Full Programme

Friday, September 18, 2026 | 4:00–8:30 PM EDT First Church in Cambridge | 11 Garden Street | Cambridge, Massachusetts
 

One evening. Three movements.
 

Where human rights, health, scholarship, and culture meet in support of Ukraine.

Voices for Ukraine is an interdisciplinary gathering presented by First Aid of the Soul, bringing together distinguished voices in human rights, global affairs, academia, mental health, humanitarian response, and the arts alongside Ukrainian and local musicians, artists, and storytellers.
 

The evening asks us to consider recovery in its fullest sense. Rebuilding Ukraine means more than responding to trauma or reconstructing physical infrastructure. It also means protecting human dignity and psychological well-being, strengthening communities, preserving culture and identity, pursuing justice and accountability, and sustaining the relationships that allow people and communities to imagine a future beyond war.
 

The program unfolds in three movements—a Symposium, Reception & Silent Art Auction, and Concert—and marks the public launch of First Aid of the Soul’s Arts & Health Initiative in Ukraine.

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FIRST AID OF THE SOUL

Rebuilding Ukraine Through Mental Health
 

First Aid of the Soul is a U.S.- and Ukraine-based nonprofit providing accessible mental health and psychosocial support through trauma-informed, holistic, and creative approaches.
 

Founded in March 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, First Aid of the Soul works alongside Ukrainian mental health professionals, educators, universities, healthcare institutions, artists, humanitarian organizations, and community partners to strengthen both immediate support and sustainable systems of care.
 

Today, our programs have reached more than 25,000 individuals, combining evidence-based mental health practices with approaches rooted in creativity, education, culture, professional capacity building, and community resilience. The organization also provides more than ten weekly supervision and support groups and has delivered more than 300 trainings.

Our experience has reinforced a central principle:

Recovery is about more than responding to trauma.

It requires strengthening communities, supporting those who care for others, preserving culture and identity, fostering dialogue, and creating spaces where healing, leadership, dignity, and human connection can flourish.

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THE ARTS & HEALTH INITIATIVE

Tonight marks the public launch of First Aid of the Soul’s Arts & Health Initiative in Ukraine.

Building upon our trauma-informed mental health and psychosocial work, the initiative brings together mental health, creative practice, education, healthcare, culture, and community resilience.

Through partnerships with universities, healthcare institutions, cultural organizations, mental health professionals, and communities across Ukraine, the initiative seeks to expand opportunities for creative and arts-based approaches that support psychological well-being, professional development, human connection, and long-term recovery.
 

At its heart is a simple idea: the arts are not separate from recovery.
 

Music, visual art, movement, storytelling, cultural expression, and shared creative experiences can help people make meaning, preserve identity, reconnect with one another, and imagine possibilities beyond survival.

4:00–5:30 PM | SYMPOSIUM

Democracy, Human Dignity & Ukraine’s Future
 

The opening symposium brings together perspectives from human rights, international affairs, history, mental health, humanitarian response, documentary storytelling, and culture to examine the human dimensions of Ukraine’s present and future.
 

The conversation moves from international solidarity and human dignity to justice and accountability, history and cultural identity, and finally to an interdisciplinary discussion of what Ukraine’s long-term recovery will require.

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Welcome & Opening Remarks

Nathalie Robelot-Timtchenko, LMHC, MC/MPA, MA-ET

Founder & Executive Director, First Aid of the Soul | Licensed Mental Health Counselor & Expressive Arts Therapist
 

Nathalie Robelot-Timtchenko is the Founder and Executive Director of First Aid of the Soul, which she established immediately following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A licensed mental health counselor and expressive arts therapist, she has spent much of her career working at the intersection of trauma-informed care, humanitarian response, arts and health, professional capacity building, and community resilience.

Nathalie lived and practiced as a psychotherapist in Kyiv for more than eight years and has maintained a personal and professional connection to Ukraine spanning more than seventeen years. Under her leadership, First Aid of the Soul has developed a growing network of mental health professionals and partners supporting communities across Ukraine, with programs reaching more than 25,000 people.

A 2025 graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School Mid-Career Master in Public Administration program, Nathalie’s work focuses increasingly on connecting frontline mental health practice with systems change, policy, education, and sustainable models of care. Music and the expressive arts have remained central to both her clinical practice and her own creative life.

Keynotes

Featured Keynote

Ambassador Samantha Power
 

Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School | William D. Zabel ’61 Professor of Practice in Human Rights, Harvard Law School

Samantha Power is a scholar, author, journalist, and former U.S. government official whose career has focused on international affairs, human rights, humanitarian action, and development. She currently holds joint appointments at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.

From 2021 to 2025, Power served as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. She previously served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. Earlier in her career, she reported from conflict zones as a journalist and later became the founding executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She earned her B.A. from Yale University and J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Her scholarship and public service have examined questions central to tonight’s gathering: how governments and institutions respond to human suffering, the protection of civilians and human rights, and the responsibilities of the international community during crises.

Featured Keynote

Oleksandra Matviichuk

Human Rights Lawyer | Head, Center for Civil Liberties
 

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, the Ukrainian human rights organization awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.

For years, her work has focused on strengthening human rights, democratic institutions, and accountability in Ukraine. Since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began in 2014—and with renewed urgency following the full-scale invasion in 2022—Matviichuk and the Center for Civil Liberties have worked to document alleged war crimes and advocate internationally for justice and accountability.

Her work raises questions extending far beyond legal institutions alone: how societies protect human dignity amid mass violence; how survivors and communities experience justice; and how accountability, memory, democratic values, and recovery intersect.

Her participation in Voices for Ukraine brings the perspective of a Ukrainian human rights movement working not only to document what has happened, but to help shape the principles upon which Ukraine’s future will be built.

Featured Keynote

Professor Serhii Plokhii

Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University
 

Serhii Plokhii is the Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and one of the foremost scholars of Ukrainian and Eastern European history. His research encompasses the intellectual, cultural, and international history of Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on Ukraine. He served as Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute from 2013 to 2025.

His many books include The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, and, most recently, David and Goliath: Commentaries on the Russo-Ukrainian War. His work has received numerous honors, including the Baillie Gifford Prize and Ukraine’s Shevchenko National Prize.

Through his scholarship, Plokhii situates Ukraine’s present within a much longer history of empire, sovereignty, identity, culture, and national self-determination—providing essential historical context for understanding both the current war and the future Ukraine is working to build.

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Special Remarks

Carl L. Sheline

Mayor of Lewiston, Maine
 

Carl L. Sheline serves as Mayor of Lewiston, Maine. His participation in Voices for Ukraine represents an important dimension of the evening: the role of American communities and civic leaders in sustaining relationships with Ukraine beyond national institutions.

His remarks will reflect on community, solidarity, and the ways local leadership and civic engagement can help maintain human connections across borders during prolonged crises.

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PANEL CONVERSATION

Human Rights, Mental Health & Resilience: The Human Dimensions of Ukraine’s Future
 

An interdisciplinary conversation exploring the psychological, social, cultural, and human rights dimensions of war and Ukraine’s long-term recovery.

Bringing together expertise in mental health, international human rights law, veterans’ care, documentary storytelling, and humanitarian response, the conversation examines how Ukraine and its international partners can strengthen human dignity, accountability, psychological well-being, resilience, and community alongside physical reconstruction.
 

Central Question

What does it mean to protect human dignity—not only during war, but through the long process of recovery?

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Moderator

Anastasiya Donets, PhD, LL.M.

Human Rights Lawyer | Team Lead, IPHR Ukraine Legal Team

Anastasiya Donets is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer specializing in international law, war crimes investigations, strategic litigation, and accountability. As Team Lead of the Ukraine Legal Team at International Partnership for Human Rights, her work focuses on documenting and responding to serious violations associated with Russia’s war against Ukraine and strengthening pathways toward justice for individuals and communities affected by the war.

With advanced training in international law, including an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, Anastasiya brings together legal scholarship and practical experience working on complex human rights challenges.

She also works closely with First Aid of the Soul, contributing her expertise to conversations around safeguarding, legal and ethical frameworks, and the intersection of human rights with humanitarian and mental health response.

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Panelists

Nathalie Robelot-Timtchenko, LMHC, MC/MPA, MA-ET

Founder & Executive Director, First Aid of the Soul | Mental Health Policy Advocate

Nathalie returns to the conversation from the perspective of mental health practice and humanitarian response in Ukraine. Her complete biography appears with the opening remarks above.
 

Joseph Bonvie, PsyD, ABPP

Senior Director, Clinical Services, Home Base

Dr. Joseph Bonvie is a board-certified clinical psychologist and Senior Director of Clinical Services at Home Base, where his work centers on the psychological health and recovery of veterans, service members, and their families. He is a retired U.S. Navy Captain and operational psychologist with 21 years of active-duty service.

During his Navy career, Dr. Bonvie completed multiple deployments supporting Joint Special Operations Forces and held senior leadership roles including Force Psychologist for Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, Director of Operational Psychology for two Naval Special Warfare Major Commands, Chief Consultant for Navy Operational Psychology, and inaugural Director of the Navy Operational Psychology Fellowship.

His experience brings an important perspective to the symposium on the psychological consequences of high-risk occupational and combat exposure, the needs of veterans and their families, and the systems required to support recovery over time.
 

Susan H. Farbstein

Clinical Professor of Law | Director, International Human Rights Clinic, Harvard Law School

Susan Farbstein is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. Her teaching and practice focus on international human rights, accountability, transitional justice, strategic litigation, and the complex questions that arise when legal systems seek to respond to mass violence and serious human rights violations.

Her work has involved collaboration with affected communities and human rights advocates across multiple countries and contexts, connecting legal strategy with the lived realities of survivors.

In the context of Ukraine, her work contributes to broader efforts concerning accountability for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. She brings to the panel a critical perspective on what justice can—and cannot—accomplish, how accountability processes interact with recovery, and why the protection of human dignity must remain central to legal responses to war.
 

Kseniia Marchenko

Ukrainian Documentary Director, Producer & Non-Fiction Writer

Kseniia Marchenko is a Ukrainian documentary director, producer, and non-fiction writer whose work examines conflict, systemic change, and socially and politically sensitive subjects through deeply human stories.

Her producing credits include the acclaimed documentary In the Rearview, which follows Ukrainians fleeing the war as they travel toward safety and was shortlisted in the International Feature Film category for the 2024 Academy Awards.

Through documentary storytelling, Marchenko explores experiences that statistics and policy language can struggle to capture: displacement, uncertainty, relationships, memory, loss, and the ways ordinary people navigate extraordinary circumstances.

Her participation brings the role of storytelling, representation, cultural memory, and witness into a conversation about recovery—asking how stories shape what societies remember and how the world understands the human experience of war.
 

Themes for the Conversation

The Human Impact of Prolonged War • Mental Health & Psychological Recovery • Justice, Accountability & Human Rights • Storytelling, Culture & Memory • From Resilience to Recovery

5:30–6:45 PM | RECEPTION & SILENT ART AUCTION

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Following the symposium, guests are invited to gather for an informal reception celebrating community, creativity, collaboration, and Ukrainian culture.
 

Enjoy light refreshments, conversation, music, and a silent art auction featuring works contributed by Ukrainian artists and supporters.
 

The reception is not simply an intermission. It is another expression of the evening’s purpose: creating space for human connection across disciplines, institutions, cultures, and communities.

The Silent Art Auction will be curated in partnership with the Ukrainian Cultural Initiative. 

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Live Music

Taisa Kulyk

Ukrainian Banduristka & Vocalist

Taisa Kulyk is a Ukrainian banduristka and vocalist whose work brings one of Ukraine’s most distinctive musical traditions into conversation with contemporary musical expression.

Through the bandura, an instrument deeply connected with Ukrainian history, cultural memory, and identity, Taisa moves fluidly across traditional Ukrainian music, folk influences, jazz, and popular styles. Her performances demonstrate how cultural traditions can remain alive precisely because artists continue to reinterpret and share them.

At Voices for Ukraine, her music creates a bridge between the symposium and concert—inviting guests to experience culture not simply as something discussed or preserved, but as something living, communal, and continually renewed.

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Ukrainian Dance

MIT Zirka | Ukrainian Dance Ensemble

MIT Zirka is a Ukrainian dance ensemble rooted in the MIT and Greater Boston communities. Through Ukrainian folk dance and performance, the ensemble celebrates and preserves cultural traditions while sharing them with new audiences.

At a time when Ukrainian culture and identity remain inseparable from the country’s struggle for freedom and survival, cultural groups throughout the diaspora play an important role in maintaining connection across generations and borders.

MIT Zirka brings that spirit to Voices for Ukraine through movement, music, community, and the joy of Ukrainian cultural expression.

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7:00–8:30 PM | CONCERT

Music and Stories from Ukraine

The final movement of Voices for Ukraine brings us together through music, storytelling, memory, and creative expression.

Featuring Ukrainian and local musicians alongside expressive arts practitioners and educators, the concert moves among Ukrainian musical traditions, classical repertoire, jazz, improvisation, original music, and collective song.

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Opening Remarks

Phillip Speiser, PhD, REAT, RDT/BC

Chair, Board of Directors, First Aid of the Soul

Phillip Speiser is an expressive arts educator, therapist, drama therapist, and psychodramatist whose career has spanned more than four decades. His work has explored the role of the arts in mental health, trauma recovery, education, community building, and conflict transformation in the United States and internationally.

As Chair of the Board of Directors of First Aid of the Soul, Phillip has helped guide the organization’s growth while championing the integration of expressive arts within trauma-informed mental health and community programming.

His career embodies a central principle of tonight’s gathering: that creativity is not peripheral to health and human connection, but can become a meaningful way of building relationship, processing experience, and strengthening communities.

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Performers

Olga Lisovska

Ukrainian Soprano | Arts Producer | Cultural Advocate

Kyiv-born soprano Olga Lisovska is a performer, arts producer, and cultural advocate whose career bridges music, cultural leadership, and international collaboration. She has performed on stages including Carnegie Hall and has developed projects that create opportunities for artists while bringing communities together through music and interdisciplinary cultural programming.

Olga is a co-founder of the Boston International Symphony Orchestra and founder of Music, Arts & Fashion Productions. Her work reflects a commitment not only to performance but to creating platforms through which artists and audiences can connect across cultures.

At Voices for Ukraine, Olga helps open the concert with the National Anthem of Ukraine, grounding the evening in a musical expression of Ukrainian identity, dignity, and collective belonging.

Solon Gordon

Pianist | Collaborative Artist

Solon Gordon is a pianist and collaborative musician whose work spans performance, accompaniment, and interdisciplinary musical collaboration.

At Voices for Ukraine, he joins Olga Lisovska in the opening musical portion of the concert, including the National Anthem of Ukraine.

His participation reflects the collaborative spirit at the heart of the evening: musicians from different backgrounds coming together through performance in solidarity with Ukraine and in recognition of music’s capacity to create shared experience.

Taisa Kulyk

Bandura

Following her reception performance, Taisa returns to the stage for a featured bandura performance. Her full biography appears in the Reception section above.

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Vadim Neselovskyi

Ukrainian Pianist & Composer | Professor, Berklee College of Music

Vadim Neselovskyi is an internationally acclaimed Ukrainian pianist and composer born in Odesa. His musical language moves between jazz, classical composition, improvisation, and storytelling, often drawing upon memory, place, and his relationship to Ukraine.

A professor at Berklee College of Music, Neselovskyi has built an international career as both performer and composer and has collaborated with major artists including Gary Burton, Herbie Hancock, and Chaka Khan.

His recent work has brought particular attention to the cultural and emotional landscapes of his native Odesa, demonstrating how music can hold memories of place even when those places are transformed by history and war.

At Voices for Ukraine, his performance brings together virtuosity and personal reflection, allowing music itself to become a form of remembrance, testimony, and connection.

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Story Sharing

Between musical performances, the concert creates space for a voice from Ukraine—a reminder that behind discussions of policy, recovery, and international response are individual lives, families, communities, memories, and experiences.

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Alexander Vavilov

Ukrainian Violist | Arts Advocate

Alexander Vavilov is a Ukrainian violist, chamber musician, and arts advocate whose career combines performance with a commitment to supporting fellow musicians.

A co-founder of the Sheffield Chamber Players, Alexander has performed in major venues including Carnegie Hall and Boston Symphony Hall and has built a career centered on chamber music, collaboration, and bringing classical music into closer relationship with communities.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion, he helped establish the Relief Fund for Ukrainian Musicians in collaboration with the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation, supporting Ukrainian musicians whose lives and careers were disrupted by the war.

His work demonstrates how artists can respond to crisis not only through performance, but through concrete acts of solidarity with their professional and cultural communities.

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Nathalie Robelot-Timtchenko

“Freedom” — Original Song

Returning to the stage as a musician and singer-songwriter, Nathalie performs her original song “Freedom.”

Long before founding First Aid of the Soul, music was central to Nathalie’s life. As a vocalist and keyboardist, she performed with Ukraine-based independent rock groups and toured internationally while living in Kyiv.

Tonight, her clinical, humanitarian, and creative worlds meet on the same stage. Freedom reflects on belonging, human connection, and the meaning of freedom amid Ukraine’s continuing struggle to protect its people, culture, and future.

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Mitchell Kossak

Jazz Pianist | Expressive Arts Therapist | Educator

Mitchell Kossak is a jazz pianist, expressive arts therapist, educator, and longtime leader in the international expressive arts field. A professor in the Expressive Therapies program at Lesley University, his work has explored the relationship among improvisation, creativity, embodiment, empathy, and healing.

He has served as President of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association and has spent decades developing and teaching approaches that position artistic process as a way of building connection and engaging experiences that may not be accessible through words alone.

As both musician and clinician, Mitchell brings to Voices for Ukraine a perspective in which improvisation becomes more than a musical technique—it becomes a practice of listening, responding, adapting, and creating something together.

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Greta Bro

Singer-Songwriter | Expressive Therapist

Greta Bro is a singer-songwriter and expressive therapist whose musical work draws from soul, jazz, sacred music, and global rhythms.

Her approach to performance is rooted in the transformational possibilities of voice, creativity, and human connection. Across her artistic and therapeutic work, she explores how music can create spaces for reflection, emotional expression, belonging, and shared experience.

At Voices for Ukraine, Greta joins Mitchell Kossak and Nick Suchecki in a collaborative performance that brings together musicianship and expressive arts practice—reflecting the evening’s broader commitment to understanding art not only as performance, but as relationship.

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Nick Suchecki

Multi-Instrumentalist | Educator | Researcher

Nick Suchecki is a multi-instrumentalist, educator, and researcher whose work explores the intersection of music, mindfulness, stress reduction, and trauma-sensitive creative practice.

His teaching and research have examined how carefully facilitated musical experiences can support psychological well-being and connection. His work has also included programming and research with Ukrainian educators and mental health professionals, giving his participation in Voices for Ukraine a direct relationship to the themes at the center of the evening.

Nick joins Mitchell Kossak and Greta Bro for an interdisciplinary musical collaboration grounded in improvisation, listening, and shared creative experience.

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Collective Closing

“Stand by Me”

The evening concludes not with another speech, but with a collective song.

Artists are invited to return to the stage for “Stand by Me,” transforming the closing moments of Voices for Ukraine into a shared expression of solidarity.

It is a simple idea with particular meaning tonight:
 

To stand with Ukraine is to remain present.

To listen. To remember. To sustain relationships. To continue the work.

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CONTINUE THE WORK

Stand with Ukraine
 

Ukraine’s recovery will extend far beyond the end of active hostilities. The psychological, social, cultural, and human consequences of war will require sustained attention and partnership for years to come.

Continue learning. Share Ukrainian voices. Support Ukrainian communities and organizations. Keep Ukraine present in the institutions, professions, and communities of which you are a part.

Partner With Us

First Aid of the Soul works with universities, healthcare institutions, humanitarian organizations, foundations, businesses, cultural institutions, artists, clinicians, researchers, educators, and community leaders.

We welcome partnerships that strengthen mental health, professional capacity, education, research, arts and health, and community resilience across Ukraine.

Support Our Work

Every contribution helps First Aid of the Soul expand trauma-informed mental health and psychosocial programming, professional training and supervision, family and community initiatives, and our growing Arts & Health work.

Support First Aid of the Soul

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WITH DEEP GRATITUDE TO EACH OF YOU

Voices for Ukraine is possible because of a remarkable community of people and institutions who have contributed their time, resources, expertise, creativity, and trust.

Our Generous Sponsors

UA Chronicles • DRAY • International Partnership for Human Rights • Phillip & Vivien Speiser • Eric & Hillary Rubesin • Steve Barrett • Lisa Wong • Ben Zackin • David & Virginia Anderson • Project Kesher • Rokada • Ukrainian American Educational Center of Boston Inc. • Marlene Kenney • Natasha Rogoff • Deer Mountain Productions • Ukrainian Catholic University Foundation

Voices of Collaboration | Our Partners

American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine • Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute • New Lines Institute • MIT Center for International Studies / MIT-Ukraine • Ukrainian Cultural Center of New England • Ukrainian Cultural Initiative • Cultural Forces of Ukraine

A MESSAGE OF GRATITUDE

On behalf of the Board of Directors and team of First Aid of the Soul, thank you for joining us.

To our speakers, musicians, artists, partners, sponsors, volunteers, colleagues, friends, and guests: this gathering exists because each of you chose to contribute your voice, time, expertise, creativity, or support.

Above all, we recognize the Ukrainian mental health professionals, healthcare workers, educators, humanitarian responders, artists, community leaders, families, and defenders whose courage and persistence continue to shape our work.

Tonight is not an endpoint.

It is an invitation to remain connected—to continue building the relationships, systems, communities, and spaces that Ukraine’s long-term recovery will require.

Thank you for being part of Voices for Ukraine.

First Aid of the Soul Board of Directors & Team

FEEDBACK & FINAL THOUGHTS

We would be grateful to hear from you.

What moved you? What challenged you? What should conversations like Voices for Ukraine make possible next?

Your reflections will help shape future gatherings and First Aid of the Soul’s growing Arts & Health work in Ukraine.
 

Thank you for standing with Ukraine.