Elaina Peterkin

Elaina Peterkin

Elaina Peterkin obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Vassar College in 2019. During her time there she focused on implications of incarceration for Black queer women in the United States.

Elaina has joined the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University as a Research Associate to support BBI’s evaluation of new web-based technology supporting access and use of psychiatric advanced directives (PADs) by people with mental health challenges across seven California counties. Before accepting her role at BBI, Elaina worked as a research assistant at the Center for Critical Public Health in Alameda, California. She contributed to multiple projects including the Tobacco Harm Reduction study, the North State Smoking and Intoxication studies, and the Intoxicated Sexual Encounters study.

Michele D. Schilling

Michele Dominique Schilling holds a master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Colorado Denver, where her academic research explored the impact of Orthodox religious institutions’ policies on women and LGBTQ+ persons, focusing on their rights, mental health, stigma management, and minority stress. For these studies, she used qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews and thematic content analysis.

Previously, she worked in film as a writer and director, telling stories about the experiences of women and LGBTQ+ youth within the family unit and the social world, focusing on issues such as the impacts of micro and macro marginalization on mental health. With her business partner, she ran a film production company in Los Angeles and worked as a writer and consultant for media and publishing companies. She also conducted research on policy, history, and mental health, as well as in-depth interviews, as part of her film work.

She is a Research Associate at the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University, where she is part of a team evaluating the Psychiatric Advanced Directives (PADs) Innovation Project in California, which is designed to support people during a mental health crisis as well as during the recovery process.

Samantha Deane

Samantha Deane is a PhD candidate in Human Resources at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. She started her PhD program in 2022. Her research interests focus on management practices related to, and the workplace experiences of, diverse employees. She is particularly interested in people with disabilities and sexual minorities.

She earned her master’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations, concentrating in Human Resources from Cornell University and her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Emory University. Prior to starting her PhD program, she worked as a Senior Manager of Enterprise Human Resources Strategy and Governance at the McKesson Corporation.

Schuyler Lawson

Dr. Schuyler Lawson obtained a Ph.D. in Community Health and Health Behavior from the University at Buffalo in 2024. From November 2023 to June 2024, he served as a New York State Public Health Corps Fellow in a county health department. Before his doctoral studies, he received a Master’s in Psychology from the University at Buffalo in 2019.

Dr. Lawson has joined the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University as a Research Associate to assist in various research projects, such as quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies. Before accepting his role at the BBI, he worked as an epidemiology fellow at the Erie County Department of Health, Office of Health Equity in Buffalo, New York. Dr. Lawson specializes in health disparities, tobacco-related health disparities, tobacco control policy, and tobacco cessation. He is experienced in survey design, qualitative and quantitative methodology, data visualization, and managing small to moderate-sized research teams.

Montserrat Avila Acosta

Montserrat is a PhD candidate in Public Administration and Policy at SUNY Albany. Prior to her doctoral studies, Montserrat earned an M.A. in Economics from Penn State. Her research experience spans multiple projects in topics like health, education, and poverty. Prior to joining BBI, Montserrat worked in research projects at the Coalition for Applied Modeling for Prevention (CAMP) and The World Bank. She is interested in the use of advanced quantitative methods to address public policy issues. Montserrat Avila-Acosta currently serves as a Senior Research Associate at BBI.

Giuseppe Pagano

Giuseppe Franco “Joey” Pagano is a research assistant at the Burton Blatt Institute, contributing in a variety of ways. A writer by nature, he works across projects, assisting with knowledge translation efforts, managing social media accounts, developing research and policy briefs, contributing to academic papers, and more. With a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in education and disability studies, he seeks to combine his skills, knowledge and experience to help address barriers to employment, education and full economic and social equity facing those with disabilities.

Kate Battoe

Kate Battoe started working at the BBI in March 2012 as a Research Assistant. She is an extremely talented young woman with a gift for writing.  As a Research Assistant, she assists with many projects. Kate started by working on BBI’s Demand Side Employment project, which studies the employment patterns of people with disabilities and seeks to educate employers and employees in order to increase the job retention rate of employees with disabilities. After completing her work on Demand Side Employment, she assisted with research on various projects; wrote monthly articles for BBI’s newsletter; worked extensively with Technical Assistance and Continuing Education Center (TACE), collecting, analyzing and writing reports based on data collected from training sessions; and played a major role in creating the Communication Hope through Assistive Technology (CHAT) pilot camp in 2013. Currently, Kate assists with managing the Disability Rights Bar Association membership and is the point person for processing new student and attorney members and writes the Announcements section of the

Outside of the BBI, Kate is a sought after public speaker and talks about many aspects of living with a disability. For the past five years she has been a guest speaker at Syracuse University’s graduate classes Augmentation and Alternative Communication (AAC) in the Inclusive Classroom and Introduction to AAC, where she has explained her communication development and suggested teaching strategies to help children learn to use. Kate helps train employees at Advocates Inc. on presuming competence, the mindsets of being care givers vs. support staff, and different methods of communication.

Mary Killeen

Ms. Killeen is currently Principal Investigator on an in-depth interview project on effective practices in supported decision-making funded by the Administration on Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services. This study entails 60 interviews with persons with disabilities and their supporters and subsequent data analysis and interpretation with the use of qualitative data analysis software. She is also Co-Director on a study on supported decision-making, self-determination, and satisfaction with life. This study entails quantitative data collection from 420 participants with disabilities over four years and is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.

Previously, Ms. Killeen was Co-Director on a national online survey for the American Bar Association examining the unique challenges that people of differing sexual orientations, gender identities, and people with disabilities face in the legal profession.

She was Principal Investigator on a qualitative study focused on assistive technology delivery systems involving 90 in-depth interviews with directors, staff, and clients at vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies, state AT Act programs, and centers for independent living (CILs). She was also the lead on a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews with experts in the assistive technology industry on the issues faced by manufacturers in the quickly evolving technology environment. These studies are part of the larger Center on Effective Technology’s (CERT) five-year project conducting case studies of assistive technology deliver models through online surveys.

Ms. Killeen was also part of a team conducting 100 site visits across the country for a project evaluating the accessibility of the American Job Center system for people with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Chief Evaluation Office has contracted with IMPAQ International and BBI to conduct this study. As part of the project, she is traveling to selected centers to interview onsite managers and staff in order to document how their centers serve people with disabilities.

In addition, Ms Killeen completed a qualitative study focused on accommodations issues in the workplace involving 60 in-depth interviews with both employees and supervisors. This study is part of a larger project conducting national surveys to develop a longitudinal costs-benefits analysis of workplace accommodations for the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Workplace Accommodations.

Ms. Killeen was a member of the research team on a two-year project for the Department of Veterans Affairs focused on the mental health needs of Veterans in the workplace. She took the lead on a qualitative project involving 63 in-depth interviews with employees in six Fortune 500 companies. She was also involved in developing and implementing a national survey of 245 companies on their veteran hiring and retention practices. This study resulted in the development and dissemination of tools and resources to support Veterans in obtaining jobs and building viable, meaningful careers. It also resulted in the development and dissemination of tools and resources to support businesses in recruiting, retaining, and promoting veterans.

She took the lead on the qualitative portion of a comprehensive evaluation of StartUP NY—a 3-year demonstration project that developed a collaborative, community-based entrepreneurship program for people with disabilities funded by ODEP. The evaluation included a focus on participant, program, and system-level outcomes using archival analysis, participant milestone and outcome data, participant satisfaction surveys, in-depth interviews of stakeholders, staff, and program participants. She also took the lead on a similar evaluation of the SBA PRIME Inclusive Entrepreneur program (funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration) that provided services and follow-up to people with low income.

Ms. Killeen provided technical assistance in both Ulster County, NY and in Manhattan based on the Inclusive Entrepreneurship model developed in the demonstration projects mentioned above. She conducted a series of learning communities in both locations that began a collaborative process among local agencies and organizations with the goal of developing effective and sustainable entrepreneurship programs. The Ulster County project focused on entrepreneurship for people with psychiatric disabilities; the Manhattan project focused on entrepreneurship for people with disabilities in general. In addition, she co-authored the Tool Kit for Inclusive Entrepreneurship.