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Michele Bedard-Gilligan, PhD
Board Term 2022-2024
Dr. Bedard-Gilligan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) and a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of Washington (WA). She is co-director of the Trauma Recovery and Resilience Innovations (TRI) program and is associate director of the UW Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress (UWCATS). Dr. Bedard-Gilligan’s research predominantly focuses on recovery process following trauma exposure, with specific emphases on the co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use. She is currently a lead investigator on several clinical trials developing and testing brief interventions to promote trauma recovery and is involved in ongoing projects designed to train providers in trauma-focused behavioral treatment approaches. She also maintains an active clinical practice.
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Erika Felix, PhD
Board Term 2020-2023
Dr. Felix is an Associate 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, National Science Foundation, 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. |
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Bita Ghafoori, PhD
Board Term: 2022-2025
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.
Jaimie L. Gradus, DMSc, DSc, MPH
Board Term: 2022-2025
Jaimie L. Gradus, DMSc, DSc, MPH is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry at Boston University School of Public Health and School of Medicine. Her research interests are in the epidemiology of trauma and trauma-related disorders, with a particular focus on suicide. She received her BA in psychology from Stony Brook University, her MPH with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics and DSc in epidemiology from Boston University and in 2018, a Doctor of Medical Science degree from Aarhus University in Denmark for her major contributions to the literature on the longitudinal consequences of stressors and trauma. Dr. Gradus has been the recipient of numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, and various foundations. She has published over 100 scientific articles within the field of psychiatric epidemiology. Dr. Gradus also has roles as a Board Member for the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, a Scientific Advisor to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology. In 2023 she was named the Director of the newly launched Center for Trauma and Mental Health at Boston University School of Public Health.
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Rachel Hiller, PhD
Board Term: 2021-2024
Dr. Rachel Hiller is an Associate Professor in Child Mental Health at University College London (UCL) and the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, in the United Kingdom. Her research is in the field of complex child trauma, with a particular focus on children with experience of out-of-home care (e.g., foster care, residential group care). Her work here spans research into social and cognitive mechanisms driving mental health and wellbeing, through to the testing of scalable mental health interventions delivered in child welfare and mental health settings, and the implementation of current best-evidenced practice. Her work includes a transdiagnostic focus, as well as a more specific focus on PTSD and complex PTSD. |
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Jana D. Javakhishvili, PhD
Board Term 2022-2025
Dr. Jana D. Javakhishvili is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute of Addiction Studies at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. Her research interests focus on exploring mental health problems of war- and political oppression-affected populations. She is heavily engaged in the projects of the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry focused at improving human rights-based mental health care in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and other war-affected countries. She is a Past President of ESTSS. Currently, she is on the editorial board of the European Journal of Psychotraumatology and a Trustee of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma Europe. |
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Christian Kristensen, PhD
Board Term: 2022-2025
Dr. Kristensen is Professor of Psychology at the Graduate Program in Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (PUCRS), Director of the Center for Studies and Research in Traumatic Stress (NEPTE-PUCRS) and Dean of Graduate Studies at the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies (PUCRS). His main research areas of interest are (a) trauma and neurocognitive processes (executive functions, attention), (b) trauma-focused psychosocial interventions, and (c) immigrant and refugee mental health. |
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Rachel Liebman, PhD, CPsych
Board Term: 2022-2025
Dr. Rachel Liebman a clinical psychologist at Toronto General Hospital and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Dr. Liebman specializes in the treatment of co-occurring trauma-related disorders and high-risk problem behaviours such as eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide. Her research on development and adaptation of treatments for high-risk trauma-related conditions has been awarded multiple federal and institutional grants and she has published widely on mechanisms and processes associated with these conditions. She served on the Task Force for the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program for Gender Based Violence and she provides workshops, trainings and consultation on the assessment and treatment of trauma-related conditions internationally. |
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Sonya Norman, PhD
Board Term: 2021-2024
Dr. Sonya Norman earned her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Vassar College and her PhD in Counseling Psychology from Stanford University. She completed her pre-doctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Diego and VA San Diego. The focus of her fellowship was on the neurobiology of trauma among female survivors of intimate partner violence. In the course of doing assessments with our study participants and learning from them about their lives, she realized her passion was to study treatments to help people recover from the detrimental effects of trauma. She joined the faculty of the UCSD Department of Psychiatry shortly after. Studying treatment has been her research focus since then. In addition, early her career, she served as a VA psychologist, PTSD clinical team leader, and training director for a postdoctoral fellowship focused on evidence-based treatments at the San Diego VA. In 2012, while continuing her faculty appointment at UCSD, she transitioned from her VA roles to her position as the PTSD Consultation Program Director for the National Center for PTSD, where she lead a team of expert PTSD clinicians, administrators and researchers. In this capacity, she oversee over 2000 consultations per year related to treating veterans with PTSD and lead educational efforts on PTSD assessment and treatment for VA and community providers. |
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Nicole Nugent, PhD
Board Term 2022-2025
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.
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Misari Oe, MD, PhD
Board Term: 2021-2024
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). |
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Monique Pfaltz, PhD
Board Term 2020-2023
Monique Pfaltz is a trained psychotherapist and clinical and experimental researcher. She is professor for clinical psychology at Mid Sweden University, and her research assesses socio-emotional processes (e.g., interpersonal boundary setting, regulation of closeness and distance, emotional reactivity, facial emotion recognition) in healthy individuals and patients affected by traumatic stress, with a focus on childhood maltreatment (abuse and neglect). As part of the Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress, she is currently leading a theme on the socio-emotional development across cultures. Findings of the corresponding projects shall provide a basis for the development of interventions improving social functioning and thus health and well-being of those affected by childhood maltreatment. Dr. Pfaltz is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Psychotraumatology and of the Journal of Traumatic Stress. |
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Synne Øien Stensland, MD, PhD
Term 2021-2024
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. |
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Jennifer C. Wild, DPsych, Clin
Board Term 2020-2023
Dr. Jennifer Wild is a consultant clinical psychologist, associate professor and NIHR Oxford Health BRC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her area of expertise is in developing and evaluating evidence-based interventions to prevent stress-related psychopathology in at risk populations. With her team, she developed and evaluated internet-delivered cognitive training in resilience (iCT-R), which targets modifiable risk factors for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in emergency workers. This preventative intervention is being disseminated to emergency services across England by the UK’s mental health charity, Mind. Dr Wild leads SHAPE Recovery, an evidence-based wellbeing programme to support hospital and paramedic employees during and after COVID. She has worked in an advisory role to the Cabinet Office on best practice for developing preventative interventions for emergency responders. She has over 70 publications, including book chapters, and a recently published popular science book on resilience: Be Extraordinary. Dr Wild regularly appears in the media giving evidence-based advice for trauma-related mental health problems. |
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Briana Woods-Jaeger, PhD
Board Term 2021-2024
Dr. Woods-Jaeger earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Duke University and her doctorate degree in child clinical psychology from the University of Washington. Prior to her current position at Emory University, she was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Director of Psychological Services and Research for the Children’s Mercy Hospital and Operation Breakthrough Partnership. In this role she spearheaded the development and implementation of a unique clinical care and research program that integrates primary care pediatrics, behavioral health, social services, and early education to address trauma and stress-related health disparities. She is currently a Principal Investigator on research projects supported by the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused on primary and secondary violence prevention and promoting resilience after experiencing trauma and adversity. |