Our Team
Go Slow. Don't Force. No Rush.
Residential Post-Traumatic Holistic Care
Robin M. Leonard, MA
CEO, Community Relations
The first half of my career was spent in wild bird conservation, and the second half in patient advocacy for women diagnosed with breast cancer. Over the course of twenty years, I’ve come away with two truths: 1. People of all types experience solace when they attune to the rhythms of the natural world; 2. Allopathic medicine can save a person’s life, but healing the body, the mind, and the spirit takes patience, consistency, and a calm and gentle hand. In the last five years as a veteran caregiver, I’ve gained direct experience navigating the VA Healthcare System in Texas, and coordinating services provided through Michael E. DeBakey Medical Center, VA Home Based Primary Care, VA Community Care, and independent home health agencies. I maintain a personal yoga practice guided by a mentor and continue to study the therapeutic application of meditation, breathwork, and the principles of Ayurveda through the Yoga Well Institute. With Rowan House, I’m creating the place my family needed, but couldn’t find.
Becky Kersey, OTR
Adaptive Therapeutics
My approach to occupational therapy focuses on manual methods utilizing therapeutic touch. Through more than 25 years of practice, I’ve come to understand touch can encourage all functional systems of the human being to heal and grow. My experience, research, and training have taught me therapeutic support can be integrated into a person’s daily routine and reenforced through adaptive activities. Far beyond the typical measures of range-of-motion, strength, and pain relief, an immersive delivery of integrative therapy can produce sustainable improvements in areas uniquely meaningful to the individual. I believe in adapting the environment to optimize a person’s ability to engage in their own life and have developed and refined strategies to foster success for thousands of clients with all levels of ability, across all ages, and in a multitude of settings. At Rowan House, I’m developing a therapeutic program that inspires disabled veterans and their families to expand their abilities and thrive despite their challenges.
Lenny Halverson
Environmental Engineering
For more than 20 years, I’ve worked in the audio/visual industry designing, installing, and maintaining complex environmental control systems ranging from simple home security to comprehensive campus-wide solutions for businesses, schools, universities, governments, and tribal nations. With a specialized approach toward integrated technology, I’m adept at customizing interior/exterior living spaces to promote positive and predictable sensory responses. My varied experience across a diverse portfolio of long-term care projects has taught me that the deliberate application of adaptive lighting and ambient sound can minimize external alarm triggers, mitigate stress-generated fear responses, and restore natural biometric rhythms in the body. With Rowan House, I’m designing a homelike setting wherein the environment itself functions to induce universal feelings of safety and well-being in the combat veterans and caregivers who inhabit it.
Our Story
In 2018, my husband suffered an anoxic brain injury related to his combat duty in the Gulf War. After 18 months in a series of neuro-rehabilitation centers, an insurance company forced us into discharge. A team of neurology professionals explained there were no long-term care options for a combat veteran with a brain injury and underlying PTSD.
In response, I founded Rowan Fellowship and assembled a diverse team of therapists, counselors, ministers, and social scientists. Our unified philosophy is simple: we do not view people as broken or in need of repair. Instead, we see each individual as a complex natural system that can restore itself to balance.
The current systems in place fall short. We’ve developed a solution—a brand-new version of long-term residential care that meets a specific need for a specific population.
There’s nothing else like Rowan House. We’ve made it our mission to provide disabled veterans with a homelike place of residence, embedded in a natural setting, that evokes feelings of dignity, reverence, and peace.
Welcome to Rowan House. We’re happy to meet you!