About

Ernest (Ernie) Duff, is both a minister and a psychologist who is profoundly inspired by collective psychological theory and practice and the potential for healing in and across communities. He is a former nonprofit Executive, who has worked cross-culturally for over thirty years with homeless people, the chronically ill, refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of torture and war, innocent former prisoners of our prison system, people living with HIV, survivors of mass shootings and international/domestic terrorism. He co-founded the Safe Horizon/Solace Program for Survivors of Torture and Refugee Trauma in New York City, and created and managed the Metro Area Support for Survivors of Torture (MASST) Consortium in New York and Northern New Jersey, which became a leading community empowerment approach to healing the wounds of torture survivors living in the United States. Ernie is also a former President of the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs (NCTTP), which is the association of torture rehabilitation efforts across the United States. He moved west with his family in 2004, and now resides in Denver, Colorado.

Since that time, Ernie has worked in a number of capacities, with a few examples including: Executive Director of the Life After Exoneration Program in Berkeley, California, working to create a just, psychosocial support network for wrongfully convicted former prisoners of the prison system; Program Director of the Aurora Strong Community Resilience Center, creating a community resilience initiative in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado Theater Shooting, and as a Senior Community Engagement Coordinator with the Office of Community Engagement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, educating and organizing the public to be able to respond to domestic violent extremism.

In all of his work, Ernie guides and facilitates steps toward community healing, empowerment, inclusiveness and resilience! He brings a collective, systemic understanding and expertise on how community members and the organizations/businesses which support them, may work together, discovering and actualizing human resilience, while solving tasks and building efficiencies.

Ernie has considerable leadership, management history and knowledge that he brings to the table to help organizations conduct strategic and operational planning, program development, fundraising, board development and recruitment, volunteer management and more. All work  with organizations is done through the collective lens of mutuality with communities, cultural humility and structural competency.