REACH Planning & Evaluation Staff

Planning & Evaluation Staff

Robert Illback, PsyD
Senior Evaluation Researcher & CEO
Margaret Pennington, MSSW, CSW
Director of Planning, Evaluation, & Consultation Daniel Sanders Jr, PhD
Senior Evaluation Researcher & Statistician Ben Birkby, PsyD
Senior Evaluation Researcher & Licensed Psychologist

Patrick Smith, AICP
Community Planner & Evaluation Researcher Lisa Crabtree
Evaluation Researcher Daniel Sanders III
Evaluation Researcher & Applications Developer Amanda Kilmer
Research Associate

Tim Davis
Applications Programmer/Analyst Brittany Inge
Research Assistant Mason Roberts
Research Associate

Bob Illback, PsyD
Senior Evaluation Researcher
email: illbackr@reachoflouisville.com

Robert J. Illback is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Senior Evaluation Researcher at REACH of Louisville, Inc. He holds a Psy.D. from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology (GSAPP) at Rutgers University, and in 1990 was the inaugural recipient of the Donald R. Peterson Prize in recognition of career contributions in professional psychology.

A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology (AAAPP), Dr. Illback has published extensively in areas of child psychology and education. He has co-edited three books, including Integrated Services for Children andFamilies: Opportunities for Psychological Practice (APA Books, 1997). Emerging School-Based Approaches for Children with Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Research and Practice in Service Integration, (Haworth Press, 1996), and Organizational Psychology in the Schools: A Handbook for Professionals (Charles C. Thomas, 1984). He has served as principal investigator or program evaluator for a number of nationally-recognized systems of care initiatives, including Kentucky's Family Resource and Youth Services Centers, Kentucky IMPACT, Integrated Resources in Schools (IRIS), Health Access: Nurturing Development Services (HANDS), Community Partnerships for Protecting Children, Early Childhood Mental Health, Family-to-Family (F2F), the Kentucky Safe Schools Data Project, Project Family, and Kentucky's substance abuse prevention programs.

Presently, he also serves as Director of Planning and Evaluation for Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health, in Dublin, Ireland. His professional and research interests include systems of care in child mental health, school-based and school-linked integrated service programs, community-based intervention, program planning and evaluation, and planned organizational change. Dr. Illback has been active in professional association work at the local and national level, and completed nine years of service as a member of the State Board of Examiners in Psychology, including two terms as Chair.
Bob and Marsha have five children between them, including two girls (Erin and Anne) and three boys (Scott, Patrick, Drew), all of whom have graduated from college. They also have two grandchildren, Morgan and Evelyn
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Margaret Pennington, MSSW, CSW
Director of Planning, Evaluation, & Consultation
email: penningtonm@reachoflouisville.com

Margaret Pennington serves as the Director of Policy, Evaluation, and Consultation Services at R.E.A.C.H. of Louisville. In that role, and under the leadership of Dr. Illback, she is responsible for: organizing and directing the work of REACH's interdisciplinary evaluation team; serving as evaluation researcher; developing and identifying planning and evaluation opportunities; and marketing REACH's extraordinary evaluation research capacity.

Prior to coming to REACH, between July 1999 and December 2003, Margaret served as the Commissioner of the Department for Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services. In that capacity, she oversaw the delivery of publicly funded mental health, mental retardation, substance abuse, and acquired brain injury services, and led the shift toward evidence based practices. Accomplishments during her tenure included the completion of the statewide network of regional centers for adults and children experiencing a mental health crisis, the almost doubling of the state's capacity to provide comprehensive community services to individuals with mental retardation, the creation of a statewide infrastructure for serving adults with brain injuries, and the expansion of services to women who abuse substances and the accompanying improvements in health outcomes for their children.

For 14 years, Margaret worked in the Division of Mental Health, first as the Branch Manager of the Children's Branch and then as Director of the Division. She played a key role in the decriminalization of the involuntary commitment process; the design and implementation of a system of care for children with severe emotional disabilities; and the enhanced involvement of consumers and families in the design and delivery of services.

From 1972 to 1985, she worked for the former Departments of Child Welfare and Social Services, where she began her career in child protection and foster care. Recognizing the right of every child to a family, Margaret advocated for and initiated the Special Needs Adoption Program.

In her capacity as Commissioner, Margaret served on a number of statewide boards and commissions, including the Center for School Safety's Board of Directors, the State Interagency Council for Children with Emotional Disabilities, the State Housing Policy Advisory Committee, and the two new commissions that are charged with the development of ten-year plans for delivery of mental health, substance abuse and mental retardation services.

She represented the southern states on the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and was the Vice President of that Board prior to her retirement.

Margaret attended Hanover College and graduated with honors from the Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville.

She is married to Dr. Gary E. Pennington, a marriage and family therapist and Presbyterian minister. They live in Louisville.

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Daniel Sanders Jr, PhD
Senior Evaluation Researcher & Statistician
email: sandersd@reachoflouisville.com

Daniel Sanders, Jr. (father of Daniel Sanders III, REACHís Information Manager) serves REACH as Senior Evaluation Researcher. He currently spends most of his time working on the KIP and Synar evaluation projects. These are state wide substance prevention initiatives funded by a grant from the Division of Substance Abuse. Dr. Sanders has been involved in the planning and implementation, and analyzing the resulting data using a variety of statistical tools (including factor analysis and multivariate regression). From these analyses it is possible to extract useful information for future prevention efforts.

After earning a Ph.D. at U. of L., Dr. Sanders taught courses there at the undergraduate level in statistics, research methods, economics, and urban sociology. He also taught courses in the Master of Public Administration program. Earlier, he majored in philosophy at Princeton, earned a Master of Divinity degree, did social work here in Louisville, and then served as a diplomat in Ouagadougou and Zagreb. He was named Cherokee Park volunteer of the year for 2001.

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Ben Birkby, PsyD
Senior Evaluation Researcher & Licensed Psychologist
email: birkbyb@reachoflouisville.com

Licensed Psychologist & Evaluation Researcher Ben serves as a licensed psychologist and evaluation researcher with REACH of Louisville. He holds a Psy.D. from Spalding University in Clinical Psychology (December, 2000), and a license to practice psychology from the Kentucky Board of Examiners in Psychology (he also holds the Health Service Provider endorsement). A long-time REACH employee, Ben has held several positions and worked in various capacities during the past 13 years. For a number of years Ben worked as a Clinical Coordinator in REACH's Therapeutic Foster Care program, coordinating the care of a number of children with complex needs. He also helped to coordinate the initial training sequence and certification process of therapeutic foster parents.

More recently, Ben has been primarily involved in planning, managing and conducting a range of program evaluation projects. Ben has served as principal investigator for several evaluation projects and is currently leading the evaluation efforts for a large substance abuse prevention initiative in partnership with Kentucky's Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Also a child and family clinician, Ben worked in summer therapeutic recreation programs in New York and Kentucky and completed his predoctoral internship at Girls and Boys Town in Nebraska. He maintains a small outpatient psychology practice. Ben volunteers on the Ethics Committee of the Kentucky Psychological Association and has served as both Chair and Vice-Chair of this committee. His professional interests include planning and evaluation of human services programs, therapeutic foster care, family support, community partnerships, child and family behavior therapy, prevention of child maltreatment and related areas.

Ben has three children (Nathan, Grace and Will) and is married to Laurie Birkby who also works at REACH.

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Lisa Crabtree
Evaluation Researcher
email: crabtreel@reachoflouisville.com

Lisa Kauffmann is an Evaluation Researcher at REACH. In addition to managing the Kentucky Incentives for Prevention (KIP) survey, she is responsible for coordinating research activities of various evaluation projects, designing evaluation instruments, maintaining communication with evaluation sites, and acquiring and managing all research records. Lisa’s responsibilities extend to prevention projects across the state, including: multiple adolescent prevention curriculums in Eastern Kentucky, the underage tobacco sales prevention (Synar) initiative, and several Kentucky Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse related projects. While earning Bachelor’s degrees in psychology and English at Bellarmine University, Lisa studied Intercultural Communications and completed her minor thesis at Växjö University in Växjö, Sweden. She has recently completed her Master’s course work in sociology at the University of Louisville, where she focused on social explanations of psychological distress, bereavement, and identity formation as related to grief experience and mental health. Her professional interests include community-based mental health services, grief education and support programs, and providing culturally-competent and age-appropriate services to young people. As the sister of a child with developmental disabilities, Lisa is proud to work with a group of individuals intensely committed to REACH’s person-centered mission.

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Daniel Sanders III
Evaluation Researcher & Applications Developer
email: sandersD2@reachoflouisville.com

Daniel Sanders III is an Evaluation Researcher and Applications Developer at REACH. In these dual roles, he works with the creation of software to record, organize, synthesize, and retrieve project-related data. He is responsible for producing visual representations of data relevant to a wide variety of audiences, and consulting on various aspects of data storage and management. As an integral part of REACH’s planning and evaluation work in Ireland, Daniel also makes regular journeys overseas to work in concert with Headstrong, Ireland’s National Centre for Youth Mental Health.

Daniel is a 2002 graduate of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business with a concentration in Information Technology. In addition to his full-time duties at REACH, Daniel is the founder-owner-operator of the Louisville Photographic Booth Co., a Louisville- based digital photo booth rental company (www.louisvillephotobooth.com).

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Patrick Smith, AICP
Community Planner & Evaluation Researcher
email: smithp@reachoflouisville.com

Patrick C. Smith, MUP is a planner and evaluation researcher at REACH of Louisville. Patrick specializes in spatial and statistical analysis, human services planning and evaluation, assessments of accessibility to services, and issues in community development. He is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville's Master of Urban Planning program and graduated with honors with a Bachelor's degree in Geography from the University of Kentucky. While pursuing these degrees he interned with the Kentucky Geological Survey, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, and the American Planning Association. Before coming to REACH, Patrick assisted professors in research projects dealing with access to public parks, access to public transit, emergency response planning, and mobile disaster communications. Currently, Patrick is interested in projects or programs that seek to integrate social services, health services, and community development.

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Amanda Kilmer
Research Associate
email: kilmera@reachoflouisville.com

Amanda Kilmer is a Research Associate at REACH. Amanda's duties include assisting REACH's research evaluation team through data analysis, document preparation, library research and literature reviews. She is also responsible for overseeing REACH's library archives. Amanda graduated with honors from Northern Kentucky University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies. Her core area of academic focus was English, with a particular emphasis on business writing. Amanda served as student editor for Word, NKU's Department of Literature and Language newsletter. She also carried areas of concentration in Psychology, Women's Studies and History. Amanda plans to continue her education, pursuing studies that promote her professional interest in the areas of writing and information management / library science. Amanda recently relocated to Louisville, with her husband Patrick and son Morgan, from her home town of Ft. Thomas, Kentucky. Prior to joining the REACH team, Amanda had several years of experience working in financial planning, personnel management, information management and data archiving.

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Tim Davis
Applications Programmer/Analyst
email: davist@reachoflouisville.com

Tim is an Applications Developer at REACH. In this role he maintains the SIG Data Warehouse and develops other websites. He also maintains an application used to generate the KIP reports.

Tim is a graduate of Biola University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and mathematics. Currently Tim is also a part-time seminary student.

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Brittany Parks
Research Assistant
email: ingeb@reachoflouisville.com

Brittany Parks is a Research Assistant at Reach of Louisville. Brittany’s duties include assisting the research team with data entry and helping to set up the REACH library. Brittany is currently working towards her Bachelor’s degree in Education and plans on working as a school counselor.

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Mason Roberts
Research Associate
email: robertsm@reachoflouisville.com

Mason holds an IMBA form the Monterey Institute of International Studies where he concentrated on energy policy and sustainable development while codirecting a number of inter-school programs. One of such is Team Monterey, a development program that brings graduate students to rural El Salvador to apply their areas of study in the field while living and working with their partners. He is also the co-founder of the Monterey Institutes’s Entrepreneur Initiative. His bachelors degree is in Mathematics: Actuarial Science from the University of Louisville. Professionally, Mason has worked as the Sustainability Coordinator for the Offset Project, a Management Specialist for the County of Monterey, as an Economic Development Consultant to the City of Carmel, and an Actuary for Humana.

While working with REACH, Mason has developed Annual Reports, provided support for SCL billing system, created data warehouse training modules, and performed qualitative evaluation.

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