Rhonda Waller, PhD
Dr. Rhonda Waller is a psychologist with more than 25 years of professional experience in public health, education, and human services with an emphasis on program development, leadership development, capacity building, and training and technical assistance. Dr. Waller is highly skilled in program design and implementation, coalition building, and the development of community-based strategies to improve access to health care and education. She has led numerous training and technical assistance initiatives for federal and non-federal organizations.
Currently, Dr. Waller is the Senior Associate for Maternal and Child Health initiatives at The Bizzell Group. She has managed several SAMHSA, CDC, and HHS projects. She recently assisted HRSA’s Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting / Federal Home Visiting program grantees and SAMHSA’s Targeted Capacity Expansion: Medication Assisted Treatment – Prescription Drug and Opioid Addiction (MAT-PDOA) grantees in identifying gaps in programmatic services and identifying opportunities for technical assistance and training. She also ensures the development and provision of culturally competent in-person, online, and web-based trainings on topics related to program development, leadership development, capacity building, maternal and child health, early childhood education, behavioral health, and psychology.
Dr. Waller has held leadership positions for several nonprofit organizations. She served as the Deputy Director of Break the Cycle (BTC), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to decreasing the incidence of dating violence and domestic violence among youth. In this capacity, she analyzed state and local policies and made recommendations to ensure that these policies were relevant to youth and incorporated best practices. As the Executive Director of Healthy Babies Project (HBP), Inc., Dr. Waller worked with stakeholders and collaborative partners to identify funding and services to complement HBP’s programs dedicated to decreasing infant mortality among low-income, high-risk African American women in the District of Columbia. Under her leadership, HBP expanded its service offerings to include HIV testing and prevention education, parenting empowerment programs, prenatal yoga, fatherhood initiatives, GED training, job skills sessions, financial literacy workshops, and other evidence-based health interventions not readily available to families served by HBP. HBP also secured funding to implement and evaluate pilot projects, resulting in HBP’s reports on the effectiveness of its projects and “best practices” used to reach and impact low-income, African-American families.
Dr. Waller received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Howard University, an M.A. in Counseling and Psychology from Clark Atlanta University, and a B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College.