Leah Aldridge, Ph.D., is a scholar, educator, and longtime leader in the sexual assault and domestic violence movements. She is the former Associate Director of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults against Women, where she was the lead author of a popular dating violence prevention curriculum, In Touch with Teens, and helped guide the organization’s public communications during the trials of OJ Simpson and Mike Tyson. She co-coordinated statewide organizing for the anti-sexual assault campaign This is Not an Invitation to Rape Me. She has served as a board member of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault and coauthored Women of Color Leadership: A Look at the Experiences of Women of Color Executives in the Anti-Violence Against Women’s Movement. Leah holds a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Southern California and has recently joined the faculty at the Dodge College of Film & Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Alisha Ali, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University and the Director of the Advocacy & Community-Based Trauma Studies Lab. Her research focuses on the mental health effects of oppression, including violence, racism, poverty, discrimination, and trauma. Her current projects are investigating empowerment-based and arts-based programs for domestic violence survivors, low-income high school students, and military veterans. She is coeditor (with Dana Crowley Jack) of the book Silencing the Self Across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World (Oxford University Press) and coeditor (with Bradley Lewis and Jazmine Russell) of the upcoming book The Mad Studies Reader (Routledge Press). She received her B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Toronto.
Paula Barata, Ph.D., was born in Rueil-Malmaison, France, spent her toddler years in her parent’s hometown of Sao Jorge da Beira, Portugal, and the rest of her childhood in Vancouver, Canada where she also completed her undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia. In her mid-twenties she (finally) moved out of her parent’s house despite culturally sanctioned objections and moved to Windsor, Ontario to pursue her graduate work in Applied Social Psychology. There she learned how to both do her own laundry and incorporate feminist theories and methods into her work on intimate partner violence. Her work since has been explicitly feminist, largely focused on violence against women, and applied in nature. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at the University of Guelph in Applied Social Psychology. She lives with her partner and two children, who both learned to do laundry and challenge gender restrictions from an early age.
Elizabeth A. Bennett, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Point Park University (Pittsburgh, PA). Her research interests are both qualitative and feminist in nature, with a particular focus on the integration of creative arts in research. Dr. Bennett is broadly interested in questions regarding embodied trauma, particularly in relation to motherhood and sexual violence. Clinically, her interests include the treatment of complex trauma, particularly in adult women, maternal traumas broadly defined, and eating disorders. She approaches both therapy and clinical supervision from a feminist-relational orientation; she is also passionate about feminist mentoring and pedagogy. She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA).
Amna Chaudhry, M.A., received her M.A. degree in the Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness program in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. Her research interests are mainly in the areas of trauma and women's issues.
Sheetal Chib, L.M.F.T., identifies as an agent of change, educator, social justice advocate, and psychotherapist. As an agent of change and social justice advocate, she managed one of the largest sexual assault crisis services programs in California and created systemic and societal change across academic and community settings. As a psychotherapist, her area of expertise has been in providing crisis intervention, support, advocacy, and therapy to survivors of sexual assault, dating/intimate partner/domestic violence, stalking, domestic human sex trafficking, childhood sexual abuse, and other forms of interpersonal and gender-based violence. As an educator, she has a passion for prevention and has conducted presentations and speaking engagements throughout California. Sheetal Chib received a Masters of Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Irvine. Sheetal Chib is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist in the State of California.
Sapna B. Chopra, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in Human Services at California State University, Fullerton. She completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Social Behavior with a minor in Women’s Studies at the University of California, Irvine and her doctoral degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the daughter of Abha and Subhash Batra, who immigrated to the U.S. from India before she was born, and the mother of Armaan and Anya. Her experiences as a second-generation South Asian American woman shaped her worldview and her teaching and scholarly work that focuses on the intersections of multiple forms of oppression and healing from internalized racism.
Yanet Cortez-Barba is a first generation Mexican-American and a graduate student in Higher Education Administration at Loyola Marymount University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies in 2016 at California State University, Long Beach. Upon graduation, she became the Lead Trainer for the InterACT Social Justice Performance Troupe and the Project Assistant for Not Alone @ The Beach. She is passionate about advocacy, violence prevention, and innovative education.
Alexandria “Ali” Dilley, M.S., is a social justice activist and a therapist working in community mental health in Los Angeles. She earned a Master’s degree in Counseling, with an emphasis in clinical mental health, from California State University, Fullerton, where she was introduced to feminist research methods. Her professional interests include working with underserved populations, intersectionality, and trauma recovery. Ali’s experiences as a White, queer feminist from a rural, working class background influence her worldview and approach to clinical care and psychological scholarship. She approaches all her work from a strength based, multicultural, feminist lens.
Misha Eliasziw, Ph.D., is a transgender woman and associate professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. As a biostatistician, she seeks out opportunities to apply mathematical and probabilistic methods to solve social, public health, and clinical questions through numbers. Born in Canada, Misha graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a doctorate in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. After having academic appointments at both the University of Western Ontario and University of Calgary, Misha moved to The Witch City (Salem, Massachusetts) in 2011. Country borders have not hampered her continuing collaboration with coauthor, Charlene Senn, to further advance the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) sexual violence prevention program. With over 30 years of experience in the design, management, and analysis of clinical trials and longitudinal cohort studies, Misha has applied her skills to other areas of research, including acute and secondary prevention of stroke, multiple sclerosis, advanced brain imaging, cancer biomarkers, prevention of substance use among adolescents, reduction of traffic-related air pollution through filtration, prenatal nutrition, and prevention of obesity among children with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities.
Shelley Eriksen, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology in the Departments of Human Development & Sociology at California State University, Long Beach. She has published widely in the areas of families, gender, and health, applying these interests most recently to the investigation and prevention of sexual assault as a major public health issue affecting students on college campuses, and women and children worldwide. For the past five years, she served first as the lead evaluation researcher, then project director, of Not Alone @ the Beach, an innovative, grant-sponsored effort to provide systematic survivor support and gender violence prevention leadership education to one university community. Dr. Eriksen obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was formerly Director of Women’s Studies at Southern Oregon University, where she helped to establish its Women’s Studies Program as well as advance feminist education in the broader Southern Oregon community.
Patricia Fahmy, M.A., received her M.A. degree in the Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness program in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. Her research interests relate to the mental health effects of trauma and violence. She is particularly interested in developing culturally informed, evidence-based mental health interventions that help promote resilience.
Jessica Healey, M.A., received her Master’s degree in Counseling from City University of New York. She is a mental health counselor at Brooklyn Somatic Therapy where she specializes in integrative experiential psychotherapy, combining psychodynamic and gestalt approaches.
Karen Hobden, Ph.D., received her doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health. She has also worked at Wayne State University and Michigan’s Developmental Disabilities Institute. Since 2011, she has been Dr. Charlene Senn’s Research Manager at the University of Windsor and directed the clinical trial examining the efficacy of the EAAA sexual assault resistance program. Karen also assisted Dr. Senn in founding the SARE Center, a nonprofit established to disseminate EAAA worldwide, and continues to sit on its board. As a person with albinism who is legally blind, she has been integral to making EAAA accessible to young women with disabilities. Originally from Copper Cliff (a small mining town in Northern Ontario), Karen is a lesbian and feminist who plans to dedicate the rest of her career to reducing violence against women.
Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is co-founder of the multiracial, mixed-gender Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention initiatives in North America and beyond. MVP was the first large-scale prevention program in sports culture and the U.S. military and introduced “bystander” training to the sexual assault and domestic violence prevention fields. He is the author of numerous articles and two acclaimed books, including The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. He is the creator of the award-winning Tough Guise educational documentary series, as well as The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots. His TEDx talk, Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue, has been translated into 27 languages and has over five million views. He has lectured and trained in all fifty states, eight Canadian provinces, and every continent except Antarctica.
Sheree King Ash, Psy.D., is a scholar with a central interest in spiritual identity as a praxis for a movement toward holistic self-care. Her primary research foci are both qualitative and feminist in nature. She is interested in questions regarding embodied trauma in the context of the intersectionality of race and gender, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum bodies; in particular, Dr. King Ash is concerned with resolving grief and empowering women who have experienced being marginalized while receiving medical treatment. In addition to these focal areas, Dr. King Ash is broadly interested in clinical concerns, including trauma (intergenerational trauma and maternal traumas), body-oriented psychotherapy, health psychology, eating disorders, and disordered eating. She received her Psy.D. in clinical psychology from Mercer University and completed her postdoctoral residency at Kaiser Permanente. Of note, she also has two master’s degrees in Clinical Psychology and Clinical Health Psychology.
Lori E. Koelsch, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA). Through this role, she is afforded many opportunities to work with and mentor students, including as a clinical supervisor in their doctoral-level training clinic, as director of undergraduate programs, and as a teaching mentor for psychology graduate instructors. She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Miami University (Oxford, OH), where she developed an interpersonal and feminist-informed approach to therapy and supervision. Dr. Koelsch’s research has focused on qualitative methodology, sexual violence, and trauma. She is particularly interested in the possibilities of poetic inquiry and enjoys working with students on projects that employ creative research approaches.
Susannah R. Kuppers is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Licensed Clinical Addictions Specialist. She received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Women’s Studies from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC) and her M.S.W. from Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC). Susannah specializes in trauma treatment with experience working in community mental health, rape crisis and domestic violence advocacy, and currently services as a counselor and interpersonal violence care coordinator at Counseling and Psychological Services at Western Carolina University. She has specialized training in EMDR and is currently pursuing EMDRIA certification.
Ingrid Lam, M.A., received her M.A. degree in Human Development and Social Intervention in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. Her work mainly focuses on childhood trauma and children’s imagination.
Ian Newby-Clark, Ph.D., (he/him) was born in Toronto in 1970. He moved with his family to the Barrie area in 1975, where he remained until attending the University of Toronto from 1989 to 1993. After obtaining his Bachelor of Science in Psychology (Specialist) there, he went on to obtain his doctorate in psychology from the University of Waterloo in 1999. From there, he went to Cornell University where he was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow until being hired as an assistant professor of psychology by the University of Windsor in 2000. In 2002, he was hired as an assistant professor of psychology by the University of Guelph, where he has remained. He was promoted to the rank of professor in 2017 and now serves as chair of the department. Ian considers himself an ally in the fight against sexual assault, and he is happy and proud to have played his small part in the development of the sexual assault resistance education program.
H. Lorraine Radtke, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology, University of Calgary. Although “officially” retired, she continues her work as a feminist psychologist who researches and writes about a variety of gender-related topics from her new home in The Netherlands. She has a long-standing interest in violence against women, having collaborated on two large, longitudinal projects, one exploring intimate partner violence and the other the randomized clinical trial of the EAAA sexual assault resistance education program. This work continues with her current collaboration in an assessment of the efficacy of EAAA as it is implemented by a number of universities in Canada. Her other prominent interest is in the use of language to construct meanings, identities, and “facts”. This has entailed an exploration of topics as diverse as mothers with asthma and older women of the “third age”. She is an Associate Editor of Feminism & Psychology.
Pam Rayburn, M.S., has been the Coordinator for the Women's and Gender Equity Center at California State University, Long Beach for the past seven years, with 15 years of experience in Student Affairs. Pam's passion to serve students with a holistic social justice approach to academic success has translated to co-facilitating Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) workshops on campus since 2013, developing quality programs, and volunteering on and off-campus. She co-wrote her first 3-year Cal OES Campus Safety Grant in 2014 to provide gender violence prevention/awareness programming and seamless survivor services and advocate support. Pam is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach, where she earned a B.A. in English and an M.S. in Recreation Administration. She is a Certified Rape Crisis Volunteer Advocate and a past officer of the American Association of University Women-Long Beach.
Charlene Y. Senn, Ph.D., is a White, lesbian, feminist, applied social psychologist. She holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded Canada Research Chair in Sexual Violence and is a Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. She has been an activist and advocate on issues related to men’s violence against women and women’s health for many years in the community and on campus. Her research focuses on effective sexual violence interventions, particularly those developing women’s capacity to resist sexual assault. This research puts feminist knowledge and social psychological theories and evidence into practice and actively undermines rape culture, woman-blaming, and self-blame. For more information about the Flip the Script with EAAATM sexual assault resistance program go to SARECentre.org. Charlene publishes in a range of psychology, feminist, medical, and interdisciplinary violence journals but also enjoys communicating research for a general audience.
Rebekah Smart, Ph.D., (she/her) is a professor of Counseling at California State University, Fullerton. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from Mount St. Mary’s, a women’s college in Los Angeles, and obtained a doctorate in Counseling Psychology, with a certificate in Gender Studies, from the University of Southern California. She worked as a staff psychologist in university mental health for a number of years and specialized in eating and body image concerns across cultures and genders. Her experiences as a cis-gender, White European American woman, born to U.S. parents but raised outside the country, have shaped her professional interests. Much of her scholarly work has focused on the intersections of gender and culture.
Wilfreda E. Thurston, Ph.D., was born in Nova Scotia and raised in a small fishing village. She is a Caucasian, cisgender feminist who worked as an employee, board member, or activist in a number of local, provincial, and national organizations dealing with poverty, addiction, or women’s rights. This led her to graduate studies in the sciences of community health, where her feminism and the social determinants of population health intersected. Her career before retirement as an Emerita Professor at the University of Calgary included nearly 4 decades of working against and researching the impacts of violence against women and children. Her work involved getting health systems to address this violence as a population health problem. Dr. Thurston characterizes her involvement with the Sexual Assault Resistance Education project, which actually prevented rapes from occurring, as one of the best academic and personal experiences she has had.
Melissa L. Ward, M.S., (she/her) is a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at Oklahoma State University. She completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Humboldt State University and her Master’s degree in Counseling, with an emphasis in clinical mental health, from California State University, Fullerton. Melissa’s professional interests include researching the experiences of fat people, especially those who hold additional marginalized identities, and social justice work rooted in fighting weight-based discrimination and other forms of oppression. Melissa is a White, queer, fat, cis-gender woman, who is also a first-generation college student from a rural working-class background. Melissa’s experiences and identity as a fat positive intersectional feminist actively continue to shape her research, pedagogy, activism, and clinical work.
Stephan Wolfert is a U.S. Army veteran and the founder of the DE-CRUIT veterans transition program. He is also a classically-trained Shakespearian actor. His autobiographical, one-man off-Broadway play Cry Havoc, which documents his life in the military, is the basis for the theoretical and practical model of DE-CRUIT. He is recipient of the 2020 Aaron Stein Award from the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) and the 2019 Max Gabriel Award from National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI). Stephan received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island in 2000.