API's Volunteer Staff

The small but mighty staff of Attachment Parenting International (API) is made up of a core group of volunteers dedicated to the Eight Principles and to promoting Attachment Parenting in the community. Their hard work can only continue with support from members and donors like you. Won't you consider helping them continue their good work?

Contacting Us

Attachment Parenting International
P.O. Box 4615
Alpharetta, GA 30023
phone/fax (800) 850-8320

If you have a comment or concern, or want to help with a project, feel free to contact us directly by email, by leaving a message at (800) 850-8320, or, if you are unsure which person you need to contact, by submitting a message on our Contact Us page. We will return your email or phone message as soon as possible. You may also wish to check out API's FAQ section for answers to many common questions.

Volunteer Staff Directory

The following teams make up API's Volunteer Staff. For a list of available volunteer positions amongst these teams, review our volunteer descriptions..

Samantha Gray
Executive Director
Business Management Team Coordinator

Attachment Parenting International's Executive Director and Business Management Coordinator, Samantha Gray, works with API's staff, Board of Directors and Business Management Team members to ensure that our organization is continuing to meet the mission and vision of API. She also ensures that all aspects of our organization are running efficiently and effectively.

She welcomes comments and concerns about API or information that you might not be able to address with another staff member.

Art Yuen
Business Development Team Coordinator

Art is API's Business Development Coordinator and works diligently to find and develop avenues of financial support for our organization. She works with a team of members devoted to the longevity of API's success and ability to continue to reach those seeking to parent with empathy and compassion.

Please contact Art if you know of a grant or other financial prospect that our organization might apply for or participate in.

Stephanie Petters
Membership Liaison

API's Membership Team is coordinated by Stephanie Petters. She and her team work to improve and maintain API's growing Family, Professional, and AP Friendly membership programs. This team also aims to offer timely responses to questions or concerns regarding membership.

Rita Brhel
Publications Team Coordinator
The Attached Family Editor

Rita leads our fast-growing Publications Team. This team works to provide amazing digital and print publications that not only offer parenting support but also education regarding the science behind Attachment Parenting. Rita is also API's editor of our wonderful quarterly publication, The Attached Family Magazine. She manages various aspects of The Attached Family, including content, layout, and production communications.

If you have comments or concerns about The Attached Family Magazine or another one of our publications or would like to submit an article for one of our upcoming issues, please contact Rita.

Melissa Hincha-Ownby
Technology Team Coordinator

Melissa heads up the Technology Team, which manages various technical applications and projects within the organization. From the every day management of the website, to optimizing content for the web, Melissa manages all of the technical aspects of API's online offerings. If you have comments or suggestions about the web site or other API technology, please contact Melissa.

Aimee Lou Dee
Communications Team Coordinator

Aimee specializes in copy writing and grassroots public relations, focusing on building credibility and awareness through a variety of media. She is excited to join the API Team and use her skills to help spread the knowledge of attachment parenting to families around the world.

Leader Liaison/Education & Support Team Coordinator

The Leader Liaison provides assistance and support to API Support Group Leaders and Resource Leaders striving to educate and support parents practicing AP throughout the world. If you are an API Leader needing assistance, please contact the Leader Liaison.

The Education and Support Team Coordinator works with a skilled and dedicated team. We are focused and committed to offering a variety of tools, resources, and materials to API Leaders, Leader Applicants, volunteers, members and communities. Projects include enhancing and updating processes and procedures that impact our organization, creating and distributing resources and materials intended to provide ongoing growth and satisfaction, and creating and maintaining connection with those who give their time, energy and resources to API. Anyone wishing to offer ideas or time to assist with API's focus of education and support can contact the Education and Support Team Coordinator. We welcome and appreciate your input and contribution.

Lisa Feiertag
Leader Applicant Liaison

Lisa oversees the application process for people interested in becoming API Support Group Leaders. Lisa works with leader applicants from the beginning of their process, learns more about their understanding of Attachment Parenting, level of empathy, and leadership abilities, and assists them as they complete the process of becoming support group leaders.

Please contact Lisa if you have questions about the application process or if you would like to begin the process of becoming an API Support Group Leader.


Jennifer Moquin
Web Administrator

Jennifer is a member of the Technology Team and is API's Web Administrator. Please feel free to contact her with feedback about our Web site, including broken links or files that fail to open.

Dedra Keoshian
Forum Administrator

Dedra is the Administrator of Attachment Parenting International's Online Forums. The forums provide members of the AP community an opportunity to discuss API's Principles of Parenting, connect with others in their area, and much more. If you have any questions about the forums, or an interesting and creative idea for generating revenue through it, please contact Dedra.

Michelle Garwood
Research Analyst

Michelle will be working on curriculum development for a new parent education program for API. Her B.S. is in Family & Consumer Sciences and Health Education. Her M.S. is in Youth Development (both degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln). Michelle brings curriculum development experience from the public schools as well as informal youth programs.

Courtney Sperlazza
Web Content Writer/Editor 

Courtney Sperlazza holds a master's degree in public health and has worked as a research assistant for the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. Through these positions, she has worked on projects involving health care decision-making at the end of life, and the development of an online community for dental researchers. Courtney took an active interest in attachment parenting shortly before the birth of her first child in February 2009.

Julie Hunter
API's Spanish Translator

Julie is API's Spanish translator and has been working with the Leader Applicant Liaison to help Spanish-speaking applicants through the process of becoming leaders. She is currently working on translating API's Leader Guidelines into Spanish. Julie lived in Spain for five years before returning to the United States, where she worked as a Spanish professor before her daughter was born. She is excited about helping get the word out about API in Spanish-speaking countries. Please feel free to contact Julie if you have any questions or need anything translated into or from Spanish.

Julie es la traductora de español de API y ha estado trabajando con la Leader Applicant Liaison para ayudar a los candidatos con el proceso de convertirse en lideres de los grupos de apoyo. También traduce los Leader Guidelines de API al español. Julie vivió en España por cinco años antes de volver a EEUU, donde trabajó como profesora de español antes de empezar su familia. Julie está muy contenta al ayudar a promover API en los países de habla hispana. Por favor, póngase en contacto con Julie si tiene cualquier duda o pregunta, o si necesita algo traducido al/del español.

Alma L. Ramos-Gilbert
Spanish Translator – Project Based

Alma L. Ramos-Gilbert has a BS in Communication with a double major in Spanish. She's also a Social Worker, graduate of Columbia University School of Social Work. Alma is a native Spanish speaker and originally from Puerto Rico. She recently moved from NYC to Omaha, NE, where she hopes to become involved with the local chapter in Lincoln. Having worked in the communications field since 1997, Alma enjoys helping others and using media outlets to express different points of views. Alma became interested in Attachment Parenting prior to the birth of her 3 year-old son in 2006. Alongside her husband, she has enjoyed actively practicing attachment parenting. The hardest thing about her son growing up according to Alma, is not being able to wear him any longer!


Joanna Liberty
Welcome Baby Liaison

Joanna represents the API New Baby Welcome Wagon, a program to share API’s mission with families new to API.


Sheena Brockington
Advertising Assistant

Sheena provides assistance and support to API's marketing team. She received her B.S. in Business Administration/Marketing from Towson University and is currently working on her M.A. in Publications design at University of Baltimore. She is excited to join API and share her knowledge and skills in marketing and advertising.

Danielle Buffardi
Volunteer Editor

Danielle Buffardi is a volunteer editor for API. She is, by trade, a freelance editor and proofreader who also provides resume services. Please visit her website at www.daniellebuffardi.com to learn more about her and her work or to engage in friendly conversation.

Kelly Bartlett
Meeting Resource Liaison

Kelly is a mother of two and a former high school biology teacher. She lives in Portland, Oregon, and has been an API leader since 2007. Kelly brings her education and experience as a teacher to API, and is working to create resource of meeting curriculum materials for API leaders to use nationwide. She is always striving to create more educational opportunities for parents on the benefits of AP.


Michel Rasmussen
Graphic Designer

Michel works as the graphic designer for API's quarterly publication, The Attached Family Magazine. She is excited to be involved with API's Publications Team and hopes that by contributing her skills, she is playing a small role in helping to promote the API organization's cause.

Lyndsey Steffensen
Book Review Team Member

I am the stay at home mother of a very active 7 month old baby boy. I practice co-sleeping, non-vaccination, babywearing, baby-led solids, breastfeeding, and Elimination communication with my little one, and I feel very strongly that parents should educate themselves to the highest degree in each area where a choice in parenting style must be made. We are all in this for the benefit of our children!

I am currently gaining my certification through DONA International as a birth doula. I absolutely love all things pregnancy and birth related, and I hope to train as a midwife once my son is a little older. I strongly support La Leche League, and I look forward to my volunteer position with API!

Robynn Schamel
Assistant Leader Applicant Liaison

I've been married to John, a retired Marine, for 19 years and we live on a small farm in Fredericksburg, VA with our 9 children. I am passionate about unschooling, taking full advantage of all the cool places to go in and around Washington D.C. and Richmond. I enjoy cooking exotic food with my daughters; discussing philosophy, science and history with my sons; beer tasting and watching crime dramas with my husband; reading and writing about attachment, philosophy and spirituality; and living and loving in the moment. I love being an API leader and hearing about other parents' journeys and insights into parenting; and especially supporting parents who, like myself, have come to fully embrace attachment principles later in their parenting journeys, and are going through the transition of re-attachment.

Amanda Nicolosi
Data Administrator

Amanda has a BS degree from Georgia Tech and worked the past 11 years in the IT industry with focus in large database management systems. Mandy is now a full time stay at home mother. She and her son enjoy their days exploring nature and enjoying life. Mandy enjoys her drawing hobby and aspires to write children's books. Mandy has been an active member of API of North Fulton GA since 2006.

Camille North
API Links Editor

An attached parent of a preteen, a tween, and a teen, Camille North volunteers with API Links and blogs on API Speaks. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband of fifteen years and fills her days with homeschooling her three children. She has a master's degree in biopsychology and spent her pre-mom life in scholarly publishing. A Leader-in-Training with API, Camille is most interested in showing families with young children that Attachment Parenting continues to be just as important with older children as it is with babies and toddlers. She blogs about homeschooling, parenting, and her chaotic, eclectic life at TheEclecticMom.blogspot.com.

Rachel Losey
Volunteer Liaison

Rachel Losey is API's Volunteer Liaison. She coordinates all volunteers and helps new volunteers match with open positions. Rachel is the proud mother of two beautiful children – Cora and Tobin.


Marian Friedrichs
Associate Editor, The Attached Family

Marian Tascio Friedrichs is a stay-at-home mother, a freelance writer and editor, and an accredited La Leche League Leader. She volunteers as Associate Editor of The Attached Family and is grateful for this opportunity to support the mission of API and to learn from other AP moms and dads.


Bonnie Maize
Assistant Leader Liaison

Bonnie has a B.S. from Kansas State University and a J.D. from Washburn University School of Law. She's now a full-time mom to two amazing boys, and enjoys knitting, reading, volunteering, and gardening in her spare time.


Barbara Benjamin
Information Inquiry Liaison

I am excited about joining API as the Information Inquiry Liaison. I am an "Army brat" with a degree in Marketing (Auburn University), 15 years experience as a substitute teacher, and 25 years experience as the mother of a wonderful daughter. I have self-published two children's books and one poetry book. As long as I'm writing, I'm happy! I look forward to working with all of you in the near future.

Beatriz Collado
Assistant Volunteer Liaison

Beatriz Collado is joining API as the assistant volunteer liaison. Beatriz Collado has a B.A. in English and Education and an M.S. in Literacy and Learning. Beatriz has been a teacher of Language Arts in Winter Garden, FL for the past 7 years and has recently moved to Long Island in New York. She is now a stay at home mom to her daughter, Riley. Beatriz is the proud mother of two girls, Charlie Elizabeth and Riley Soledad.

Alissa Smith
API Speaks blogger

Alissa and her family (son Solomon, 1 and husband Levi) live in Denver, CO. She has been a childcare provider for the last 6 years, and brings her experiences with families of all shapes and sizes to API. Please visit her website at www.anewhistory.com for more information as she strives to live purposefully through attachment parenting, purposeful homemaking, and more.

Nilufer Devecigil
Turkish Translator

Nilufer Devecigil, M.A received Transpersonal Counseling Psychology degree from Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado. She has been a practicing psychotherapist specializing in parent-child relationships and developmental issues. She is currently working at Kuraldisi in Istanbul practicing play therapy. She also has her own private practice where she gives seminars on parenting and provides cancelling for both children and adults. She has a 3.5 year old girl called Irmak.

Stephanie Dahl
Responding with Sensitivity Editor for The Attached Family

Stephanie Dahl is a National Board Certified teacher with a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. She left her teaching career shortly after the adoption of her first child and prior to the birth of her first biological child. She has been a member of API since 2008. Writing has been a vehicle for understanding and improving her experiences and roles as a mother. She lives in Washington State with her husband and two daughters.

Biographies coming soon