Karl Bertrand, LMSW, President/C.E.O.

Karl Bertrand, LMSW is founder and President of Program Design and Development, LLC (PD&D), which specializes in helping public and private organizations develop effective and innovative programs, with particular expertise in development and management of multi-agency collaborations. In 1983, while a social work student at Hunter, Mr. Bertrand organized Yonkers’ first homeless shelter. Later that year he helped co-found the Coalition for the Homeless of Westchester and in 1984 was named “Social Worker of the Year” by the Westchester chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Since founding PD&D in 1989, Mr. Bertrand has developed new programs in law enforcement, crime prevention, chemical dependency prevention and treatment, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, employment, emergency and transitional shelter, permanent supportive housing, healthcare, mental health, and youth services. Under his leadership PD&D has prepared over 2,300 grant applications and won over $220 million in grant funding.

Mr. Bertrand has served as consultant to police departments, schools, housing authorities, city planning departments, county agencies, and dozens of private agencies with annual budgets ranging from $60,000 to over $265 million. He helps coordinate HUD Continuum of Care for the Homeless-funded programs for the cities of Yonkers and Mount Vernon, the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health, and the Westchester County Department of Social Services. He co-chairs Westchester’s countywide Continuum of Care for the Homeless. He also co-chairs Westchester's Recovery Housing Network, which he organized to develop a more seamless and effective continuum of outreach, services and housing for people in early stages of recovery from chemical dependency.

Another major focus area for Mr. Bertrand has been eviction prevention and rapid rehousing. He helped plan and develop the Bridge Fund, Westchester's first privately-funded eviction prevention program, in 1991. He planned and currently helps coordinate HUD-funded Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Services for the cities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and New Rochelle.

Mr. Bertrand is currently coordinating truancy reduction efforts for the Mount Vernon City School District and the Yonkers Public Schools. He coordinates Yonkers’ youth violence reduction planning for the Yonkers Police Department and co-chairs the Yonkers Juvenile Crime Enforcement Coalition. While drafting Yonkers' juvenile crime prevention strategy, he developed the concept of “evidence-based targeting,” an innovative approach that uses objective data to targeted limited prevention resources to youth at highest risk of becoming involved with the juvenile justice system, instead of targeting youth simply on the basis of race, class, or provider convenience. He has given numerous presentations on Evidence-Based Targeting including presentations sponsored by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, the New York State chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, the Association of New York State Youth Bureaus, and the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). He is a consultant with OJJDP's National Training and Technical Assistance Center.

He coordinated development of the first Drug Treatment Courts in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and Greenburgh, as well as two successful five-year Weed & Seed crime prevention projects in Yonkers. He previously coordinated Yonkers’ Public Housing Drug Elimination Program and spearheaded Yonkers’ CSAP-funded Family Strengthening Initiative, which led to Yonkers’ first replication of a CSAP-recommended evidence-based prevention program.

 

Thomas B. Saunders, Ph.D., affiliated consultant

Thomas B. Saunders, Ph.D. has worked with PD&D since 1998. Mr. Saunders has 17 years of experience in the planning, management, and evaluation of public programs implemented at the local level. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from New York University. While working with PD&D, Mr. Saunders has developed discretionary grant applications to federal, state, and private grantors resulting in over $41 million in funding awards. As a Research Associate at NYU's Institute for Education and Social Policy, he served as the primary data analyst for an evaluation of a K-3 literacy program implemented in ten school districts nationwide and worked on a number of quantitative research projects concerning education policy in New York City. He also previously served as Grant Development Coordinator for the Mayor’s Office in New Orleans, where he was Project Director for federal grant projects with budgets totaling over $2 million funded by the U.S Department of Health & Human Services and the U.S. Department of Justice. He currently serves as the evaluator for several programs including a five-year $2.5 million U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant administered by the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health and a five-year $2.5 million U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant administered by The Mount Vernon Hospital. He previously served as evaluator for two U.S. Department of Justice-funded Weed & Seed program sites in Yonkers. He is also the principal data analyst for the Yonkers Juvenile Crime Enforcement Coalition, and did the statistical analyses that led to the development of the concept of “evidence-based targeting.”

 

Yoav N. Spiegel, MPA, Grants Associate

Yoav Spiegel joined PD&D in 2008. He has a Masters degree in Public Administration from Baruch College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Speigel's prior experience includes serving as President of the Univerity Students Cooperative Association in Berkeley, California. The U.S.C.A. is an $8.5 million non-profit corporation dedicated to providing low-cost, below market housing to students attending schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since joining PD&D, Mr. Spiegel has helped prepare nearly 200 grant applications resulting in over $51 million in grant awards. He has also developed a uniquely detailed expertise in all aspects of HUD Continuum of Care-funded programs throughout Westchester County.

 

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