Courtney joined the Center for Victims of Torture as the Director of Evaluation and Research in early 2024.
She is a social psychologist and mental health clinician specializing in traumatic stress, working at the intersection of research, evaluation, clinical practice, and systems innovation to strengthen responses to complex humanitarian crises.
Across more than two decades in global practice, research, and academic leadership, her work has focused on advancing recovery, resilience, and violence prevention in contexts shaped by conflict, displacement, and climate-related disasters. After a decade as a clinical mental health and humanitarian practitioner, she transitioned to leading research and evaluation initiatives designed to strengthen the evidence base for scalable, culturally grounded, human rights informed mental health interventions.
Dr. Welton-Mitchell has led global efforts integrating group-based mental health services with violence prevention, emergency preparedness, and climate adaptation. Through this body of work she has advanced models that promote resilience for communities facing displacement, adversity and social exclusion in Nepal, India, Haiti, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Lebanon, the U.S. and other similar settings.
Her scholarship on gender-based violence and human rights violations examines how social norms shift, how help-seeking behaviors are catalyzed, and how communities interrupt cycles of harm. She has also led staff wellbeing initiatives for frontline humanitarian and healthcare professionals, in settings such as Ukraine and Pakistan.
Courtney has collaborated with UN agencies, I/NGOs, CBOs, community leaders, and academic institutions, founded research groups, directed academic programs, and trained clinicians, humanitarians and researchers. Graduate level courses she has taught include refugee and forced migration studies, climate and disaster mental health, humanitarian response, public health preparedness, cognitive and clinical psychology, and research methods.
She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Affect/Social Psychology (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Track), from the University of Denver and an M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of New Mexico. She is a former Fulbright Scholar (Malaysia), Global Fulbright Ambassador, and Peace Corps Volunteer (Nepal). Dr. Courtney Welton-Mitchell is currently an Adjoint Associate Professor with the Colorado School of Public Health, where she previously directed the graduate Certificate in Climate and Disaster Resilience as core faculty.
Most recently, she has led AI initiatives at CVT and pursued advanced training in AI for Good, exploring how human-centered, ethically grounded AI can expand access and responsibly support mental health and humanitarian innovation.
