"Hi Michele, They look great to me now. It is ok for some sections to have more than 2 if you think they are important concepts. I think they are." Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, MSW, PhD, ASU School of Social Work, April 10, 2026
The partner
Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz is a Professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University and the founding Director of the ASU Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research (STIR), which leads applied research, evaluation, and program design in the field of trafficking prevention and intervention. She is also Clinical Director of the STIR Project Lighthouse intervention program.
Her partnership with Michele's work sits inside that mandate. The Brave Together curriculum, in its four-volume Faith and Classic editions, is now being deployed in school and community settings across Hawai'i. Outcome measurement matters. The instrument that captures whether the curriculum is changing what it claims to change has to be designed by people who understand prevention-education evaluation at a research level.
The work the partnership produced
Through Spring 2026, Michele and Dr. Roe-Sepowitz built and refined the Brave Together pre and post curriculum evaluation surveys across all four volumes. The work moved across email threads, shared Google Docs, and Zoom sessions, and brought in the Hawai'i field team alongside the academic side.
Michele brought the curriculum, the content categories, and the field-implementation knowledge from the Hawai'i partners using the volumes in real classrooms. Dr. Roe-Sepowitz brought the structural standard for in-class pre-post survey design, an example of a well-built four-session healthy-relationships group evaluation, and the willingness to mark up draft after draft until the question stems landed clean.
By mid-April, the survey instrument was at the version Dr. Roe-Sepowitz reviewed and signed off on with the note that anchors this page. By late April, Lisa Nagamine of the Office of the Superintendent at the Hawai'i State Department of Education had reviewed the same draft and replied: "Looked over and those are fine. Much more polished."
That is the multi-vetted instrument the Brave Together field implementations now run on.
The outcome
For Michele, the partnership delivered three things at once. A real evaluation instrument the Hawai'i partners can run in classroom settings. An academic affiliation that grounds the curriculum's outcome claims in research-credible measurement. And a peer relationship with one of the field's leading prevention-education researchers.
For the curriculum, the partnership did the harder work. It separated what Brave Together teaches from what it can be shown to change, and built the measurement bridge that lets the field tell those two stories cleanly.
Where this work goes next
If you build curriculum, lead a prevention or healing program, or steward a body of work that needs both warmth and rigor, the Brave Purpose Author Method is shaped for exactly this kind of build. Michele has walked it.
Work with Michele.
If you lead a school, church, or organization and want to bring this kind of work to your community, please reach out. Michele will follow up with you personally.
- Based in
- Honolulu, HI