Rick Griffin
Executive Director, CRI
Rick (he/him) is the Executive Director for CRI. With more than twenty years of experience in non-profit administration, Rick has first-hand experience with building organizations that use a trauma-informed approach in both internal operations and service delivery. Under Rick’s guidance, CRI has become a leading voice in the field of trauma and resilience. His dedication to resilience, and his commitment to creating a citizenry conversant in the science of trauma, are an inspiration to all who know him.
Community Resilience Inside Corrections
In 2020 while working inside Oklahoma Correctional Industries, a man in custody became intrigued about Adverse Childhood Experiences. He had been directed to learn about ACEs by his friend Tim, who facilitated NVC classes inside Oregon Prisons. He began searching for everything he could find on the subject.
With help from Staff Sponsors, this incarcerated man was put in touch with Rick Griffin who gladly welcomed the interest. It wasn’t long and Rick began acting as his mentor and guide into understanding ACEs and Resilience.
This mentoring and one on one training resulted in this incarcerated man becoming the first person in Oklahoma Custody to become certified in all three Trauma Courses as well as the Training of Trainer Courses.
Hundreds of men inside ODOC have personally benefited from this training and over a hundred have now received Trauma Informed certifications themselves. It is truly changing things inside ODOC for those who are fortunate to undergo the training.
Our Services
Our Trauma Series
Trauma Informed
Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement
from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into action. The training includes three groups of topics: the NEAR sciences, a cluster of emerging scientific findings in the fields of Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACE
Studies, and Resilience; Beneath Behavior, the critical transition from Knowledge to Insight; and ROLES, CRI’s signature training on Recognize, Observe, Label, Elect and Solve, core strategies that take us below the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The key objective is to provide information
about identifying and responding to trauma with evidence-based resilience strategies when working with an audience whose trauma history may not be known.
Trauma Supportive
Course 2 helps to transform your organization, classroom, or family through more than 30 resilience- based strategies. Using trauma- informed principles, the course teaches individuals to systematically create the positive environment that is essential to lasting success. The course includes strategies to:
• Build a positive culture in the
classroom, office, or the family
• Foster resilience through affirming
communication
• Create effective regulation skills
• Deliver compassionate and
empowering discipline
• Teach others about their own
trauma and stress response
• Develop trauma-informed conflict
resolution skills
Attendee must have taken CRI’s Trauma-Informed Certification Course 1 as a prerequisite for this course.
Trauma Practitioner
Neuroscience provides a new lens through which to view challenging and disruptive behavior. This information helps us to respond more compassionately to individuals that use adaptive strategies to cope with their experiences. This course is about compassionate and effective intervention strategies for challenging behavior. During this training for trauma practitioners, participants will learn the foundation of the trauma-informed approach to understanding and helping individuals with behavioral challenges. CRI’s Course 3
focuses on helping to teach the skills these individuals lack while resolving the problems that tend to precipitate challenging behavior.
Attendee must have taken CRI’s Trauma-Informed Certification Course 1 as a prerequisite for this course.
Additional Courses
CRI Training of Trainers
The Training of Trainers (TOT) is designed to create a world conversant in emerging science and practice of trauma and resilience. In our interactive training program, participants learn to present the content to CRI’s signature courses with fidelity to science and adult learning methodology. These trainings are provided by CRI Senior or Master Trainers and offered throughout the year in various locations and online in a virtual setting.
- Trauma-Informed
- Trauma-Supportive
- Trauma-Practitioner
People Say The Nicest Things
Tiffany Polychrones
Social Worker, City of Charlottesville
“The training was phenomenal. Mr. Griffin is highly organized and knowledgeable. He encourages participants to absorb the material and present it in their own individual style geared toward the population they serve.”
Tiodolo A. Delagarza, III
Recovery Coach, Recovery Support, Inc
“Because of the TOT, we now have 5 staff certified in Trauma-Informed Care. The content gives us a unique set of skills to work more effectively with clients who have been victimized from physical, mental, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse within our community.”
Anne Marie McDonald
Principal, Bayridge Secondary School
“I believe all of us truly felt ‘seen’ by Rick during our learning. It is very hard to create an authentic and captivating learning experience in an online format, but Rick was able to achieve that.”