotional development, race, gender, and policy, and families’ and educators’ understandings of how to foster thriving communities. Angela spent five years teaching at Play Mountain Place, a humanistic school in Los Angeles that was founded in 1949. Angela is a Hand in Hand Certification Candidate and a member of the Building Resilience through Relationships in Early Childhood Educational Communities Research Team (a Portfolio Program of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child Frontiers of Innovation Program).

Ahava Vogelstein is a preschool consultant, parent coach, and nanny educator. As the founder of Nourishing Relationships, Ahava works with primary caregivers using emotionally responsive caregiving practices to support thriving, resilient, and creative young people. She collaborates with agencies and organizations to implement trauma-informed and attachment-based tools to support the body, heart, mind, and spirit of young children in infant/toddler and preschool centers.

As the Assistant Program Director for The Institute for Families and Nannies (TIFFAN), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving caregiving by nannies, Ahava designs and facilitates ongoing professional development workshops for nannies in San Francisco.

Ahava studied Transpersonal Psychology and received an MA in Counseling Psychology from The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, where she focused on the relationship between children and spirituality. She focused her post graduate work on meditation with the Marin Mindfulness Institute and received certification in Mindfulness and Child Development. Ahava is a Hand in Hand Certification Candidate and a member of the Building Resilience through Relationships in Early Childhood Educational Communities Research Team (a Portfolio Program of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child Frontiers of Innovation Program).

Judith Wides is the School Counselor and Special Needs Inclusion Coordinator at the National Child Development Center in Washington, DC. Judith is graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, holds an MA in Expressive Arts Therapies from Lesley University and an MEd in School and Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Early Childhood Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She trained for two years at the Brazelton Institute at Harvard Medical School in Infant Assessment. Judith is a member of the Building Resilience through Relationships in Early Childhood Educational Communities Research Team (a Portfolio Program of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child Frontiers of Innovation Program).

Please reach out to us at contact@resiliencethroughrelationships.com