Photo of Elsa Ferguson

Elsa Ferguson, BA

Digital Content and Graphic Design Specialist
elsakf@uw.edu
Box 354920
  • Biography
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Elsa Ferguson is the new Digital Content and Graphic Design Specialist for NW MHTTC and UW SMART Center. She is excited to visually engage in the school mental health world to assist in delivering practical, inclusive, uplifting, and empowering content and imagery. She has over 13 years of non-profit experience in various sectors, including nutrition/food insecurity, public health, cancer care, event planning and tech industry, which gives her a unique perspective to her work.

Over the past two years she has been working for herself, having started her own small business called What Else Designs, LLC, providing graphic design, creative direction, brand development, communications planning, and content marketing strategy to entrepreneurs, small businesses, state, and government agencies. Her recent projects over the past years include contributing to Washington State Department of Health’s statewide mental health campaign, A Mindful State; illustrating and designing a data report for Public Health – Seattle & King County’s Best Starts for Kids, King County Communities Speak Their Truth About Racism; illustrating and developing an educational training material for environmentally safe homes for Public Health – Seattle & King County’s Community Clean Air Ambassador Pilot Program.

Elsa has a B.A. in Nutrition & Public Policy and a minor in Adult Education from Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Outside of work Elsa enjoys spending time with her family and friends, traveling, eating ice cream and delicious meals, and cheering on her favorite sports teams Kansas Jayhawks (Basketball) and the Seattle Seahawks.

Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center’s School Mental Health Supplement
(Training & Technical Assistance) In addition to regular training activities and special areas of focus, the Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (Northwest) has received funding to support increased training and technical assistance for school mental health in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. To operationalize this support Northwest has partnered with the University of Washington School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center, a national leader in developing and supporting implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in schools, including prevention, early intervention, and intensive supports. The Northwest School Mental Health (SMH) and Multi-tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Training and Technical Assistance (TA) Center, within the UW SMART Center, supports school mental health efforts with the goal to support states, districts, schools and community partners to build an equitable single system of delivery in which education and mental health systems are integrated across the tiers.
Training & Technical Assistance Core (TACore)
(Training & Technical Assistance) As a key component of this mission, UW SMART has developed strategies and related infrastructure for providing training and technical assistance to state and local education agencies as well as individual school districts. The SMART Center’s “TACore” provides: 1) Training and consultation/coaching focused on developing workforce capacity (among school staff and community partners) to deliver research-based strategies, policies, and practice models relevant to the education context, 2) Technical assistance focused on building evidence-based, multi-tiered systems of school-based behavioral health, using collaborative decision-making processes guided by local data as well as research evidence, and 3) Program evaluation focused on collecting and analyzing existing (e.g., administrative datasets) and novel (e.g., surveys, focus groups) quantitative and qualitative data to determine the impact of new or existing programs, practices, and policies.