Press & Media
The Chrysalis Alliance
Founded by Emma M. Churchman LLC
The Chrysalis Alliance exists because trauma doesn’t wait for convenient timing - and neither do we.
Founded by nationally certified trauma chaplain, PhD candidate, and crisis response veteran Emma Churchman, The Chrysalis Alliance brings together practitioners, communities, and organizations ready to move beyond surviving and into transformation.
For media inquiries, speaking requests, or book orders: support@traumarecoverycertification.org📞 828.419.0940
In The News
Community Highlights: Meet Emma Churchman
Outlet: Voyage LA Magazine
“My story doesn't start in a boardroom. It starts in a crisis.”
In this Q&A profile from Voyage LA Magazine, Emma Churchman traces the origin of both Emma M. Churchman LLC and The Chrysalis Alliance to more than 25 years of showing up at the worst moments of people's lives - hurricanes, wildfires, pandemics, and the quiet organizational crises that never make headlines but destroy people from the inside out.
What she kept finding, in corporate leaders and disaster survivors alike, was the same gap: plenty of resilience slogans, no real methodology. So she built one. The four-phase framework - Rescue, Recovery, Reconstruction, Evolution - emerged from field work with 50,000+ individuals and hundreds of organizations, and became the foundation for everything The Chrysalis Alliance does today.
Trauma Chaplain Offers Critical Guidance for Disaster Recovery
Outlet: GracePoint Publishing
“When disaster strikes, communities need more than physical rebuilding - they need a clear pathway through the emotional wreckage.”
This nationally distributed press release, issued through GracePoint Publishing, spotlights Emma Churchman's work as a trauma chaplain and the core methodology introduced in her first book, The Deep End of Hope in the Wake of Hurricane Helene (GracePoint, 2025).
The release outlines her four-phase framework - Rescue, Recovery, Reconstruction, and Evolution - and makes the case that real-time trauma processing is not a soft skill but a survival strategy for leaders, organizations, and communities facing crisis.
Finding Hope in Hurricane Helene: A Journey to Recovery
Outlet: The Successful Mind Podcast with David Neagle
“Her insights are revolutionary. She’s turned these observations into a comprehensive trauma recovery program that fills a massive gap in how we handle disasters.
~ David Neagle, Host
Emma joined bestselling author and business coach David Neagle on The Successful Mind Podcast to walk through her firsthand experience of Hurricane Helene in the mountains of Western North Carolina - including the 32-foot river surge that isolated 300 residents for weeks. She described the moment she became the emotional anchor at the local fire station and how those days in the field shaped her four-phase trauma recovery model. Neagle called her framework something no one in disaster response had documented before.
The conversation covers her book The Deep End of Hope in the Wake of Hurricane Helene (GracePoint, 2025) - not another disaster story, but a practical roadmap for any community facing overwhelming loss.
Featured Speaker: West Asheville, NC Volunteer Report
January 18–25, 2026
Outlet: Mennonite Disaster Service
Emma was welcomed as a dinner guest at the Mennonite Disaster Service volunteer base in West Asheville during a week of active rebuilding across multiple Hurricane Helene recovery sites. Volunteers heard her recount the first days of the storm - a conversation that MDS field staff noted as a meaningful anchor for their ongoing work in the community.
The report also notes that Emma was a featured speaker at the MDS 75th Anniversary Celebration in 2025, a recognition of her sustained role in the long-term recovery of Western North Carolina.
Book Review: The Deep End of Hope
Outlet: Mountain Xpress - "Smart Bets"
Asheville’s alt-weekly Mountain Xpress featured The Deep End of Hope in the Wake of Hurricane Helene in its arts and literature coverage, recognizing it as a “smart bet” - a book that earns its place on the shelf not through sentimentality but through honest documentation of what compound disaster and community resilience actually look like.
For a readership that lived through Helene themselves, the review carries particular weight.
As Seen In:
Media Resources
Emma M. Churchman is available for media interviews, keynotes, and expert comment on:
Disaster response and community trauma recovery
Trauma-resilient leadership for organizations and executive teams
Post-traumatic growth as a business strategy
The long-term recovery of Western North Carolina post-Hurricane Helene
Credentials:
Nationally Certified Trauma Chaplain
MDiv · PhD Candidate in Conscious Business Ethics
25+ years crisis response and trauma recovery
Helped over 50,000 individuals and hundreds of organizations recover from trauma
Books:
Navigating the Deep End: Resilient Leadership in a Volatile World (GracePoint, 2026)
The Deep End of Hope in the Wake of Hurricane Helene (GracePoint, 2025)
Unshattered: Surviving My Mother's 123 Personalities and Transforming a Legacy of Abuse (GracePoint, 2025)
✓501(c)3 registered nonprofit | EIN: 42-1834781
✓Founded by Emma M. Churchman LLC | Gerton, NC
✓Aligned with FEMA national disaster management standards
✓ Aligned with NVOAD emotional and spiritual care guidelines