Clinical and community psychologist and health care innovator Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, is CEO of the American Psychological Association, the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. Before joining APA in March 2017, Evans spent 12 years as commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. In that post, he led the transformation of that agency’s approach to serving a wide range of individuals with complex needs. The transformation of the $1.5 billion Philadelphia system has relied heavily on public health strategies that contribute to better community health.  He emphasized a data-driven, population health approach to improve outcomes for people and increased system efficiency. Over his tenure, the agency saved more than $110 million that the city reinvested in improving and expanding services and employing innovative strategies to reach more people. The work in Philadelphia has become a national and international model, with over 25 states and more than a dozen countries having either visited the city or invited Evans to speak about the Philadelphia model.

An unconventional leader, he employed science, research, community activism, spirituality, traditional clinical care, policy, and cross-system collaborations to change the status quo. His approach gave voice to and empowered individuals and communities that have been historically marginalized. He ensured those with lived experiences were involved with every policy decision. He enlisted political and community leaders, grassroots organizations, academic institutions and advocates in a citywide commitment to think differently about behavioral health and intellectual disabilities.

A clinical psychologist by background, Professor Miranda Wolpert is committed to understanding how best to support and evaluate effective service delivery to promote resilience and meet children and young people’s mental health needs. Her work focuses on improvement and prevention science combined with social entrepreneurship, and includes the development of online, digital and face-to-face tools and training resources for young people, carers and practitioners.

Miranda is Professor in Evidence Based Practice and Research at UCL and Founder and Director of the Evidence Based Practice Unit (EBPU), a service development and academic unit which works to bridge research and practice in child mental health.

I have a leadership role in the development and ongoing growth of clinical psychology within UCL and the teaching of psychoanalysis. There was no clinical psychology at UCL when I joined the staff in 1977. It took 10 years (1977 to 1986) for us to be able to establish a programme. In 2017 we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Clinical Psychology Professional training programme which I established at UCL and which I was proud to co-Direct for 25 years, now the most popular and respected doctoral programme in the UK. Despite cuts on almost all other UK-based courses in 2007 and 2011, UCL retained all its 42 new commissions (126 in total), which indicates the esteem in which this course is held by the Strategic Health Authority.

Dr. Benjamin F. Miller, PsyD is the Chief Strategy Officer for Well Being Trust, a national foundation committed to advancing the mental, social and spiritual health of the nation. He helps oversee the foundation’s portfolio ensuring alignment across grantees, overall strategy and direction, and connection of the work to advance policy. The end goal is to help advance the national movement around mental health and well-being. Prior to joining Well Being Trust, Dr. Miller spent 8 years as an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine where he was the founding Director of Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health Policy Center. The Farley Center was created in 2014 to be a leader in conducting policy studies, relevant to health and health care challenges, disseminating evidence to those positioned to use it in their decision-making issues related to health policy for the University, and to be a leader locally and nationally on a variety of topic areas. Under Dr. Miller’s leadership, the Farley Health Policy Center worked on four main areas: behavioral health integration, payment reform, workforce, and community-based prevention. He remains a Senior Advisor to the Farley Center. Miller is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Stanford School of Medicine

Barbara Van Dahlen, Ph.D., named to TIME’s 2012 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, is the president and founder of Give an Hour™. A licensed clinical psychologist who has been practicing in the Washington, D.C., area for over 20 years, she served as an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University, where she participated in the training and supervision of developing clinicians. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland in 1991, her M.A. in clinical psychology from the University of Maryland in 1987, and her B.A., summa cum laude, in psychology from California State College in 1982.

Chris Fairburn trained in medicine at Oxford and in psychiatry at Edinburgh. He returned to Oxford in 1979 and have been engaged in full-time clinical research since 1981. Initially he was supported by the Medical Research Council, and then from 1984 to 2017 by the Wellcome Trust (Wellcome Senior Lectureship / Wellcome Principal Research Fellowship). He’s been a governor of the Wellcome Trust and was a founder trustee of the mental health research charity MQ. He has twice been a Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has received the AT Beck Prize from the Academy of Cognitive Therapy and the Lifetime Achievement and Outstanding Researcher Awards from the Academy of Eating Disorders.

Mala Gaonkar is co-portfolio manager at investment firm Lone Pine Capital. After graduating from Harvard College, she worked for The Boston Consulting Group and completed her MBA at Harvard Business School before Lone Pine’s inception in 1998. She is a trustee of Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and was a founding trustee of Ariadne Labs, The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Technology., as well as Surgo Foundation, which provides data science tools for a smarter public health ecosystem. She also serves as a trustee of RAND and the Tate. and is a member of Harvard’s Global Advisory Council.

Thomas R. Insel, M.D, Founder and President of Mindstrong Health, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) committed to research on mental disorders. Most recently he led the Mental Health Team at Verily. Prior to his appointment at the NIMH, Dr. Insel was a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University School of Medicine. He also served as Director of the Center for Autism Research and is a member of the scientific advisory board at the Autism Science Foundation. Dr. Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europ

Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School. For over two decades, he has studied entrepreneurship as a means to social and economic development in emerging markets. At HBS since 1993, after obtaining degrees from Princeton and Harvard, he has taught courses on strategy, corporate governance and international business to MBA and Ph.D. students and senior executives.

CEO at Koa Health, Oliver’s a father of two with a life-long passion for healthcare and technology. After qualifying and practising as a medical doctor (with a degree in neuroscience from Cambridge and postgraduate training in psychiatry and public health), he took his talents to McKinsey, where he worked on health data and technology for several years, before being recruited to become the Head of Public Health and Director of Strategy at the Health Authority, Abu Dhabi.

Shekhar Saxena is Professor of the Practice of Global Mental Health at the Department of Global Health and Population at the Havard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. A psychiatrist by training, he has served in the World Health Organization (WHO) since 1998. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO. In 2017, he received the prestigious Leon Eisenberg Award from Harvard Medical School. Author of more than 300 academic papers, he functioned as an editor of the Lancet Series on Global Mental Health 2007 and 2011, and the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development 2018. His expertise includes providing advice and technical assistance to policy makers on prevention and management of mental, developmental, neurological and substance use disorders and suicide prevention.

Natasha is a next gen impact investor, philanthropist and mental health activist. She is a convener to the core and is passionate about leveraging her deep network to build and support a global ecosystem of local change-makers that, together, create sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Natasha also actively campaigns on mental health issues, has worked on several policy initiatives, and helps fundraise and create philanthropic solutions. She is a trustee for United for Global Mental Health and Philanthropy Impact, occupies seats on various advisory committees and boards including, the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP) at the University of Zurich, the Empower initiative at Harvard Medical School, and is a founding member of The Conduit social impact membership club.

Andy Keller, PhD, is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Linda Perryman Evans Presidential Chair of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, a Texas-based nonprofit that provides nonpartisan policy and program research, development, and advice to state and local leaders towards a single goal: improving mental health care delivery in Texas.

Andy is a licensed psychologist with more than 20 years of experience in behavioral health policy, financing, and best practices. His work has centered on helping state and local health systems implement evidence-based and innovative care, as well as helping local and state governments develop the regulatory and financial frameworks to support them.

Prior to moving full time into policy work, Andy was a managing partner for 15 years at a national behavioral health management consulting firm where he focused on health financing and system improvement. Before that, he worked in Colorado with a leading Medicaid HMO and the local community mental health system, where he directed and led a range of community-based and care management programs.

Chris Fairburn trained in medicine at Oxford and in psychiatry at Edinburgh. He returned to Oxford in 1979 and have been engaged in full-time clinical research since 1981. Initially he was supported by the Medical Research Council, and then from 1984 to 2017 by the Wellcome Trust (Wellcome Senior Lectureship / Wellcome Principal Research Fellowship). He’s been a governor of the Wellcome Trust and was a founder trustee of the mental health research charity MQ. He has twice been a Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has received the AT Beck Prize from the Academy of Cognitive Therapy and the Lifetime Achievement and Outstanding Researcher Awards from the Academy of Eating Disorders.

Dr. Weissman is a Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Mailman School of Public health at Columbia University and Chief of the Division of Translational Epidemiology at New York State Psychiatric Institute. Until 1987, she was a Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Yale University School of Medicine and Director of the Depression Research Unit. She was a Visiting Senior Scholar (1979-1980) at the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. In 1974, she received a Ph.D. in chronic disease epidemiology from Yale University. Her current research includes the study of the transmission of depression across generations, the detection of biomarkers of transmission and treatment response, and the implementation of psychotherapy in low-income countries and populations.

David M Clark is the Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is well-known for his pioneering work on the understanding and psychological treatment of anxiety disorders: especially panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, health anxiety and PTSD.  Recently, he has also focused on how to disseminate effective psychological treatments within healthcare systems and is one of the architects of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Currently, the IAPT program treats around 560,000 people with depression or anxiety disorders each year and reports clinical outcomes on almost everyone. 2 in every 3 treated people reliably improve and 50% recover. David is the UK Government’s Clinical and Informatics Advisor for the program. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the UK Academies of Medical Sciences and Social Sciences, the British Association of Behavioural Psychotherapies, ABCT, and APS.  He is also a Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.  He was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to mental health in 2013.

Pim Cuijpers is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands), and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Dissemination of Psychological Interventions . Pim Cuijpers is specialised in conducting randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses on prevention and psychological treatments of common mental disorders. Much of his work is aimed at prevention of mental disorders, psychological treatments of depression and anxiety disorders, and Internet-delivered treatments. He has also published on a broad range of subjects in the field of clinical psychology, including psychoeducational treatment and early interventions, psychotic disorders, caregivers of dementia patients and bibliotherapy.

John Weisz’ research involves development and testing of interventions for youth mental health problems, as well as meta-analyses and systematic reviews characterizing and critiquing the science of youth mental health care. His most recent work involves development and testing of transdiagnostic approaches to youth psychotherapy, including treatment that uses modular design and treatment guided by a small number of broad principles of psychological change. He is especially interested in integrating evidence-based practices with strategies for personalizing treatment to fit individual youth and family characteristics. Weisz’ meta-analyses provide a broad picture of the state of youth psychotherapy research and address specific questions about moderators of psychotherapy benefit. His books include Psychotherapy for children and adolescents: Evidence-based treatments and case examples (Cambridge University Press) and Evidence-based psychotherapies for children and adolescents (Co-edited with Alan Kazdin; Guilford Press).

Hollon’s primary interest lies in the etiology and treatment of depression in adults. His work extends from basic psychopathology to prevention and treatment. He is particularly interested in the relative contribution of cognitive and biological processes to depression, and how the relative efficacies of psychosocial versus pharmacological interventions compare. A current interest is the prevention of depression, both with respect to its initial onset and subsequent recurrence following successful treatment.

Sona Dimidjian, Ph.D. is Director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on cultivating mental health and wellness among women, children, and families by engaging people’s capacities for learning to care for themselves and their communities. She develops and studies programs and practices in education and healthcare settings, with an emphasis on navigating key developmental transitions, such as the perinatal period, early childhood, and adolescence. She also has a longstanding interest in expanding access, scaling, and sustaining effective programs, using both digital technology and community-based partnerships. Her current research projects focus on preventing depression and supporting wellness among new and expectant mothers, promoting healthy body image and leadership among young women, and enhancing mindfulness and compassion among youth, families and educators. She is the co-author with Sherryl Goodman, Ph.D., of a book for new and expectant mothers, Expecting Mindfully: Nourish Your Emotional Well-Being and Prevent Depression During Pregnancy and Postpartum. She also is the editor of Evidence-Based Practice in Action: Bridging Clinical Science and Intervention. She is the recipient of numerous awards acknowledging her teaching and clinical research, including the Dorothy Martin Women’s Faculty Award, the Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, and the Robert L. Stearns Award at the University of Colorado Boulder along with the Susan Hickman Award from Postpartum Support International and the Women and Psychotherapy Award from Division 35 of the American Psychological Association. She received her BA in psychology from the University of Chicago and her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Washington.

Mark Tomlison is a Professor in the Psychology Department at Universiteit Stellenbosch. He is an Associate Editor of the Infant Mental Health Journal and is on the International Editorial Board of Psychology, Health and Medicine. Prof Tomlinson has completed epidemiological work investigating the association between postpartum depression and the mother-infant relationship, and the impact of postpartum depression on infant and child development. He has also completed a randomised controlled trial to improve the quality of the mother-infant relationship and infant attachment in a peri-urban settlement on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. He is currently involved in a number of community based trials. One based in Khayelitsha, Cape Town is aimed at reducing alcohol use, reducing HIV/TB and improving the nutritional status of women in the antenatal and postnatal period in Cape Town and is funded by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA – USA). The second is based in Umlazi, KwaZulu Natal is aimed at preventing mother to child transmission of HIV and reducing neonatal death and is funded by the Centers for Disease Control (USA) and Saving Newborn Lives (USA). Together with colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) he has secured funding from the National Institute of Mental Health to design a structural, community-level intervention to sustain self-protective acts among young, South African men aged 18-25 years. He is also currently one of two Research Directors of the Programme to Improve Mental Health Care (PRIME). This is a six-year project funded by Department of International Development in the UK (DfID). The aim of PRIME is to generate world-class research evidence on the implementation and scaling up of treatment programmes for priority mental disorders in primary and maternal health care contexts in low resource settings. PRIME will be implemented in South Africa, Uganda, Ethiopia, India and Nepal.

I have a leadership role in the development and ongoing growth of clinical psychology within UCL and the teaching of psychoanalysis. There was no clinical psychology at UCL when I joined the staff in 1977. It took 10 years (1977 to 1986) for us to be able to establish a programme. In 2017 we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Clinical Psychology Professional training programme which I established at UCL and which I was proud to co-Direct for 25 years, now the most popular and respected doctoral programme in the UK. Despite cuts on almost all other UK-based courses in 2007 and 2011, UCL retained all its 42 new commissions (126 in total), which indicates the esteem in which this course is held by the Strategic Health Authority.

Paul Ramchandani is LEGO Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning at Cambridge University, UK. He is Director of the PEDAL Research Centre, where he leads a research team investigating the role of play in children’s early development. He also works as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the UK National Health Service. Paul’s research is focussed on early child development and he has a particular interest in child and parental play and also the prevention of emotional and behavioural difficulties. Much of this work has explored the role of fathers, as well as mothers, in children’s lives and development and includes the development and testing of psychological interventions and detailed observational studies of parents and young children. This research has been supported by Fellowships awarded by the MRC and Wellcome Trust and by substantive grant funding from the National Institute of Health Research and the LEGO Foundation.

Gauri is a paediatrician who has been working for Sangath since 2005. She works as a developmental and behavioural specialist, guiding parents and families on the best management strategies for their children. She was also the clinical consultant on the ARTI project and now works with the PASS project. Having contributed to the health promotion in school programmes, Gauri also participates in a number of training initiatives in Sangath directed at teachers, counsellors, parents and professionals.

Dr. Aisha Yousafzai has extensive experience in evaluating early childhood interventions in south Asia, east Africa, and in central and east Europe. One of Dr. Yousafzai’s most significant studies is the Pakistan Early Child Development Scale-Up (PEDS) trial, a cluster randomized controlled trial evaluating responsive stimulation and nutrition interventions to strengthen early child development and growth outcomes. The PEDS trial cohort is currently being followed-up at age 8 years old to investigate early intervention effects at school-age. This is one of the few studies to test the effects of integrating a psychosocial stimulation intervention in a large-scale community health service and to examine the long-term intervention effects on development and growth in a low- and middle-income population. She is also the PI of a randomized controlled trial in Pakistan investigating the impacts of community youth leaders delivering early childhood care and learning interventions on a host of early childhood and community outcomes. 

Camilla works at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families as Head of Early Years. Camilla is a consultant clinical psychologist and couple therapist by background and across her clinical career has held a range of therapeutic roles related to the early years in the NHS, local authority and other third sector organisations. She has a specialist research interest in developing the field of co-parenting from pre-conception across the transition to parenthood and beyond, and is involved in several research projects to develop the evidence-base in this area.

Alan Stein received his medical training at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Most of his postgraduate medical training was undertaken in Oxford and in 1988 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Lectureship in the University of Oxford. From 1991 to 1994 he held joint Senior Research Fellowships at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge and in 1995 was appointed Professor of Child & Adolescent Mental Health at the Royal Free and University College Medical School and the Tavistock Centre. In 2001 he returned to Oxford to take up the Chair in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. He is also holds an Honorary Professorship in the School of Public Health, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa and is an Honarary Fellow of the Child, Youth, Family and Social Development Programme of the HSRC in South Africa. 

Ed Tronick is a developmental and clinical psychologist. Professor Tronick is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is director of the Child Development Unit, a research associate in Newborn Medicine, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, an associate professor at both the Graduate School of Education and the School of Public Health at Harvard. He is a member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, a past member of the Boston Process of Change Group and a Founder and faculty member of the Touchpoints program. With Kristie Brandt, Dorothy Richardson, Marilyn Davillier he has created an Infant-Parent Mental Health Post Graduate Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He has developed the Newborn Behavioral Assessment Scale and the Touchpoints Project with T.B. Brazelton. He developed the Still-face paradigm. With Barry Lester he developed the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Assessment Scale. He is currently working on developing norms for the neurobehavior of clinically health newborns and collaborating with Rosario Montirosso in Milan on a multi-NICU examination of developmental caretaking and its effects on preterm infants. A set of studies on social referencing and negative affect are in process. He continues to do research on the effects of maternal depression and other affective disorders on infant and child social emotional development. 

Daisy R. Singla is a clinical psychologist (C. Psych), a clinician scientist at Sinai Health System and the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, and a global health researcher. Her main areas of interest involve the development and evaluation of complex, integrated intervention in existing health-care systems and low-resource settings. As a clinical psychologist by training, she has a strong understanding in study design as well as the study of psychometrics. She is an investigator on several NIMH and Wellcome Trust grants. She also serves as a temporary advisor for the WHO-EMRO Coalition for Women, Children and Adolescent integrated health. To date, Dr. Singla has led or contributed to complex trials focusing on child growth, health and development, as well as maternal mental health in rural Uganda, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan and aims to bring these innovative lessons to local contexts involving the Perinatal Mental Heath Programme at Sinai Health System and across Toronto.  Dr. Singla aspires to increase access to evidence-based psychological treatments to enrich the lives of all women, their children and their families.

Brandon Kohrt holds the Charles and Sonia Akman Professorship in Global Psychiatry at George Washington University, where he is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Global Health, and Anthropology, and Director of the Global Mental Health Equity Lab. Dr. Kohrt has worked with populations affected by war and political violence, disasters, and other forms of adversity around the world. Dr. Kohrt’s work also addresses reducing stigma in healthcare settings to improve the quality of mental health services. He co-edited the book, Global Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives.

Dr. Nadkarni is an addictions psychiatrist conducting research aimed at developing and evaluating interventions for alcohol use disorders in low resource settings. Having completed my medical degree and a specialized degree in psychiatry in Goa (India); he further pursued post graduate training in General Adult and Addictions Psychiatry under the South London and Maudsley training scheme in UK, and later completed his Masters in Mental Health Services Research from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London and PhD from LSHTM. 

His research interests encompass global mental health, and particularly alcohol use disorders. A lot of his work is based out of Sangath, a research NGO in Goa, India where he started and lead the Addictions Research Group.

Neal Lesh is a computer scientist with field experience in applying information technologies to help organizations address poverty in low-income regions. He has published and lectured extensively in data visualization, data mining, and automated planning and logistics. He has developed medical record and analysis systems for Partners in Health, the government of Rwanda, and a large AIDS treatment program in Tanzania, and worked with many other Universities and NGOs. He is coordinating a Harvard-funded research project in South Africa.

Neal holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington and a masters degree in global health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Urvita Bhatia is based at Sangath’s headquarters in Goa. She is a psychologist and doctoral researcher. She is trained in Clinical Psychology in India before going to the UK to complete an MSc in Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and King’s College London. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at Oxford Brookes University, through a Global Challenges Research Studentship. Her PhD is focussed on the development of a prevention program for substance use and misuse in young people, in India. Her research and clinical interests include community-based models of care for substance use disorders, for both, individuals and families, and the development and evaluation of such interventions. She is also interested in culturally appropriate treatments for gender-based violence, common mental disorders, and anti-stigma interventions.