Founding Board of Directors
Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div., President, is a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine. She served as Director of Research for the Center for the Study of Violence and co-founded Yale’s Violence and Health Study Group, a member of the World Health Organization Violence Prevention Alliance. Lee has consulted with governments on prison reform, including of New York City’s Rikers Island Correctional Center. She has published numerous scholarly articles and academic books, and has authored the textbook Violence (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019). The ethics conference she convened in April 2017 led to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President (Macmillan, 2017 and 2019).
Prudence Gourguechon, M.D., Vice President, is a past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She advises business leaders on the psychology of business through her consulting firm, Invantage Advising. She is widely quoted as an expert in human behavior in national media including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic and has appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. She devised a tool for assessing the fundamental traits and capacities necessary for a leader to carry out his duties. A chapter about this approach and its relationship to the 25th amendment appears in the 2nd edition of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
Scott Banford, LCSW, Secretary/Treasurer, is a psychotherapist in private practice in Englewood, NJ. He is also currently providing social services at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and developing a social outreach program with the goal of strengthening communities. He was the Founding Executive Director of Shepherd’s House, a substance abuse treatment program based in Lexington KY. He developed an intensive in-community treatment business in NJ providing services to children in the Medicaid system of care. Banford has extensive experience in non-profit management and program development. He is a founding officer of the World Mental Health Coalition.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Ph.D., is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. The recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other fellowships, she’s an expert on fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda. As a political commentator on those subjects and how Donald Trump fits into them, she appears frequently on radio, podcasts, and television and writes columns for CNN, the Washington Post and other outlets. She is the author of numerous books on Fascism and is now writing Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall to be published by Norton in 2020.
Brenda Berger, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in practice in New York City. She is a clinical assistant professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia University and on the faculty at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research where she serves on the Executive and Public Outreach Committees. She is coeditor with Dr. Stephanie Newman of Money Talks: In Therapy, Society and Life (Routledge, 2012) and author of Parent Development Interview and several articles. Born and raised in South Africa during the cruelties and indignities of apartheid, Berger has had a life time concern about racism and hatred.
Edwin B. Fisher, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department of Health Behavior in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a past president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and editor of Principles and Concepts of Behavioral Medicine: A Global Handbook (Springer, 2018). He is also the Global Director of Peers for Progress, dedicated to peer support in health care and prevention worldwide. In addition to his chapter in The Dangerous Case, he has written on community and peer support in health and on the varied connections of health and behavior.
Flora E. Lazar, Ph.D., LCSW, is a psychotherapist and historian practicing in Chicago, where she founded and edits the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society News. Before becoming a clinician, Lazar served as public affairs director at Chapin Hall, a child and family policy research institute formerly at the University of Chicago, and helped found Operation Respect, an advocacy organization focused on combatting bullying in schools . Her work on psychoanalysis and the allied disciplines has appeared in American Psychoanalyst and Division Review. Flora earned her B.A. from Harvard College, Ph.D. from Columbia University, and M.S.W. from the University of Chicago.
Richard Goldwasser, J.D., is a partner with the Chicago law firm of Schoenberg Finkel Newman & Rosenberg, LLC. He concentrates his law practice in commercial litigation and appellate practice, including criminal defense appeals, where he has obtained reversals of murder convictions based on violations of Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. From 2011-2017, Goldwasser served on the national board of directors for J Street, a political advocacy organization focused on promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He currently serves as chair of J Street’s local chapter in Chicago.
Jennifer Panning, Psy.D., has been a licensed clinical psychologist since 2004 and is the President of Mindful Psychology Associates, a group practice in Evanston IL. She has been working with young adults using empirically validated treatments and relational therapy, specializing in mood disorders and eating disorders, for most of her career. Panning is the author of the chapter “Trump Anxiety Disorder” in the NY Times Best Seller The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Mental Health Experts Assess a President and has been quoted in publications such as Raw Story, Healthline, and Esquire.
Rosemary Sword is co-developer of Time Perspective Therapy (TPT) and a time perspective therapist in private practice on the island of Maui. Based on her Hawaiian heritage, she is a cross-cultural counselor trained in ho’oponopono — indigenous Hawaiian psychology/counseling. With her colleague Philip Zimbardo, she is coauthor of numerous TPT books, book chapters, psychological journal articles as well as a popular PsychologyToday.com blog column. Sword is developer of Aetas Mind Balancing Apps (www.discoveraetas.com) and a 4-week PTSD/TPT track for Happify.com.
Leslie Wagner, Ph.D., is a clinical, health, and design psychologist licensed in the states of Michigan and Florida. She is in private practice and consults as a global real estate advisor to Sotheby’s. Wagner completed the Public Interest Design Training Program at Harvard Graduate School of Design and is certified in Social, Economic, and Environmental Design. She was a two-year clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed her clinical internship in French and English at McGill University’s Montreal General Hospital, and her doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of Southern California (USC). At USC, she was named a presidential fellow of the Leadership Institute, the highest honor awarded to USC’s graduate and professional students.
Kevin Washington (Mwata Kairi), Ph.D., is a licensed African-centered psychologist in Florida and Washington, DC. NewsOne, Essence Magazine, Black Entertainment Television (BET) News, Vocal Point and many other national and international organizations have sought his expertise in the area of cultural matters and mental health. He is the immediate past president of the Association of Black Psychologists and is head of the Sociology and Psychology Department at Grambling State University. He examines cultural and historical trauma of people who are impacted by Persistent Enslavement Systemic Trauma (PEST), and a founder of Ubuntu Psychotherapy (Psychology), he advances a culturally-sensitive mental health counseling and psychotherapy.
Committees
Technical Committee
Stacey Pritchett
Leonard Adler
Research Committee
Susan Cortilet-Jones, Chair
Marla Allisan, Special Consultant
Leslie Ellis
Michael Everett
June Cancell
Russell Cashin
Barbara Gold
Lisa Lombard
Rogelio Martinez
Jessica Massino Drass
Shloime Perel
Anne Pollack
Donnah Rickerson-Retí
Social Media Committee
Leslie Deutsch
Jessica Eiseman
Nancy Gregoire
Nina Holmes
Lisa Lombard
Stacey Pritchett
Janet Sullivan
Communications Committee
Toni Aguilar
Jennifer Young