Strategies for Youth
SFY TRAINERS’ BIOs
James (Jim) B. Golden has worked in law enforcement for more than 40 years and began his career in the Philadelphia, PA Police Department. Rising through the ranks to Captain, he served as the department’s Executive Officer from 1992 until his retirement in 1996. Jim then served as Chief of Police for the City of Saginaw, MI until 2000, when he was appointed Trenton, New Jersey’s first civilian Police Director. His experience as a senior police official led to his appointment by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to serve as the first Federal Security Director at Philadelphia International Airport for the Transportation Security Administration in 2002. Jim’s last career assignment was Deputy Chief of School Operations and Chief Safety Executive for the School District of Philadelphia, where he and his team were responsible for the safety and security of more than 200,000 students and staff on 267 school campuses.
Jim’s experience makes him uniquely qualified to assist communities across the country in engaging citizens to partner with police departments to identify and solve neighborhood problems. His particular interest is in breaking the “school to prison” pipeline. Jim has trained with Strategies for Youth since 2015 in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Ohio.
John Hudson has over 45 years of experience as an educational policy and leadership consultant. He has been a teacher, department chair, assistant principal and principal of seven high schools and one middle school in three states. Concerned with issues related to at-risk youth for his entire career, he has consulted with school districts in nine states on Suicide Prevention & Intervention, Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention & Intervention, school climate, restorative justice, positive discipline, dropout prevention and recovery and school leadership. He chaired the Governor’s Select Commission on Adolescent Suicide for Arizona and served as a member of the National Association of Secondary School Principals Institute. He served as a has site visitor for the U.S. Department of Education’s Secondary School Recognition Program, the Project Manager of the Texas High School Redesign and Restructuring Grant Program and the Program Coordinator of the Texas Turnaround Leadership Academy. Most recently he consulted for non-profit organizations focused on restorative justice, positive school discipline and related educational policies.
John has graduate and undergraduate degrees in education from Boston State College and a graduate degree in Organizational Leadership in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. In addition he has been adjunct faculty member at Phoenix College, Rio Salado Community College and University of Phoenix.
Lisa H. Thurau is the founder and Executive Director of Strategies for Youth, a national nonprofit policy and training organization dedicated to improving police/youth interactions through developmentally appropriate, trauma-informed, racially equitable policies, practices and partnerships. Strategies for Youth now provides its law enforcement training, outreach programs, and policy reviews in 23 states. Lisa has been consulted by state legislators, state agencies, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education on policing’s impacts on youth, as well as policy development, statutory reforms, and recommendations for best practices. Lisa writes and speaks on these topics to police, youth-advocates, and legal audiences.
Prior to forming Strategies for Youth, from 1999 to 2008, Lisa served as policy specialist and Managing Director of the Juvenile Justice Center of Suffolk Law School. There, Lisa focused on public policy advocacy on behalf of court-involved teens. She monitored juveniles’ civil rights issues regarding police treatment, tracked trends in the Center’s cases, and challenged legislation affecting youth in the juvenile justice system.
Lisa is a graduate of Barnard College and holds a Masters degree in Anthropology from Columbia University. She graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in 1991. Before becoming an attorney, Lisa worked as an advocate for reform of the public education system in New York City. She also worked in the litigation department of an international law firm, focusing on copyright and commercial litigation matters.
Dr. Linda Watt is a licensed psychologist specializing in treatment of adolescents. She received both her Bachelor of Arts degree and Masters in Psychology from Boston College. After working for a social service agency in Massachusetts, she served as clinical director of a Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) girl’s detention facility in Boston for five years. During that time she obtained her PhD in psychology from Northeastern University.
Dr. Watt has conducted court evaluations for DYS, served as the clinical director of three secure facilities for boys, and as the clinical coordinator overseeing the clinical services for the southeast region of Massachusetts. She is an adjunct professor at Northeastern University’s graduate psychology program and consults at a community college on threat assessment. Linda‘s areas of expertise include adolescents with behavioral issues, sexual offending, gangs and fire play. Linda has more than a decade of training experience within DYS on the topics of mental health, suicidality, gang issues, and behavior management; she has also trained at the Massachusetts Department of Corrections in mental health and gender.
Linda currently works in the Taunton Public Schools in Massachusetts, and has a private practice focusing on individual and family therapy and risk assessments for youth charged with sex offenses and fire-setting.
Linda has trained patrol and school resource officers for Strategies for Youth since 2012 in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.