Winner! 2025 Nevada Arts Council Project Grant for Artists
Advisory Board
The No Stigma Nevada advisory board provides advice to the organization. The advisory board members are all experts in various fields of mental health, with decades of experience dedicated to behavioral health issues.
Gail Palchikoff is a bilingual (Spanish) licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She has worked with families, children and individuals for more than 40 years. Currently she works as a therapist supporting the U.S. military.
Throughout her career she has treated many issues including domestic violence, mental health crisis, anger management, parenting, family issues and conflict resolution.
For over 10 years she served on the Nevada Council for the Prevention of Domestic Violence advising Nevada’s attorney general on statewide policies.
She has also provided management consultation, team building and on-site interventions to organizations and businesses.
Sandra K. (Sandy) Stamates is an advocate for families and mental health and has worked both as a volunteer and as a paid employee for the Nevada chapters of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for over 20 years.
She retired from IBM Corporation and is a graduate of Malone University in Canton, Ohio with a BA in Management. She has taught NAMI’s Family-to-Family course more than 30 times and has trained Family-to-Family moderators to teach the eight week program designed to assist families experiencing mental health crisis. She is also a NAMI Smarts leader and has been a co-facilitator for family support groups. She served as president of the NAMI Nevada board from 2014 through 2017.
In 2019 she established NAMI Northern Nevada’s first office and became its Executive Director. She served on the Washoe Regional Behavioral Health Policy Board in Reno from 2018 through September 2025.