Our Team

Tracey Wallace, MS, CCC-SLP

Tracey oversees program development, training, and research initiatives as the SHARE Military Initiative Projects & Education Coordinator. Tracey has over 20 years of experience helping people with brain injury maximize participation at home, work, school, and their community. She has worked at Shepherd Center since 2002 and has held other roles, including Speech-Language Pathologist and Clinical Research Scientist, and previously served as a project director for the LiveWell RERC, a National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research funded research center, which provided funding for the research and development of the SwapMyMood app. Tracey currently directs several grant-funded research projects centered around optimizing rehabilitation outcomes, enhancing best practices in rehabilitation of cognitive-communication, and developing accessible rehabilitation interventions for veterans with brain injury and post-traumatic stress. She has extensive experience presenting and publishing about brain injury rehabilitation, teaching and supervising graduate level university students, and serving in leadership positions within national organizations, such as the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Tracey is a leader, researcher, educator, and advocate. As an Air Force brat, working at SHARE has deep meaning to Tracey, and she is proud to bring her special passion for serving veterans with brain injury to the SHARE program.

John Morris, Ph.D. 

John is a senior clinical research scientist and director of technology research and development programs at Shepherd Center, focusing on R&D for assistive and rehabilitation technology for people with all types of disability, and on user needs and usability of technology product and services. He leads several R&D projects for mobile software applications and clinical interventions based on mainstream consumer technology platforms. Additionally, John directs several R&D projects focusing on user needs and usability for the LiveWell Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Community Living, Health and Function (LiveWell RERC) and serves as director of the Accessibility User Research Collective (AURC), a partnership with Microsoft to conduct ongoing product usability testing across the Microsoft portfolio. Additionally, John serves as co-investigator for a collaborative project with Kessler Foundation on development of online training materials for paid caregivers of people with spinal cord injury. Prior to joining Shepherd Center, he worked for Oracle Corporation as a senior product development manager, designing and validating products and services, and was visiting assistant professor at the University of Connecticut. John serves in leadership roles for the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM), including serving on the executive committee of the Technology Networking Group.

Rebecca Gartell, MA, CCC-SLP

Rebecca is a Speech-Language Pathologist and Research Scientist at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, GA. She has dedicated her 14-year career to working with adolescents and adults with acquired neurological injuries and progressive neurological diseases. In her current position as Speech-Language Pathologist at the SHARE Military Initiative, she provides rehabilitation services to military service members and veterans with mild-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI) and any co-occurring psychological health conditions. Her clinical experience also includes addressing cognitive, linguistic, speech, voice, and swallowing disorders in patients across the continuum of care at hospital and university clinic facilities.  Her role in research projects at the Shepherd Center focuses on the development of rehabilitation tools and techniques to improve the lives of people living with brain injury.  These current research projects include SUCCESS (Success in College after Concussion with Effective Student Support), a novel peer mentoring program for college students with concussion, and the development of SwapMyMood, a mobile application to assist people living with TBI with problem solving and emotion regulation.