CHART
Board of Directors
Diane Mulligan-Fairfield, Chairman
Diane Mulligan-Fairfield is the Chairman of the board of CHART (Children’s Help and Assistance for Residential Treatment). As a mother of two adopted special needs children, Mulligan-Fairfield has worked as an advocate for children for the past 15 years. In Denver, for more than a decade, Mulligan-Fairfield served on the board of the Adoption Exchange, an organization that works to place foster children in permanent care. She has spoken publicly to both national and local audiences to educate the public about issues surrounding mentally ill adopted children. Most recently, Mulligan-Fairfield help to produce an Emmy award winning television program on PBS on the topic. She has also written public service announcements voiced by Hillary Clinton and produced a number of videos and articles directed at educating the public in this area.
Mulligan-Fairfield is also currently the Vice President of National Communications for National Stroke Association. She is publisher of the nationally award winning Stroke Smart magazine and oversees all public relations efforts for National Stroke Association’s stroke communications programs, including performing as the main spokesperson for National Stroke Association. She also served as special consultant on the recent NBC Health Special, Brain Attack: A Stroke Survival Guide. Mulligan-Fairfield has developed Hip Hop Stroke, a K-12 school program designed to educate the nation’s youth about stroke prevention and recognition.
Mulligan-Fairfield started her career in Tucson as a television journalist. During her television days, she held the position of News Director in Denver, Colorado, where her coverage of the Columbine high school shootings was nationally recognized. She was senior news editor for NBC News in New York City where she covered numerous breaking stories including the TWA 800 crash, the Heaven’s Gate Cult, Princess Diana’s and Mother Theresa’s death, and the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta. She has also worked in Phoenix and Las Vegas in numerous positions including producer and reporter. Mulligan-Fairfield holds a bachelor of arts degree in radio and television from the University of Arizona.
Mary Ann Mulligan, Executive Director and CEO
My working life has been spent in health care. Serving as an assistant hospital administrator, vice president of a home health company, group practice coordinator and finding success in starting and running new consulting businesses were all wonderful experiences.
However, the single most life changing event in my life was our adopted grandson’s diagnosis of bipolar disease. Walking that journey has been eye opening for me even though I spent my earlier life in health care.
The enormous expense that is required for treatment of children who require hospitalization with no or very little help from health insurance and the lack of ongoing research into therapy and psychiatric medications impact on children is mind boggling.
The question that comes to mind is what can be done to help others in the same predicament. CHART is the way. Helping other families find information and funding so they can make educated treatment decisions and afford the treatment for extremely mentally ill children they have adopted with such high hopes is my passion. If everything I have done previously helps me along this road, then I will have succeeded in my life in a way that was never expected.
Dixie van de Flier Davis, Ed.D.
With a challenge grant of merely $20,000 in 1983, Dr. Dixie van de Flier Davis founded The Adoption Exchange and later its subsidiary, the Wednesday’s Child Foundation. With headquarters in Denver, the organization now maintains offices in UT, NM, NV, and MO. Every year its Education Center trains over 7,000 families and professionals in all fifty states and abroad. The Adoption Exchange has collaborated with public and private adoption placement agencies across the country to facilitate over 4,745 adoptions of American special needs children. Adoptive families world-wide and member states of OK, UT, CO, WY, NV, MO, NM and SD utilize the broad range of services of The Adoption Exchange to recruit and sustain families for children in foster care. The Adoption Exchange was one of the first US agencies to begin working with institutionalized children and child welfare colleagues in Romania in 1990. It boasts one of the longest lasting media partnerships (25 years running Wednesday’s Child weekly on the same major TV network news station). It now runs Wednesday’s Child on three major network stations and two Spanish speaking stations. The LDS Church awarded its Family Values Award to The Adoption Exchange in 2007. An innovator, Dr. Davis has contributed to the field in the following ways:
- • Current President, Board of the national Adoption Exchange Association
- • One of the originating partners and the Principal Investigator of the national Collaboration to AdoptUsKids
- • Pioneered the development of a network of collaborating organizations to serve military families and Americans living abroad
- • Honorary member of National Association of State Adoption Programs
- • President of University Hills Rotary Club, 2006-07
- • Member of Lt. Governor Jane Norton’s 2005 Committee to Promote Adoption (Colorado)
- • Founding member and Past President of Voice for Adoption, a national advocacy organization
- • Served on numerous expert work groups and national advisory committees of Departments of Justice and Health & Human Services, The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, American Public Human Services Association, Child Welfare League of America,, National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoption ,and a National Advisory Committee on improving implementation of interstate placement of children
- • Speaker and published writer on ethics, technology, and other issues in adoption
- • Recipient of the 2007 Child Advocate of the Year Award from the North American Council on Adoptable Children
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Suzanne Sell is a media executive who has spent more than 30 years helping to build audiences and businesses in broadcasting, cable, and publishing across the United States and internationally. Currently, she is Vice President of Marketing, Sales, and Corporate Research for the Starz Entertainment premium movie service. Before joining Starz, she served as Vice President of Research and Media Planning at Crown Media International, which operated the Hallmark Channel in 110 countries around the world, and worked as a producer on the Emmy-award-winning PBS program, “Keeping Kids Healthy.”
As a consultant, Sell has provided counsel to numerous health care organizations (including HCA Psychiatric Hospitals, The New England Journal of Medicine, and the National Stroke Association) and nonprofit organizations such as the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute), and the American Water Works Association.
Sell holds a Master of Arts degree in broadcasting history/criticism and audience research from the University of Iowa. She is a member of the board of directors of Women in Cable and Telecommunications Rocky Mountain Chapter and has worked extensively in that organization’s mentoring program.
