Our Team

Meet our clinical research & training team

Elizabeth Peacock-Chambers, MD, MS 

Director of MIO Implementation 
Associate Professor, UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate 

Dr. Lili Peacock-Chambers is the Chief of the Division of Health and Behavior in the Department of Healthcare Delivery and Population Sciences, a board-certified pediatrician, and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Healthcare Delivery and Population Sciences at UMass Chan-Baystate. She completed her pediatric training at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center. She then completed a fellowship in General Academic Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center where she earned a degree in epidemiology. She also completed the UMass Boston Infant-Parent Mental Health postgraduate program and the NIH-funded “Implementation Research Institute” that seeks to advance the field of implementation science in mental health. 

Dr. Peacock-Chambers’ work focuses on the development and study of behavioral interventions using qualitative, implementation, and community-engaged methodologies. As a pediatrician, her clinical and research interests pertain to the promotion of optimal early childhood health and development among families facing adversity and marginalization, particularly among families affected by substance use disorders. Supported by grants from the NIH, NIDA, PCORI, and SAMHSA, Dr. Peacock-Chambers has led the implementation research of MIO since 2019. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a NIDA R01 to examine the effectiveness and implementation of MIO when delivered by substance use counselors under “real-world” conditions. She has also partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to disseminate MIO via a specialized program they developed for families with opioid use disorder, called FIRST Steps Together at 10+ agencies across the state. To support the scaling of MIO, Dr. Peacock-Chambers led the development of an MIO Train-the-Trainer program. 

Amanda Lowell, PhD

Director of MIO Training 
Assistant Professor Adjunct, Yale Child Study Center
Assistant Professor, UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate 
Clinical Supervisor, Center for Young Children & Families 

Dr. Amanda Lowell is a licensed clinical psychologist, clinical director of the Center for Young Children & Families, and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UMass Chan-Baystate. She completed her doctoral training at the University of Central Florida. She then completed a two-year clinical fellowship in infant & early childhood mental health at the Yale Child Study Center, followed by a NIDA-funded research fellowship in substance use treatment and prevention in the Division of Prevention and Community Research in the Yale Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Lowell was mentored by Dr. Nancy Suchman (the originator of MIO) in the training and supervision of clinicians providing MIO in the context of randomized controlled trials. Dr. Lowell trained and supervised MIO providers for Dr. Suchman’s final community-based efficacy trial and has led the iterative development of the MIO clinician training curriculum and materials.

As a scientist practitioner, Dr. Lowell uses an infant mental health framework to both study and treat the intergenerational transmission of addiction and adversity. Clinically, Dr. Lowell provides psychotherapy and parenting support to caregivers who have experienced complex trauma, those who are in recovery from addiction, and any caregiver working to break harmful intergenerational cycles. Her research focuses on translating science to practice, with the goal of bringing this relational work into the ‘real world.’ Dr. Lowell specifically applies the science of attachment, parental reflective functioning, and caregiving to identify potential treatment mechanisms. She translates such findings into the iterative refinement of the MIO model and the training of MIO clinicians. She has collaborated on several grant-funded research projects including multiple studies testing and adapting MIO’s principles for substance use counselors, home visitors, community health workers, doulas, and at the systems level. Dr. Lowell is passionate about reducing the stigma surrounding parents with substance use disorders, advocating for more humane and effective approaches and policies for addressing parental substance use. She enjoys working with helpers across systems to train in best practices for developing trusting and transformative relationships with families impacted by parental substance use.

Amanda Zayde, PsyD

Associate Director of MIO Training  
Director, Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) 
Assistant Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine 

Dr. Amanda Zayde received her PsyD from the George Washington University and completed her pre-and post-doctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine. She founded and is Director of the Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) program, co-Director of the Becoming an Emerging Adult at Montefiore (BEAM) program, and Associate Director of Psychology Internship Training (Combined Track) at Montefiore Medical Center. She is also Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Associate Training Director of MIO.  

Dr. Zayde's areas of expertise include parental reflective functioning/mentalizing-focused interventions and program development across the lifespan, as well as the assessment and treatment of emerging adults. Dr. Zayde was involved in the adaptation and delivery of MIO within outpatient mental health settings. She has also led the group-based adaptation of MIO, called the Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE), developed to dismantle the intergenerational transmission of trauma and to support secure attachment relationships within an ethnoracially diverse, under-resourced community. She is passionate about using a mentalizing framework to help systems become more trustworthy for marginalized families.  

Dr. Zayde’s research focuses on caregivers with minoritized ethnoracial identities who are underrepresented in attachment intervention research; her work has been funded by the FAR Fund, the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the American Psychological Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Thomas J. McMahon, PhD

MIO Senior Research Advisor  
Professor Emeritus, Yale Department of Psychiatry

Dr. Tom McMahon is a Professor Emeritus in the Yale School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and the Yale Child Study Center. For many years, he was the program director for the West Haven Mental Health Clinic at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. As a clinician, educator, and researcher, he is broadly interested in developmental perspectives on psychopathology and developmentally informed approaches to clinical intervention offered in community settings. He has specific expertise in parenting support for underserved populations including fathers, having collaborated with Dr. Suchman around the initial development and research of MIO 20+ years ago.

As a clinician, he is interested in the psychological assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and young adults with a history of child abuse or neglect, particularly in the context of parental addiction. As an educator, he previously coordinated training in clinical child, adolescent, and young adult psychology; and he has been actively involved in cross-training on addiction, family process, and child development within the child welfare, child guidance, and addiction treatment systems. As a researcher, he is interested in the impact of drug addiction on family process; and he is involved in the development of family-oriented intervention for men and women affected by drug addiction.

Dr. McMahon has been the recipient of several grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to explore parenting as a treatment issue for men struggling with drug addiction; and he has been invited to participate in national and international initiatives designed to attenuate the impact of alcohol and drug addiction on family process and child development.

Jessie Borelli, PhD

MIO Assessment & Fidelity Research Advisor
Director, UCI THRIVE Lab
Professor, University of California, Irvine

Dr. Jessie Borelli is a Professor of Psychology at University of California, Irvine. She is a clinical psychologist specializing the field of developmental psychopathology. Her research focuses on the links between close relationships, emotions, health, and development, with a particular focus on risk for anxiety and depression. In her work, Dr. Borelli is interested in harnessing relationship science to develop interventions to improve mental health and well-being. Dr. Borelli’s research specifically examines the links between close relationships, emotional regulation, and health in both children and adults, as well as the ways in which we can harness relationship experiences to enhance health outcomes.

In recent years, her work has focused on the development and evaluation of attachment-based interventions for improving relational and mental health. In her intervention research, she has primarily focused on developing tools for helping low income and immigrant/ethnic minority communities, as well as focusing on intervention techniques that can be delivered by paraprofessionals. This work relies heavily on community collaborations, as well as working relationships with colleagues in other disciplines. Dr. Borelli has led the assessment of parental reflective functioning and clinician reflective functioning in MIO research. She has also led the iterative refinement of MIO fidelity tools used to assess adherence to the model in research and real-world settings.

Meet the MIO Trainers

  • Danya Handelsman, LICSW

    MIO Trainer

  • Amy Sommer, LICSW

    MIO Trainer

  • Maria Rader, LICSW

    MIO Trainer

  • Beth Marron, LICSW

    MIO Trainer

  • Jessica Schmaelzle, LICSW

    MIO Trainer

In loving memory

Nancy Suchman, Ph.D.

Originator, Mothering from the Inside Out

For more than 25 years, Dr. Nancy Suchman was the principal investigator for a series of research training and independent research grants funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Nancy’s most significant academic contribution, and the one most meaningful to her, was the development of Mothering from the Inside Out, an attachment-based parenting intervention. This empirically based individual psychotherapy is designed to help mothers grappling with addiction and other threats to effective caregiving develop the capacity for reflective functioning in their relationships with their children.

Throughout her career, she partnered with a long list of co-investigators, consultants, clinicians, and research assistants to develop and test this clinical intervention. As this novel intervention captured the attention of the research community interested in the impact of addiction on parenting, she began an academic tour to speak, teach, and consult, not just in the U.S., but also in Finland, South Africa, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

In addition to her many peer-reviewed publications, Nancy was the principal editor of Parenting and Substance Abuse. This volume, published by Oxford University Press, quickly became the definitive professional reference on addiction, parenting, and parent intervention.

Over the years, Nancy made significant contributions to the personal and professional development of others. Among them are the mothers and children who have benefitted, directly and indirectly, from her clinical insights, as well as the research assistants, graduate students, professional trainees, addiction counselors, and researchers who benefitted from her generous giving of her time and tutelage.