Strategic Partners

Christine (Chris) Stoner-Mertz is the Founder and Principal of Stoner-Mertz & Co, LLC, bringing decades of experience leading transformative change in behavioral health, child welfare, and nonprofit systems. She is recognized for bold, visionary thinking combined with the ability to guide real-world implementation.

Her career encompasses an extraordinary breadth of roles: therapist, nonprofit Chief Executive Officer, foster parent, and statewide policy leader. This lived and professional experience at every level of the system gives her an unusually grounded perspective on what mission-driven organizations need from their leaders.

Chris has partnered with state agencies, county behavioral health departments, managed care plans, and community-based organizations to strengthen prevention services and advance equitable systems of care. Her work consistently sits at the intersection of policy, practice, and community — translating complex systems challenges into actionable strategies that produce lasting change.

Her leadership is marked by a deep commitment to equity, sustainability, and the conviction that people make systems work. She brings to Ford Webb Associates' searches a nuanced understanding of the behavioral health and child welfare landscape, helping to identify and assess candidates who can navigate both the human dimensions and the institutional complexity of these fields.

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Martin D. Cohen recently retired as the President and CEO of the MetroWest Health Foundation, a community health philanthropy serving the MetroWest area of Massachusetts. His retirement from that role caps a distinguished career of more than 30 years working with federal and state policymakers to plan and implement comprehensive strategies for improving publicly supported behavioral health services.

Prior to leading the MetroWest Health Foundation, Martin served as Executive Director of the Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc., a national health and human services consulting firm. Before that, he served as a Deputy Program Director and Senior Program Consultant for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he helped shape policy and programmatic initiatives at a national scale.

Martin's public sector experience is equally substantial. He served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, and currently serves as Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission, continuing to shape health policy at the state level.

His combination of philanthropic leadership, federal and state policy experience, and deep expertise in behavioral health systems makes him an invaluable advisor to Ford Webb Associates searches in the health, behavioral health, and community philanthropy sectors.

Victor Capoccia, PhD, has dedicated his career to improving access to and quality of prevention, treatment, and recovery support for people and families living with substance use and related disorders. His work sits at the convergence of academic research, executive management, and philanthropic leadership — giving him a rare capacity to understand both the science and the organizational realities of behavioral health.

Victor's executive career includes serving as Administrative Director of the City of Boston's health department and as CEO of CAB Health and Recovery, a community-based organization that grew to become the behavioral health division of Beth Israel-Lahey Health System. He has also served as Senior Program Officer and Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and at the Open Society Institute, shaping national grantmaking strategies around addiction policy, quality, and financing.

Recent work has included structured organizational analyses of community behavioral health organizations; the development of stakeholder surveys to analyze states' adoption of national standards for peer recovery support staff certification; and the creation of research tools for national studies of state expenditures advancing peer recovery support services.

Victor has served on the SAMHSA/CSAT National Advisory Committee, chaired local substance use disorder community coalitions, and authored numerous peer-reviewed publications. He brings to Ford Webb Associates a sophisticated grasp of the behavioral health field's leadership needs, financing structures, and evidence-based frameworks.

Gabriela Sandoval, PhD., M.R.P., A.F.C., is an experienced researcher and thought leader with a demonstrated history of working in economic justice. She brings exceptional expertise in economic justice, racial equity, and gender equity to her work, combining rigorous academic training with a deep commitment to progressive social change.

Dr. Sandoval is skilled in strategic visioning, project and program planning, and research in the service of progressive social movements. Her interdisciplinary background — spanning sociology, city and regional planning, and financial counseling — gives her a uniquely broad perspective on the structural forces that shape communities and the organizations that serve them.

She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and an M.R.P. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. She brings to Ford Webb Associates a sophisticated understanding of equity-centered leadership and the organizational capacity needed to advance economic and social justice missions.