About Us
Carmela J. DeCandia, Psy.D.
NEST Developer, Owner
Carmela J. DeCandia, PsyD, is a licensed clinical child psychologist who has dedicated her career to advancing best practices and policies to support vulnerable children and families, and to improve the systems which serve them. In practice for nearly 30 years, her primary work focuses on building trauma-informed systems of care. Her specialties include child and adolescent development, family homelessness, addressing the impact of traumatic stress, program development and systems change, neurodevelopmental testing and family assessment. A compassionate clinician and effective leader, she is nationally recognized as a writer, advocate, and public speaker. She has led direct service and national agencies including St. Mary’s Women and Children’s Center and The National Center on Family Homelessness.
Currently, Dr. DeCandia is the Owner and President of Artemis Associates, LLC where she provides training and consultation to organizations to enhance resilience for children, families, and their providers. and is the Principal Investigator on a NICHD funded project to develop the screening instrument – NEST Early Childhood.
In addition, Dr. DeCandia is licensed to practice in Massachusetts and New York and maintains a clinical practice in developmental and neuropsychological testing of children and adolescents at Strong Roots Counseling in Newton, MA. She has published extensively in academic journals and educational reports, and lectures on lifespan development, psychological testing, and neuroscience for mental health counselors at Boston College Graduate school in Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology and Boston University School of Medicine. For her work, she was named the recipient of the 2016 Horace Mann Spirit of Service Award by Antioch University.
Katie Volk, Ph.D.
NEST Developer
Katie Volk, Ph.D., IMH-E® has over 20 years’ experience in applying child development knowledge to the everyday work of being with children. She has particular expertise in infant mental health, early childhood development, and trauma-informed care. Katie has worked with hundreds of organizations around the United States, spanning early education/care, homelessness, mental health, and substance use/recovery systems. As a qualitative and mixed-methods researcher, Katie’s research interests include relationships between young children and their caregivers while living in shelters, the developmental wellbeing of children with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS), and ways to strengthen child-serving services/systems. She is the co-creator of NEST, an ecological, psychometrically validated screening tool for use with children ages 3-5.
In addition to her role with Artemis Associates, Katie is a Visiting Faculty member at Wheaton College (Massachusetts) and a teacher in their lab school. Katie has a master’s degree in child development and public policy from Tufts University and a doctorate in early education and care from UMass Boston. Her undergraduate degree is from the College of the Holy Cross. She is Endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Mentor (Research/Faculty) by the Massachusetts Association of Infant Mental Health.
Artemis Associates
Artemis Associates provides an array of services to help individuals, families, and organizations develop, grow, and flourish. We specialize in child and youth development, family homelessness, understanding traumatic stress, implementing trauma-informed care, building staff capacity, and leadership coaching and supervision. Our aim is to support providers in developing high-quality programs serving families and creating sustainable resiliency oriented, systems change.
Excellence, up to date research, and one to one support are the hallmarks of our consultation process. Our offerings include quantitative and qualitative research, program evaluation, collective impact evaluation, creating user-friendly data systems, using routine outcomes and data driven decision-making, and coalition building for diverse partners.
