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Leadership

ISTSS is run by a committed group of elected and unelected volunteers from the various trauma-related disciplines around the world. The organization is governed by: Board of Directors consisting of 21 members, including a membership-elected Executive Committee and several ex-officio (non-voting) members.

Each year, ISTSS holds an open election to fill expiring board terms and the President-Elect position. Board Members serve a three year term and the President serves for one year.

Bylaws

Download the Bylaws that govern ISTSS.

Executive Committee

The Executive Committee consists of: President, Vice President, President-Elect, Secretary, Treasurer and Past-President. Executive Committee members also serve as members of the Board of Directors.

President

To support organizational excellence through engagement of ISTSS membership and development of new leadership. View bio > > >

Vice President

To identify mechanisms to increase sense of professional home and to support collaboration and effective exchange of knowledge among ISTSS research, practitioners and policymakers. View bio > > >

Treasurer

To protect and increase the Society's resources. View bio > > >

Secretary

To promote communication and exchange of knowledge within and beyond ISTSS through development in new media and communication technology. View bio > > >

Past-President

To guide development of an organizational model that is responsive to issues, members and stakeholders from all nations. View bio > > >

President-Elect

To promote advancement of societal impact through influence on policy activities and strengthening relationships to other organizations. View bio > > >

2019-2020 Executive Committee

	Debra L. Kaysen, PhD, ABPP President Board Term 2018-2021 Dr. Kaysen is a Professor in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at Stanford University. Dr. Kaysen’s research is situated at the interface of PTSD and addictions and includes both etiologic and prevention/treatment-oriented studies. Other research addresses the development, adaptation, and implementation of evidence-based practices for trauma-exposed individuals who would otherwise have difficulty accessing care including in low resource communities and for underserved populations within the United States.
	Angela Nickerson, PhD Vice President Board Term 2018-2021 Dr. Angela Nickerson is Associate Professor and Director of the Refugee Trauma and Recovery Program at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. She is a clinical psychologist, and Director of the Master of Psychology (Clinical) Program at UNSW. Her research focuses on understanding psychological and social mechanisms underpinning refugee and asylum-seeker mental health, with the ultimate goal of informing policy and clinical practice.
	T.H. Eric Bui, MD, PhD Treasurer Board Term 2017-2020 Dr. Bui is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and currently serves as the Interim Director for Research at the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders and Complicated Grief Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as the Associate Director for Research at Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital program. His research focuses on improving our understanding and treatment of stressor-related conditions, such as PTSD and Complicated Grief.
	Ananda Amstadter, PhD Secretary Term 2018-2021 Dr. Amstadter is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Human & Molecular Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Her program of research focuses on understanding biologic and psychosocial factors that affect the trajectory of symptoms among individuals exposed to trauma (e.g., combat, disasters, interpersonal violence) with a focus on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol-related phenotypes.
	Julian D. Ford, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. Immediate Past President Board Term 2017-2020 Dr. Ford is a board certified clinical psychologist and tenured Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and School of Law where he is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Center for Trauma Recovery and Juvenile Justice and the Center for the Treatment of Developmental Trauma Disorders in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. His work focuses on developing and validating psychometric assessments (including the Traumatic Events Screening Instrument, and the Developmental Trauma Disorder Structured Interview) and psychosocial interventions (including TARGET: Trauma Affect Regulation-Guide for Education and Therapy, and PCT: Present Centered Therapy) for traumatized youth, adults and families, as well as clinical epidemiological studies traumatic victimization and healthcare utilization.
	Candice Monson, PhD President-Elect Board Term: 2019-2022 Dr. Candice Monson is Professor of Psychology at Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada. Her research focuses on interpersonal factors in trauma recovery and the development, testing, and implementation of individual and conjoint therapies for traumatic stress-related conditions.

2018-2019 Board of Directors

	Maureen A. Allwood, PhD Board Term 2018-2021 Dr. Allwood is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY). Her research and clinical interests focus on the developmental effects of trauma and violence exposure in youth, particularly on how systems interact to predict negative outcomes, such as school failure, delinquency, substance use, poor health, and suicide among trauma-exposed youth. Her work also focuses on the impact of trauma exposure on minority, immigrant, and refugee mental health, and accessibility to trauma-informed, developmentally-informed, and culturally-informed services.
	Cherie Armour, PhD Board Term: 2019-2022 Professor Armour holds a Chair in Psychological Trauma and Mental Health in the School of Psychology at Queens University Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Professor Armour is the President of the UK Psychological Trauma Society and an Associate Editor for the European Journal of Psychotraumatology. Professor Armour has an active and extensive portfolio of research. Her main focus currently is on the health and well-being of Military Veterans living in Northern Ireland, the risk, resilience, and outcomes of interpersonal violence in those experiencing intimate partner violence and those experiencing childhood maltreatment. Prof Armor also has a growing interest in the role of sleep in posttraumatic outcomes. In particular, Prof Armour utilises advanced quantitative modelling techniques on large scale, often population representative data-sets.
	Jeong-Ho Chae, MD, PhD Board Term 2017-2020 Dr. Chae is the Chairperson and a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, The Catholic University of Korea. His research and clinical interests focus on the resilience and recovery after trauma. He is a principal investigator of the National Trauma and Disaster Cohort Registry funded by Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare that is a large scale prospective study for registering subjects with trauma experiences. He is the founding president of Korean Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (KSTSS) and a chairman of the Trauma and Mental Health Committee of Korean Neuropsychiatric Association.
	Joanne L. Davis, PhD Board Term 2017-2020 Dr. Davis is the Executive Director of The University of Tulsa Institute of Trauma, Adversity, and Injustice (TITAN), Director of the Trauma Research, Assessment, Prevention, and Treatment Center (TRAPT) and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at The University of Tulsa. Her research interests include the assessment, treatment, and prevention of interpersonal violence and its effects. In recent years she has focused on the assessment and treatment of chronic nightmares and other sleep disturbances in trauma-exposed persons.
	Erika Felix, PhD Board Term 2017-2020 Dr. Felix is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a licensed psychologist in private practice. Her research centers on understanding the individual, relational, and contextual factors that promote positive youth development or recovery despite contexts of risk, trauma, or stress. Her work spans three related areas: (1) promoting adaptive recovery for youth following disaster, terrorism, or other collectively-experienced traumas, (2) youth victimization and its consequences, and (3) research and evaluation to improve community-based services. She has received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, private foundations, and local community organizations. She is engaged in systems change and advocacy work to address human trafficking, and serves on the Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Taskforce.
	Bita Ghafoori, PhD Board Term: 2019-2022 Dr. Ghafoori is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and Director of the CSULB Long Beach Trauma Recovery Center. Dr. Ghafoori has an active program of research focusing on dissemination of evidence-based trauma treatments for culturally diverse individuals and understanding disparities in mental health care for impoverished trauma-exposed individuals.
	Christian Kristensen, PhD Board Term: 2019-2022
	Nicole Nugent, PhD Board Term: 2019-2022 Dr. Nugent is an Associate Professor, Research Scholar, in the Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Pediatrics, and Emergency Medicine at the Alpert Brown Medical School. She serves as Director of Psychological Services at the Hasbro Pediatric Refugee Clinic as well as Associate Director of the Institute for Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR Institute) at the Alpert Brown Medical School. Her federally funded research program explores the interplay of biology and social context during times of stress, trauma, and transition in high risk and trauma-exposed populations, with the goal of translation to intervention.
	Misari Oe, MD, PhD Board Term: 2018-2021 Dr. Misari Oe is a psychiatrist and the head of the Counseling Center at the Kurume University Hospital, Japan. She is also a Senior Lecturer of the Department of Neuropsychiatry, Kurume University School of Medicine. She has a wide range of study fields, including psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, psychoendocrinology, psychophysiology, social psychiatry, epidemiology, and disaster psychiatry. She is also a board member of the Japanese Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (JSTSS).
	Carolina Salgado, MD Term 2018-2021 Dr. Carolina Salgado is the president of the recently formed Chilean Association of Traumatic Stress. She was one of the primary initiators and coordinators of the first international meeting of traumatic stress held last year with ISTSS in Chile. She is the clinical psychiatrist at the Trauma Center of the Psychology Department of the University of Talca and at the Out-Patient Public Mental Health Center (COSAM) in Talca, Chile, also, an adjunct professor at the Medical School of the University of Talca. Her research investigations focus on early trauma and its impact on the psychopathology development during adulthood and/or IPV (intimate partner violence) involving patients from both public and private mental health services.
	Christian Schmahl, MD Board Term 2017-2020 Christian Schmahl is Professor of Experimental Psychopathology and Medical Director of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Ontario. His research focuses on emotion regulation, self-injurious behavior and dissociation as well as the interaction of neurobiology and psychotherapy in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. His clinical programs focus on the treatment of adolescent and adult patients with complex PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder.
	Soraya Seedat, MBChB, MMED Psych (SA), FC PSYCH (SA), PhD Board Term 2019-2022 Soraya Seedat is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and the executive head of the Department of Psychiatry at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa. She holds the South African Research Chair in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Her research focuses on gene-brain-environmental factors that are contributory to increasing or decreasing individual risk for PTSD and on evaluating psychotherapeutic interventions for youth PTSD that can be scaled up in low resource contexts.
	Marit Sijbrandij, PhD Board Term 2019-2022 Dr. Sijbrandij is Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical, Neuro- and Developmental Psychology of the VU University Amsterdam. Her research is focused on the prevention, early detection and treatment of posttraumatic stress symptoms following trauma in a global context. She is also board member of the Dutch Society of Traumatic Stress.
	Synne Øien Stensland, MD, PhD Board Term: 2018-2021 Dr. Stensland is senior researcher and medical doctor with a specialty in paediatrics working at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS), and the Communication- and research unit for musculoskeletal disorders, Division for neuroscience and musculoskeletal medicine (FORMI), Oslo University Hospital, in Norway. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of traumatic events on the somatic health and well-being of children and adolescents growing into young adults.
	Amy Street, PhD Board Term 2017-2020 Dr. Street is a clinical psychologist and the Deputy Director of the Women’s Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSD at the VA Boston Healthcare System and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Street has an active program of research investigating the causes and correlates of interpersonal trauma, including sexual harassment, sexual assault and intimate partner violence in veteran and civilian populations.