Dr. Cassandra Kisiel is an Associate Professor and clinical psychologist in the Mental Health Services and Policy Program and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She is the Principal Investigator and Director for the Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services and Interventions, a center of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) that specializes in supporting child-serving systems to develop the infrastructure to recognize, understand, assess, and respond to the developmental effects of childhood trauma.
Dr. Kisiel has over 20 years of experience specializing in the complex, developmental effects of trauma, dissociation, and child trauma assessment, and program evaluation. She has numerous publications and has extensive experience offering presentations, professional trainings and consultation on the use of assessment and intervention strategies for children exposed to complex trauma across child-serving settings.
Dr. Kisiel is recognized as one of the leading experts in trauma screening and assessment within the NCTSN. She also has a wide range of experience in supporting the implementation of evidence-informed intervention approaches with non-clinical providers and trauma-informed assessment strategies with practitioners across the country. She has specialized in the use of innovative training, implementation and quality improvement approaches to support practice change within various child-serving systems and organizations.
Dr. Kisiel led the initial adaptation and implementation of the Breakthrough Series Collaborative/learning collaborative model for use within child trauma through her former role as Training Director of the NCTSN. Dr. Kisiel is the primary developer of the CANS-Trauma versions, including the most recent CANS -Trauma Comprehensive, developed in collaboration with the NCTSN with applications across numerous child-serving systems across the U.S. and in several other countries.