Our Team
Allie Simmons, Ph.D., GNG Director
Allie is a licensed clinical psychologist with fifteen years of practice in medical and psychiatric settings, both inpatient and outpatient, which gave her a firm grounding in the diagnosis and empirically-validated treatment of mental disorders. In 2014, she became interested in the overlaps between mental health, social support, and social and emotional learning (SEL), as she perceived that when social and emotional learning skills were practiced correctly in a supportive environment, they would open the door for a level of trust and communication which would encourage the disclosure of mental health symptoms—and potentially
interrupt the disconnection and fear of judgment which lie at the root of stigma. Convinced of this theory, she began volunteering at an international literacy nonprofit, eventually joining the staff and designing an SEL-based curriculum for four schools in Ghana. That program was successful with students and teachers alike, in terms of their academic performance and the quality of the relationships between teachers and students as well as between students. The program expanded to 75 schools in Ghana and was eventually adopted by the Ghanaian government for inclusion in four national teacher training colleges. Allie then adapted this program for use in Guatemala, Uganda, and Laos and created mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS)-based activities for use in the contexts of emergencies in Niger, Greece, and Ukraine.
Having admired and been deeply inspired by the life and work of Dr. Jane Goodall since childhood, Allie designed and proposed a novel mental health intervention called Evergreen for Roots&Shoots, Dr. Goodall’s youth activist organization. Roots & Shoots (R&S) has been working to address issues of hopelessness and helplessness head-on since its inception in Tanzania in 1991. The nine compassionate traits emphasized by the R&S model, designed to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, and collaboration, are wholly consistent with both mental health care and psychosocial support, making R&S the ideal partner for Evergreen. Dr. Goodall enthusiastically supported the idea, and Evergreen sprang to life.
Read Simmons, Ph.D., GNG Chief Strategist
Read most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer at Fortive Corporation, a publicly traded corporation. Prior to Fortive, Read held the position of President of Vista Consulting Group at Vista Equity Partners. Read began his professional career at Bain & Company, a global strategy consulting firm, where he rose to Senior Partner and spent almost 20 years as a leader in Bain’s private equity and technology practices. Read is currently also a Director of McIlhenny Company. He joined the Board of Directors in 2013.
Raised in New Orleans, Read holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. Read resides in Austin, TX with his wife Allie and children Jackson, Hayes, Crosby, and Daisy.
Read has a passion for the work Good Natured Group is engaged in and supports the Good Natured team with strategic advice.