The Visionary Architects

Abner Joseph Boles, III., Ph.D. is a Licensed Psychologist with an impressive background in health and human services. Recently served as the Director for the African American Healing Alliance, Consultant and Advisory to Alameda County’s Adult and Aging Services, and Consultant and Facilitator of Alameda County’s Social Services Agency’s Fatherhood and Male Engagement Initiative. In addition, Dr Boles has been chosen to assist with the Implementation of Alameda County’s African American Health and Wellness Hub Complext. Dr Boles has directed and managed county level Adult Outpatient, Inpatient, Residential and Crisis Treatment Services. Prior to becoming Westside Community Services’ CEO, Dr. Boles was the Assistant Director of Planning for the Department of Public Health for the City and County of San Francisco. He has also served as the Director of Child and Youth Health Services. Dr. Boles has founded and co-founded many programs designed to help African Amercans, and disenfranchised populations, including the Family Mosaic Project, the African American Health Coalition, the Third World Mental Health Coalition, and the Critical Incident Response Team for the City and County of San Francisco. In addition, he served as the lead consultant for a national initiative focused on the child welfare and juvenile justice needs of inner-city youth, and has consulted with numrous States across the country on the development and implementation of intergrated, comprehensive, African-Centered and culturally affirmative health and behavioral health services and systems. Dr. Boles currently works to reframe health and human services such that efforts to restore and heal are understood and delivered from an African-centered perspective while regularly addressing issues of, Trauma Informed Care and Treatment, integrated service system strategies for children and families, workplace violence, harassment, discrimination and racism, and the effects of violence on inner-city children and families.

Born in Trinidad and Tobago and educated in Trinidad, Jamaica and the United States, Dr. Lawford L. Goddard is a sociologist/ demographer who received his doctoral degree in Sociology from Stanford University with a minor in Education. As one of the founders of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture, Inc. in Oakland, California, he was involved in community-based programs for over forty years. He taught in the Black Studies Department at San Francisco State University for twenty years and retired in 2004 as Lecturer Emeritus in Africana Studies. Lawford also taught classes at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford and Cal State Eastbay. Lawford grew up in Belmont and attended Belmont Methodist School, Osmond High School and Queens Royal College and later the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. He developed a passion for scholar-activism at the University of Woodford Square where the People’s National Movement (PNM), under the leadership of Dr. Eric Williams, would hold mass political meetings to discuss politics, history, economics, and civics during the election campaign of 1955.

Dr. Goddard possesses a broad multidisciplinary social science background and is an expert on Black family dynamics, Black culture, youth development programs, suicide among the Black population, and substance abuse and HIV/AIDS education and prevention with over forty years experience as a trainer/educator in these areas. Lawford has also participated in over eight nationally funded community-based, participatory research, training and development projects.