Sallie Lynch, MA

Sallie Lynch is a highly accomplished consultant with over 25 years of expertise in nonprofit leadership, specializing in tragedy response and community resilience. Known for her ability to facilitate peer connections and long-term healing, Sallie has empowered individuals, families, and communities impacted by terrorism, targeted violence, military conflict, and widescale trauma and loss. A mass violence response subject matter expert and consultant to the U.S. Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center (OVC-TTAC), she delivers strategic guidance to frontline service providers, community leaders, and survivors in the U.S. and worldwide. Sallie is the visionary co-founder of S.T.O.P. (Survivors of Tragedy Outreach Program), a coalition of survivors and nonprofits impacted by and responding to terrorism and mass violence, and serves on the board of Dignity Beyond Borders, a safe community for global survivors of terrorism, war, and mass violence.

Throughout her career, Sallie has strengthened the capacity of both large and grassroots nonprofits to launch transformative initiatives in disaster response, international victim advocacy, trauma and grief support, counterterrorism and targeted violence prevention, humanitarian relief, education, family engagement, child development, and elder care. As an accomplished fundraiser, Sallie has secured substantial institutional support for high-impact projects addressing trauma, loss, and mass casualty events, including multiyear six- and seven-figure grants from federal and private insitutions to advance resilience and recovery programs in response to terrorism, targeted violence, and the COVID-19 pandemic. An expert facilitator, she has led cross-cultural resource-sharing and training sessions with victim service providers from 34 countries, fostering global collaboration and innovation. She has held leadership roles and consultancies with a range of U.S. and international nonprofits, guiding on fundraising and development, program design and delivery, outreach and communications, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and policy, and education and curriculum development. Her previous roles include Director of Development at the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, Senior Program and Development Consultant at Tuesday’s Children, and Research Coordinator for the FDNY/Columbia University Family Program.

Sallie is an experienced media spokesperson and public speaker, having addressed distinguished audiences at venues such as the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice and the United Nations. She is co-author of “FDNY Crisis Counseling: Innovative Responses to 9/11 Firefighters, Families and Communities” (Wiley, 2006), and her work on long-term healing, community resilience, and peer support has been published in leading U.S. and international journals. Sallie coordinated a landmark longitudinal research and intervention program for 9/11 widows and children in partnership with Columbia University School of Social Work and the FDNY Counseling Service Unit. She has served on the Training Subcommittee for Vibrant Emotional Health’s Crisis Emotional Care Team (CECT) and was a founding Advisory Board

member for Peace of Mind Afghanistan (PoMA), a national initiative to advance mental health awareness. Sallie holds an MA in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and a BA in Cultural Studies from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She is certified in Psychological First Aid (PFA) and as a Grief Educator.