OUR TEAM
The National Federation of Families (NFF) employs individuals dedicated to fulfilling the organization's mission with their skills covering a wide range of areas including social marketing, policy, leadership, and technical assistance. The majority of the team has lived experience as an individual or a parent/caregiver or family member who has navigated mental health and/substance use supports and services.
LYNDA GARGAN, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Dr. Lynda Gargan serves as the Executive Director for the National Federation of Families. In this position, she leads the country’s largest national advocacy organization and voice for families whose loved ones experience mental health and/or substance use disorders during their lifetime. Throughout her career, Dr. Gargan has worked across the nation providing technical assistance and training to ensure that all individuals are afforded the opportunity to live in the community of their choice. During her tenure as Deputy Special Master, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, Dr. Gargan oversaw the successful settlement of a class action lawsuit, returning 1000 children placed in the foster care system to their communities. Dr. Gargan served as the Project Manager and Project Director, respectively, for two Federal Supported Employment Technical Assistance Centers. She more recently served as CEO for an agency specializing in Intensive In-Home Family Therapy services for families navigating both the mental health and substance use systems. Dr. Gargan has a wealth of experience in community-based behavioral health at the local, state, and national levels. She has a rich background in field research, including longitudinal studies in multiple class action lawsuits.
Dr. Gargan serves as a tireless champion for the mission and vision of the Federation. Under her guidance, the National Federation has fully operationalized the Family Peer Specialist Certification, an innovative peer support workforce initiative that utilizes the lived experience and specialized training of families / caregivers to assist and support families and their loved ones with mental health and/or substance use disorders. Believing that mental health and substance use disorders are often inextricable, Dr. Gargan spearheaded efforts to expand the focus of the organization to embrace these co-occurring diagnoses. Under her leadership, the Federation has expanded their focus to include family support in both mental health and/or substance use disorders. Dr. Gargan’s most recent accomplishment is the award of SAMHSA’s first National Family Support Technical Assistance Center, of which she serves as the Principal Investigator. This five-year award focuses on families who are supporting loved ones who experience mental health and/or substance use disorders.
Utilizing both her personal and extensive professional experience to inform her work, Dr. Gargan seeks solutions to the challenges that families face as they attempt to navigate the complex systems that serve children, adults, and families. As a native of West Virginia, Dr. Gargan has personal experience and knowledge of the chaos that the opioid crisis has created in families and the challenges that Appalachian families face when attempting to locate services.
GAIL CORMIER, MS
Director of Technical Assistance
Gail Cormier, MS is the Director of Technical Assistance for the National Federation of Families. Here she served as the Director of the National Family Support Technical Assistance Center (NFSTAC), the nation’s first SAMHSA‑funded Family Center of Excellence dedicated to supporting families and caregivers of children—of any age—who experience serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders. Under her leadership, NFSTAC operated until its sunset in September 2025. In this role, Ms. Cormier led a national team of staff and subject‑matter experts, ensuring the Center met the evolving needs of families across the lifespan who were navigating behavioral health and substance use challenges.
Throughout her career, Ms. Cormier has provided national and statewide technical assistance, elevating the voices of families, youth, and young adults. She is a recognized national family leader with both professional expertise and deep family‑lived experience. Her work has contributed to the development of federal programs serving at‑risk and vulnerable individuals, families, and youth. Prior to joining the National Federation of Families, she spent 14 years as Executive Director of North Carolina Families United, the state chapter of the National Federation of Families. There, she led statewide efforts to build and strengthen both the Family Peer Specialist workforce and the Youth Peer Workforce.
With more than three decades of experience working at the intersection of children’s mental health and child‑serving systems, Ms. Cormier has advocated at both the individual and policy levels, helping families navigate complex systems and building collaborative partnerships with professionals and agencies. Her areas of expertise include organizational management, grant and program development, staff supervision and training, parent peer support, family engagement, curriculum development, and systems of care. Drawing on her professional background and her personal experience as a parent of two children with mental health challenges, she consults nationally on parent peer support certification, workforce development, program design, and service delivery. She also develops curricula, provides training on a range of children’s mental health topics, and contributes to research and policy initiatives that advance the field.
Ms. Cormier is a co‑developer of the University of New Hampshire’s nationally recognized best practice model, RENEW, a care coordination process for transition‑age youth with Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED). She provided oversight for SAMHSA‑funded Statewide Family Network grants in both New Hampshire and North Carolina from 1996 to 2019. Over the course of her career, she has served as Project Director for seven federal grants funded by SAMHSA, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Administration for Children and Families—each focused on strengthening supports for families and their children across the lifespan. She continues to support family‑run organizations, family peer support programs, and policy‑making bodies that shape child‑, youth‑, and family‑serving systems nationwide.
Grounded in her lived and professional experience, Ms. Cormier understands that parenting does not end when a child turns 21. Families face challenges at every stage of development, and caregivers need support as their children transition from childhood to adulthood and beyond. She is committed to ensuring that families—and the family peer workforce that supports them—have access to the most current tools, information, and guidance needed to navigate complex systems and help their children thrive. Contact Gail at gcormier@ffcmh.org.
MICHELLE COVINGTON
Project Manager
For over 30 years, Michelle has been a dedicated advocate for children and families experiencing behavioral health challenges. She brought her life and professional experience to the Federation in 2017. Michelle believes firmly that every family should have access to the services they need for both their mental health and physical health. This commitment to parity shows in the work she does on behalf of the Federation in the evaluation of legislation, policy and advocacy at both the national and state level. Michelle serves as a liaison with Federation affiliates, working closely with them to addressing issues at the state and local levels.
Michelle began her career as an intensive family preservation therapist and that core belief that family is the expert on their family and that they are essential partners in services has driven her work and leadership of others throughout her career. Seeing a gap in services that was essential for families, Michelle worked with her agency and managed care organizations to create and fund a mobile therapy program that allowed for therapists to go into the homes and work with children in counties where there was not easy access to children’s therapists. Additionally, she brings experience in directing community-based services for children at a statewide level that included case management, respite services, mobile therapy and grant programs providing intensive in-home services to drug affected families.
Michelle has bachelor’s in social work and a master’s in marriage and family counseling. As the proud mother of two adult children, a Mimi to two, Michelle is dedicated to see that all children and families have access to the services they need to achieve their greatest potential. Contact Michelle at mcovington@ffcmh.org.
LACHELLE FREEMAN
Project Manager
Lachelle is dedicated to advocating for youth and families to receive appropriate services that meet their needs. Lachelle is trained in family systems and stands by System of Care values that ensure the system benefits the entire family. She wholeheartedly believes that treating the whole person yields the best results.
With over 25 years working in the mental health system, Lachelle has provided direct care in family preservation programs and therapeutic services for Pittsburgh children and families where abuse occurred within the family. Additionally, she provided clinical oversight, managed therapeutic group homes and assisted in work groups for block grants.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Lachelle has worked on mental health initiatives in Maryland and North Carolina and assisted in research projects at both the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maryland's Systems Evaluation Center. For the past nine years Lachelle worked at a Managed Care Organization where she was most recently served as the Project Director for North Carolina’s SAMHSA System of Care Expansion Grant.
Lachelle comes to the Federation with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Geneva College. She is the proud mother of two children, Joshua and Madison. Lachelle is dedicated to family advocacy, whole-person care and policy change that meets the needs of the individuals being served.Contact Lachelle at lwfreeman@ffcmh.org.
GENA FITZGERALD
Program Manager
Gena Fitzgerald has been focused on children and families for her entire career: first, as a journalist covering national and local news, and then bringing that expertise to nonprofits specializing in children and families. She is a recovery ally with lived experience supporting family, friends, and colleagues and a longtime advocate for children with learning differences and disabilities.
Since 2007, Gena has directed national communications and storytelling efforts in the nonprofit sector. She was previously Senior Director of Family Support and Outreach at SAFE Project, where her portfolio included launching the first national Family Support Locator in 2022, and teaming with the National Family Support Technical Assistance Center on “Family Connections”, a virtual community for parents and caregivers. As Senior Director of Strategic Communications, she also led communications efforts to inspire and help families coping with substance use and/or mental health challenges.
Raised as a military child, Gena served as VP of Communications for the USO and then Operation Homefront to meet the special challenges affecting service members and military families. As Executive Director for the Journalism Center on Children & Families at the University of Maryland, she created training and resources for journalists on critical social issues affecting vulnerable families.
Prior to her nonprofit career, Gena was Senior Washington producer for NBC Nightly News overseeing national coverage of the White House, Capitol Hill, and breaking news. She is the recipient of many of the most prestigious honors in journalism, including the DuPont, Peabody, and Murrow awards, as well as seven Emmy awards for her work. Contact Gena at gfitzgerald@ffcmh.org.
DANA LABRANCHE
National Certification Manager and Project Specialist
Dana LaBranche is a developmental and educational psychology researcher and author, as well as a mental health and transformational leadership educator. She has a passion for helping all members of the family use their strengths to find person-centered solutions to challenges. Dana applies her lived experience as a family member to those with mental health challenges, her own recovery from traumatic experiences, and a decade as a teacher in preschool to junior high school classrooms to her current work in behavioral health.
Before joining the National Federation of Families as a Project Specialist and National Certification Manager, she worked primarily on school and youth mental health training and technical assistance. She was the Director of Innovation & Research Support at the Center for Educational Improvement and Education Coordinator of the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center for several years. Dana co-authored a book called Compassionate School Practices with her colleagues at the MHTTC. As a trauma-informed yoga teacher with neuroscience research experience from the Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University, Dana shares her knowledge of how mindfulness and community can change the structure of the brain to help heal the effects of attachment disorders, mental health challenges, trauma, and toxic stress. You can reach Dana at DLabranche@ffcmh.org.
ANGELA RADZEVICH
Project Ninja
Angela is from England and has been in the U.S. for 14 years. She comes to us with over 20 years' experience in Project Management, Marketing, HR & Business Operational roles from England, Belgium and the U.S along with a bachelor’s in international business management & French from Northumbria University in the U.K.
With lived experience supporting family members with mental health & substance use disorders, Angela’s interests lie in understanding emotional wellbeing and she has become a certified Emotional Freedom Coach and Holistic Nutritionist so she can support herself as well as friends & family members on their holistic healing journeys.
Angela wholeheartedly advocates that all families and their lvoed ones should receive person-centered mental health support. You can reach Angela at ARadzevich@ffcmh.org.