Meet Our Team

Christie Jackson, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and has maintained a private psychotherapy practice in Manhattan since 2005. She has worked with hundreds of individuals struggling with issues such as depression, anxiety, traumatic stress reactions, grief and loss, sexual functioning and orientation concerns, substance misuse, bipolar disorder, emotion regulation problems, self-harm behavior, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, problems in the workplace, relationship distress, and work/life transitions. Dr. Jackson has specialized training and experience working with individuals affected by trauma.

Dr. Jackson has held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Jackson is the President of the STAIR Institute, where she provides consultation and training to clinicians who are learning STAIR, a type of CBT specifically developed for individuals affected by trauma.

Dr. Jackson is committed to providing evidence-based psychotherapy. This means she integrates her years of clinical expertise with the best available clinical evidence from systematic research, and provides the most effective treatment to help you accomplish your goals. She believes in a collaborative approach, where the client and therapist work together as a team in order to achieve success and enhance quality of life.

Dr. Jackson obtained her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of North Dakota, and her undergraduate degrees in psychology and biology from Duke University. She completed her predoctoral clinical internship at the Southwest Consortium in Albuquerque, where she worked with Indian Health Services (IHS) on the Acoma-Canoncito-Laguna reservation, the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center doing consultation-liaison psychiatry, and the Albuquerque VA Medical Center in the family therapy and women’s trauma clinics. Discovering her love for trauma work while on internship, Dr. Jackson decided to seek specialized training in the area of posttraumatic stress and went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in trauma and dissociative disorders at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Jackson was formerly the Director of the PTSD Clinics at both the Manhattan and Honolulu VA Medical Centers. Prior to that, she worked with NYPD personnel affected by the 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks at the Columbia University Anxiety and Traumatic Stress (CATS) Program. She conducted trauma research at the New York University Trauma and Resilience Research Program. More recently, she served as the Director of Training for the national webSTAIR telemedicine project, and expert consultant for the National Center for PTSD, supervising and training VA clinicians who are serving rural Veterans affected by trauma.

Special Interests and Selected Publications

In graduate school, Dr. Jackson studied how cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) might need to be tailored for individuals from different cultural backgrounds. You can read an article she wrote about this here.

Dr. Jackson been intensively trained in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) since 2005. Early in her career she created a comprehensive DBT program at the Manhattan VA Medical Center, where she supervised a multidisciplinary team of clinicians as well as psychology and psychiatry trainees. Dr. Jackson adapted the distress tolerance skills used in DBT to help high-risk Veterans. Read the article Dr. Jackson co-authored titled A Novel Adaptation of Distress Tolerance Skills Training Among Military Veterans: Outcomes in Suicide-Related Events.

Dr. Jackson has worked on numerous research studies evaluating the efficacy of STAIR, and has trained many mental health professionals in this type of CBT for trauma. She is one of the authors of the second edition of the STAIR manual, Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Interpersonal Trauma. Dr. Jackson also helped write an article describing the use of STAIR in Veterans affected by military sexual trauma, as well as an article describing the dissemination of STAIR nationwide in community mental health clinics. To read more STAIR articles to which Dr. Jackson contributed, or to learn more about STAIR, please navigate to the STAIR psychotherapy page.

Dr. Melissa Halligan is a Clinical Psychologist licensed in New York and New Jersey. She completed her B.A. in Psychology and English from Vanderbilt University, her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Stony Brook University, and a post-doctoral fellowship at New York University Medical Center. 

She has specialized in the treatment of PTSD, Anxiety Disorders, Clinical Depression and Mood Disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder, Insomnia, Marital/Relationship Problems, and Eating Disorders. She has worked with various populations affected by trauma, including first responders to the 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks through the Columbia University Traumatic Stress program, and with military Veterans at the Hudson Valley Veterans Administration Medical Center.  

Dr. Halligan enjoys supervising clinical psychology externs and interns, as well as psychiatry residents, which she has done for many years. Dr. Halligan utilizes a cognitive-behavioral approach in her treatment, and has extensive experience in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), completing certification as a DBT provider with Dr. Marsha Linehan in 2013.  She is also credentialed in the provision of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy (IBCT).

Dr. Jennifer McQuaid pursued a Masters in Applied Child Development before earning her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University. For over two decades, she has worked at the intersection of maternal and child health, gender-based violence, and child development - translating research into practice for at-risk adults, children and families, survivors of trauma, refugees and asylum seekers.

As an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale Center for Asylum Medicine and a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Williams College, Dr. McQuaid develops initiatives, designs programs, and researches topics related to asylum seekers as they seek to overcome trauma and persecution. Her expertise developed over 12 years at Sanctuary for Families, NYC, NY State’s largest service provider for survivors of gender-based violence.  As Sanctuary’s Clinical Psychologist, Dr. McQuaid witnessed the impact of individual displacement and gender-based violence on women’s mental health and capacity to parent, as well as the deep potential of therapeutic interventions placed in non-traditional settings.

Dr. McQuaid frequently serves as an expert witness for legal teams representing individuals seeking immigration relief in the United States (asylum, trafficking visas, parent-child separation cases, and The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction).

Dr. McQuaid provides psychotherapy for adults, adolescents and children.  She also supervises and teaches medical, legal and psychological trainees through observation and case studies.

Marlo Kronberg is an advanced clinical psychology extern and a Ph.D. candidate at Long Island University, Brooklyn. She received her B.A. in English from Tufts University and her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Previously, Marlo spent two years as a psychology extern at Beth Israel where she worked with both inpatient and outpatient populations. She led inpatient Mindfulness, DBT, and Personal Change groups and spearheaded the creation of Beth Israel’s first outpatient Self-Compassion Group. She has also worked as a psychology extern at Long Island University’s Psychological Services Center and with geriatric and convalescing patients at Citadel Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.

Marlo has worked with diverse patients at all stages of life and is committed to fostering an affirming and compassionate therapeutic environment to facilitate symptom relief and positive change. Her commitment to secular Buddhist mindfulness practices — including a strong emphasis on compassion-based, acceptance-based, and somatic techniques — is at the foundation of her therapeutic philosophy.