Hope & Healing JAX Team

Every child is precious.

Hope & Healing JAX equips ALL who touch the lives of children with what they need, so they can give children what they need.

Every child should feel precious, loved & safe.

Kirsten Freitag Murray

Executive Director

As Executive Director of Hope & Healing JAX, Inc., Kirsten leads this trauma-informed care training agency grounded in Trust Based Relational Interventions® (TBRI®) and SAMHSA’s trauma informed care framework.

Equipping ALL who touch the lives of children with what they need, so they can give children what they need.

This role includes Servant Leader of Hope & Healing JAX, bringing together those already working in Jacksonville to address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and trauma to promote healing and build resilience through training, engagement, mobilization, messaging, and celebration.

Passionate to strengthen trauma responsive awareness, knowledge, and practice for child/family-serving organizations everywhere, Kirsten leverages experience , expertise and relationships to align partners, programs, and policies to relationally address complex issues.

From 2013 to 2022, Kirsten served as Director of Development and Public Relations at Creative Health Services, a Community Behavioral Health Center serving 6,000+ individuals yearly, where she obtained significant federal, state, county and private funding and developed foundational trauma informed community frameworks in Philadelphia and Pottstown, PA.

With Early Childhood Development and Elementary Education foundations at Messiah College, Kirsten began her career as a Title I Public School Teacher in Elkhart, IN, co-directed Lancaster (PA) Mother’s Center and served as a lactation consultant. She then led a Family Life Education Department providing evidence-based parenting support to 13 school districts through Strengthening Families for Parents & Youth (10-14).

Her commitment to strengthening parents and families remains top of list, as evidenced in the recent publication by the American Association of Pediatrics piece, “Engaging Parents Who Have Experienced Trauma and Marginalization in a Strengths-based Partnership”.

Link to Article:

“Engaging Parents Who Have Experienced Trauma and Marginalization in a Strengths-based Partnership” with Michael Ryan, LPC. Reaching Teens: Strength-Based Communication Strategies to Build Resilience and Support Healthy Adolescent Development, Ginsburg, Kenneth MD Editor, Second Edition; American Academy of Pediatrics, 2020

“Trauma can be generational and to be who we want to be for children, we need to do the work of resolving our own trauma and building connections of trust, so children of all ages know they are precious, loved and safe.”

Kirsten Freitag Murray

Hope & Healing JAX Team

Kirsten Freitag Murray

Executive Director

“Trauma can be generational and to be who we want to be for children, we need to do the work of resolving our own trauma and building connections of trust, so children of all ages know they are precious, loved and safe.”

Trainings & Events