The visionary behind HBA

Jodee Gibson, PhD, PCC | Developmental Trauma Researcher | Behavioral Health Systems Consultant | trauma-prevention

Her Story | From teen mom to PhD...

There are people who study broken systems from the outside.

Jodee Gibson studied this one from the inside, because she lived inside it first.

She grew up inside the very systems she now studies. Once labeled as an underperforming student, Jodee’s struggles were never about intelligence or potential, but about the absence of developmental conditions that allow people to thrive. From nearly not graduating to becoming a teen mom navigating institutions unequipped for complexity, her early life revealed the painful gap between what systems are designed to do and what people actually experience inside them. In under-resourced communities, that gap is not theoretical. It becomes generational.

That understanding deepened further in adulthood as she watched her child move through behavioral health and substance use systems that often respond to symptoms while missing the developmental and relational roots beneath them. Systems that unintentionally recycle people back into the same environments that shaped the pain in the first place. These experiences became more than personal hardship; they became the foundation of her research, her frameworks, and her commitment to helping organizations understand how dysfunctional systems can unknowingly perpetuate the very outcomes they are trying to solve.

What makes Jodee rare is not any single credential. It is the accumulation of lenses.

Thirty years inside organizations across healthcare, education, corporate, and community mental health; observing, diagnosing, and rebuilding the conditions that either support or sabotage human development.

→ A doctoral journey that produced original empirical research on the etiology of emotional dysregulation and why the mental health system is structurally incapable of addressing its roots
→ Two trademarked frameworks; Applied Relational Healing™ and The AMEND Practice™, both built from that research and refined through decades of applied practice
→ A published, award-winning book | Healing Your Map,2023 IPPY Silver Medal (psychology and mental health)
→ A nonprofit | Founded The Elephant & Willow Project — a 501(c)(3)
→ A consulting practice | Human Behavior Architects™
→ And now a body of academic work entering the public record at exactly the moment the field is ready to be disrupted

Diversity is not a value Jodee adopted. It is built into her nature, shaped by every system she navigated, survived, and ultimately reimagined.

She does not consult from a distance. She works from the inside out, because she has always known what it costs when the system gets it wrong. And she has spent her entire adult life building the alternative.

From teen mom to PhD, from the system's product to its most precise critic.

We were never broken. We were simply interrupted.

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Based in Oakland County, Michigan | Working globally

Jodee is also a proud member of Legacy17, a global collective built to empower individuals, organizations, and communities to collaborate, innovate, and lead the way towards a more sustainable future.