Tragedy to Hope: The Serve and Connect Story
Pricing
Information
Date & Time
-
-
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
-
Identify at least two intervention strategies focused on promoting trust and effective collaboration between police and community partners.
-
Explain conceptual frameworks, especially from community psychology and implementation science, to foster effective community policing implementation.
-
Describe opportunities for overcoming barriers to engagement and trust-building with police and police-community partnerships.
Educational Goal
The educational goal of this workshop is to provide information about Serve & Connect and the conceptual frameworks and evidence-informed strategies that guide their work of building effective collaboration between police and communities.
Description
On September 30, 2015, Kassy Alia Ray’s world was turned upside down when her husband, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty in Columbia, South Carolina. In response, she founded Serve & Connect, a nonprofit organization with the mission of fostering positive change through sustainable police and community partnerships. Over the last nine years, Serve & Connect has grown to receive national acclaim, reaching communities across South Carolina and beyond. In this presentation, Dr. Alia Ray will share the story of Serve & Connect along with the conceptual frameworks and evidence-informed strategies that guide their work of building effective collaboration between police and communities.
Target Audience
- Psychologist
Presenters
Kassy Alia Ray, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of Serve & Connect, a nonprofit organization focused on fostering positive change through sustainable police-community partnerships. A graduate of the University of South Carolina with her doctorate in Clinical-Community Psychology, Kassy founded the organization after her husband, an officer with the Forest Acres Police Department, was shot and killed in 2015. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from a simple hashtag to a movement dedicated to creating change.
Kassy’s work bridges the gap between law enforcement and the communities they serve, and draws on her personal experiences related to the loss of her husband combined with her expertise in community psychology to foster transformative change in police-community relationships. Her work has been recognized nationally, including features on NBC’s Today Show, Good Morning America, Fox News, and in Time Magazine, for its impact. She is a member of several boards and workgroups, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police subcommittee on Community Policing. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the FBI Director’s Community Service Leadership Award in 2023, the 2023 Bates-Jones Equity and Philanthropy Award through the Greater Columbia Community Relations Council, and South Carolina Business Monthly’s NonProfit Executive of the Year in 2021 and 2023.
Financially Sponsored By
- APA Division 18: Psychologists in Public Service