Ph.D., Senior Clinical Director, JED Foundation

Kurt joined The Jed Foundation in February 2022, bringing his expertise in rural school mental health and adolescent suicidology. At JED, he has developed new initiatives to help schools and communities nationally better evaluate their suicide prevention systems, incorporate youth voice into programming, adopt flexible and effective postvention policies and procedures, and scale up the promotion of lethal means safety practices (e.g., safe storage of medications and firearms). Previously, he spent over two decades as part of the Psychology Faculty at Appalachian State University, establishing and sustaining a nationally recognized program of funded research and clinical practice in school mental health, adolescent suicidology, and rural healthcare. Born and raised in Colorado, Kurt took his bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado – Boulder. He earned a Master of Science and PhD in Clinical-School Psychology from Utah State University and completed his Resident Internship in Clinical Child Psychology at Duke University Medical Center. Kurt is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Rural Mental Health and the Editor of the inaugural Handbook of Rural School Mental Health, published by Springer in 2017. In 2023, Kurt, along with several colleagues, published a chapter on developing the rural school mental health workforce in the 3rd edition of the Handbook of School Mental Health.