About Us
The Alternative Mobile Services Association (AMSA) is the national trade association for mobile crisis teams and stakeholders. Our purpose is to identify and uplift mobile crisis response services that provide alternatives to traditional 911 emergency response, police services, and unnecessary hospitalization.
We are building a national network of practitioners, and creating opportunities for networking, collaborative problem solving, sharing best practices, and political power building.
Our Story
AMSA was founded by practitioners, advocates, and policy leaders who recognized the urgent need for alternatives to police-led crisis response. Too often, people experiencing behavioral health challenges, substance use crises, or moments of deep distress are met with enforcement instead of care.
Our network grew from a shared vision: a country where community responders, peers, and care teams are in the field deliver person centered care, and where every response centers healing, safety, and connection.
Our Board
We are proud to be guided by leaders from public health, behavioral health, advocacy, and crisis response fields across the country.
Moki Macias
Board Co-Chair, Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative
Moki Macias has served as the Executive Director of Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative since its launch in Atlanta in 2017. She has spent the last 20 years engaged in community organizing, program development and advocacy related to criminal justice reform and community development.
In 2008 she co-founded Building Locally to Organize for Community Safety, which won subpoena power for the Atlanta Citizen’s Review Board and contributed to the dismantling of the notorious REDDOG unit.
Moki Macias
Board Co-Chair, Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative
Tiffany Patton-Burnside, LCSW
Board Co-Chair, Chicago Public Health Department
Tiffany Patton-Burnside, LCSW is co-chair of the Alternative Mobile Services Association.
She is Senior Director of Crisis Services for the Chicago Public Health Department and has worked in the field for over 20 years, providing services and attending to those with social/emotional needs. She is the director of the CARE Chicago mobile program.
Patton Burnside received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UIC, a Master’s degree in Social Work from Dominican University, and in 2009 became an LCSW. She has been in leadership for the last half of her career. Her ultimate goal is and has always been to be a change agent for those who live with social and emotional challenges.
Tiffany Patton-Burnside, LCSW
Board Co-Chair, Chicago CARE
Taylor Crouch-Dodson, MPP
Treasurer, Canopy Roots
Crouch-Dodson is a public policy professional with expertise in strategic planning and civic innovation. At Canopy Roots, he is responsible for developing strategic partnerships with non-profits, social service providers, schools, and government agencies. He also oversees marketing and communications, community engagement, and government relations.
Prior to joining Canopy Roots, Crouch-Dodson worked for the City of Minneapolis in the Civil Rights Department and then in the Performance Management & Innovation Department.
He holds a master of public policy degree from the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree from Austin College in Sherman, TX.
Taylor Crouch-Dodson, MPP
Treasurer, Canopy Roots
Tahir Duckett, JD
Center for Innovations in Community Safety
Tahir Duckett is the Executive Director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety. He was previously an attorney at Relman Colfax, a nationally renowned civil rights law firm specializing in discriminatory policing, housing, lending, employment, education, and public accommodation.
Duckett is a founding executive committee member of Law For Black Lives-DC (L4BLDC), an organization providing legal and policy support to the Movement for Black Lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. As part of L4BLDC, Tahir has facilitated and participated in dozens of formal trainings, teach-ins, and conversations about community safety.
Tahir Duckett, JD
Center for Innovations in Community Safety, Georgetown Law School
Amy Watson, PhD
Wayne State University
A research psychologist at Wayne State University, Amy Watson PhD has focused on people with serious mental illnesses that come in contact with the criminal legal system and interventions to prevent and reduce criminal legal involvement. She has conducted extensive research on police encounters with persons with mental illnesses and the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model. She has also examined mental health courts and prison reentry programs. Her current work is looking at models to reduce or eliminate the role of law enforcement in mental health crisis response. Earlier in her research career, she was the project director of a NIMH Center focused on mental illness stigma, and stigma reduction remains an important theme in her work. Other professional activities include serving on the CIT International Board of Directors from 2016-2021, (as President of the Board 2020-2021) and on the compliance team for the Department of Justice Settlement Agreement with the City of Portland, Oregon.
Watson has a BA in Criminal Justice from Aurora University and an AM and PhD from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.
Amy C Watson, PhD
Wayne State University
Quinita Garrett LCPC, NCC
Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc.
Quinita Garrett LCPC, NCC is the Director of Call Center, Mobile Crisis and System Coordination at Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc (BCRI). Quinita has worked for BCRI over nine years in various roles; including as a mental health clinician on their Mobile Response Team.
Garrett is an outspoken community leader in Maryland for funding needed services, including the Maryland 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline network. She also works part time providing individual, family, and group therapy as a licensed clinical professional counselor.
Quinita Garrett, LCPC, NCC
Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc.
Felicia Spratt, LPC, Ed.D
Behavioral Health & Crisis Systems Consulting
Dr. Felicia Spratt has held senior clinical and executive leadership roles across behavioral health and youth justice systems, including Chief Operating Officer, Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Justice Innovation Officer at Behavioral Health Response. She led the launch of St. Louis’ first Crisis Response Street & Triage Unit and 911 Call Diversion initiative, redirecting nonviolent mental health crises from law enforcement to clinicians. She designed Safely Advocating for Everyone, a regional violence-prevention and trauma-response model in Illinois and led the launching of Youth Excelling and Aiming Higher, a youth development initiative focused on early trauma intervention.
Known for her people-centered leadership and ability to bridge public health, public safety, and community systems, Dr. Spratt regularly collaborates with municipalities, healthcare systems, schools, faith leaders, and emergency responders to strengthen crisis infrastructure and community trust. She holds an Ed.D. in Community Care and Counseling (Traumatology) from Liberty University and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Missouri. Dr. Spratt speaks nationally on
Crisis systems design, justice-informed behavioral health, youth violence prevention, racial equity, and trauma recovery.
Felicia Spratt, LPC, Ed.D
Ryan Smith
Community Safety Department, Durham, NC.
Ryan Smith is the Director of the City of Durham, NC’s Community Safety Department which operates Durham’s first responder branch called HEART.
Smith joined the City in 2017 as the Innovation Team Director where much of his work focused on criminal justice reform, including developing a mass relief driver’s license restoration program.
Prior to working in local government, Smith worked for Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, for Congressman David Price, and for a diverse array of non-profits with missions ranging from teaching documentary photography to recently resettled refugee youth to providing free preschool to children living in poverty.
Ryan Smith
Durham HEART
Ebony Morgan, RN
Exodus Recovery, Inc
Ebony Morgan is a Psychiatric Registered Nurse and Program Director of Mobile Crisis Intervention for Exodus Recovery Inc., providing services for the City of Los Angeles.
She is the former CAHOOTS Program Director for White Bird Clinic of Eugene, Oregon.
Ebony Morgan, RN
Exodus Recovery
Victoria Bautista, JD
Victoria Bautista is a lawyer with 7 years of experience in federal policy in the U.S. House of Representatives. She recently served as the Legislative Director for Congressman Adam Smith (WA-09) and led on his policy work in health care and judiciary issues.
Prior to joining Congressman Smith’s office, she served as Legislative Assistant to Congresswoman Kendra Horn (OK-05). Victoria is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a Juris Doctor and Bachelor’s in Political Science.
Victoria Bautista, JD
Adejare A. McMillan, LMHC
Dade County Street Response
Adejare (Ah-Day-Jah-Ray) McMillan is a South Florida–based speaker, poet, community organizer, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor. He specializes in race and equity, sexuality, addictions, and men’s issues, centering his work on healing and liberation.
Throughout his journey, McMillan has remained deeply engaged in activism, advocacy, and community organizing. Trained in facilitating transformative spaces, he has guided others into these practices and supported countless individuals and communities through Restorative and Transformative Justice interventions. His work reflects a commitment to equity, healing, and the cultivation of liberatory practices.
With an ongoing mission to expand access to mental health services for Black communities and people of color, he devotes his life, crafts, and professional practice to curating spaces where individuals and communities can move toward wellness, balance, and collective healing.
Adejare A. Mcmillan, LMHC
Dade County Street Response
Our Staff
Ensuring AMSA remains accountable to communities, grounded in equity, and focused on sustainability.
Jason Renaud
Administrator
Jason Renaud is a nonprofit consultant focusing on program design and leadership. He’s a well-known public speaker and writer on recovery from alcoholism and the experience of people with mental illness, and is an active advocate for people who have fallen through the public safety net.
He is the board secretary of the Mental Health Association of Portland and is the organization’s voluntary managing director. He administers the Alternative Mobile Service Association, the national trade association for mobile crisis programs and stakeholders.
Jason Renaud
Administrator
Amanda Mathew
Senior Engagement Manager
Amanda leads AMSA’s member engagement efforts, building strong connections with practitioners, peers, and advocates nationwide. They are dedicated to growing AMSA’s membership, strengthening relationships across the network, and ensuring members have access to the tools and support they need. Passionate about collaboration, Amanda uplifts member voices and fosters a strong, united community advancing mobile crisis response.
Amanda Mathew
Senior Engagement Manager
Courtney Williams-Goeloe
Senior Program Manager
Courtney advances AMSA’s policy agenda, partnering with states and localities to shape legislation that strengthens and sustains mobile crisis response. She also oversees AMSA’s programs and training initiatives, supporting communities nationwide in building effective, person-centered crisis response systems.
Courtney Williams-Goeloe
Senior Program Manager
Care, not punishment, should be the first response in a moment of crisis.
AMSA is a 501c6 non-profit trade association (TAX ID 99-4161232).
Alternative Mobile Service Association
715 NW Hoyt #3641
Portland, OR 97208