Science Council and Lived Experience Expert Network

A native New Yorker, John has had a long and distinguished career in investment banking. After graduating from Yale and Harvard Business School, in 1961 John joined Lehman Brothers, where he later co-founded its M&A Department. In 1990 he founded a boutique investment bank named The Bridgeford Group, which was acquired by JP Morgan in 2000, and he served there as a managing director until 2007. He joined Lincoln International as managing director and vice chairman in 2007 and continued to serve as senior adviser until his retirement in June, 2018. He is a director of a number of corporations and is active as a financial adviser to corporations and individuals.
In addition to a highly successful career, John has had a lifetime role in philanthropy. He holds leadership roles in many charitable organizations, including the Jewish Board of Family & Children’s Services, National Public Radio, UNICEF, UJA/Federation of New York, the Yale School of Music and at MQ in the U.K. and the MQ Foundation in the U.S. A committed family man, cyclist and world traveler, John and his wife, Anne, his two sons and his seven grandchildren enjoy visiting unique places around the globe.

Henry Bedford, now retired, was one of the Moore Capital hedge fund’s top traders, and he managed a significant portion of the company’s estimated $14 billion of funds under management.

Henry previously traded at rival macro hedge fund Caxton Associates and cut his teeth at Goldman Sachs’ global macro proprietary trading desk in the 1980s.

In addition to his trading responsibilities at Moore, Henry was a member of the senior management team, overseeing the firm’s portfolio managers. He served as a trustee and chair of the Investment Committee of his alma mater, Hamilton College. He has been a trustee of several U.K. charities, including The Elliot Foundation, a network of 30+ primary charter schools, which he co-founded.

He is a key member of MQ’s Campaign Executive Network, which plays a pivotal role in fundraising for the charity’s new research initiative, Brighter Futures. The group will be tasked with generating the funds required to make the program, which focuses specifically on young people’s mental health, a reality, and to help achieve societal change.

Evan is the Co-CEO of his family’s business, Century Fasteners Corp, a distributor of fasteners and electro-mechanical components.  During his tenure, Evan has helped grow the company from a local New York Distributor with annual sales of less than $10 million, to a company with an international presence and sales approaching $80 million.

Evan and his wife live in in Brookville, NY. They have five children. His interests include, cooking, travel, cinema and playing golf. Evan graduated from George Washington University with a major in finance.

 

Chris O’Connor is a Partner and Head Healthcare Advisory for Perella Weinberg Partners LP. Before that he was Managing Director, Healthcare Investment Banking for JPMorgan. He serves on the boards of O’Connor Capital Partners (real estate private equity) and the New Canaan Library .

The father of six has lived in New Canaan, CT since 2003. Chris received an AB in English/American Literature from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

 

Rona has enjoyed a career in business, finance and sales, first on Wall Street and followed by more than 25 years working in her family’s wholesale diamond trade. Since 2013, she has been an agent at The Corcoran Group specializing in residential sales in Manhattan. As a parent at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, she served as vice president of the Board of Trustees. Rona graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in economics.

Rona has three children and two stepchildren. She lives in New York City.

Michael is a retired partner in the international law firm of Jones Day, where he practiced tax and business law for more than 30 years, representing, among others, substantial families and charities. He was chairman of the board of IMG Worldwide Inc., a sports marketing, media and athlete representation firm, following the death of the company’s founder until the sale of the company in 2004. He continues to serve as a trustee for the founder’s family, as well as numerous other private trusts and family foundations. He chairs the board of Parkland Management Co., a family office, and the Administrative Committee of the HRH Family Foundations, a group of affiliated family foundations.

Michael is a trustee of the Cleveland Orchestra, and he chairs the Personnel and Audit Committees and serves on the Executive and Investment Committees. He also serves as a trustee of The Cleveland Clinic Foundation (where he has served on the Finance Committee) and The Frick Collection in New York (where he chairs the Audit Committee and the Nominating and Governance Committee and serves on the Executive Committee, the Investment Committee, the Architectural and Long Range Planning Committee and as secretary of the corporation). In addition, he is a member of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He is a member of the Investment Committee of The Cleveland Foundation, the first community foundation in the United States. He is a trustee emeritus of Case Western Reserve University and is a former adjunct professor of law of that university, where he lectured on Law and the Visual Arts. He is chair emeritus of The Cleveland Museum of Art (where he served as president from 1996 to 2001 and as chairman of the board from 2001 to 2011). He is an honorary trustee of the University of Virginia Law School Foundation (where he chaired the board for six years and continues to serve as an adviser to the Investment Committee).

He also is a past trustee of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, where he has chaired its Finance and Investment Committee and has served on numerous other committees, including the Executive, Development, Audit and Strategic Planning Committees, in addition to having served for six years as the federation’s primary outside legal counsel.

​Sarah is currently Permanent Observer a.i. to the United Nations in New York for the International Development Law Organization (IDLO). Previously, she served in senior positions for several international organizations, including, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York and Bhutan, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, and the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in Geneva. At both UNDP and GAVI, Sarah was Director of Programme Funding. At EBRD, Sarah was Deputy Secretary of the Board. She has proven experience in leveraging funds through powerful advocacy, impact measuring and strategizing.

Having lived on both sides of the Atlantic for long stints, Sarah specializes in advising both for - profit and non - profit organizations which have launched in the United States after being conceived and founded in the United Kingdom. At Save the Children US, Sarah was Senior Adviser to the President and Chair of Save's Economic Opportunities Leadership Council. Sarah was Chair of Fauna and Flora International's (FFI) US Board when it first came to the US 20 years ago. Sarah has represented a London- based new media newsletter, The Browser, to expand its market in the US.

Born in the UK, Sarah grew up in South Africa and was educated at King's College, Cambridge (BA and MA) and the London School of Economics (M.Sc Econ). She resides in New York and has been a visiting lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She spent 15 years in Washington DC raising her three children.

Carol held the Samuel Candler Dobbs Chair in the Department of Anthropology, Emory University, where she directed the Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology. After a dual undergraduate degree in biology and botany at Pomona College, Carol earned her Ph.D. in biological anthropology at Harvard University, having also studied endocrinology at UCSD and neuroscience at MIT under Jack Geller and Richard Wurtman, respectively. After a postdoc in human development with Jerome Kagan, Robert LeVine and Beatrice Whiting, she joined the nascent anthropology faculty at Emory University, and established a pioneering laboratory advancing the use of biomarkers in population research.

Carol conducts interdisciplinary biocultural research on human development and pathways to differential mental and physical health. She has undertaken cross-cultural collaborative research in 13 countries, including Kenya, Tibet, Nepal, Egypt, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and South Africa, as well as in rural, urban and semi-urban areas of the United States. For over 20 years, she collaborated with Jane Costello and Adrian Angold in the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a large, longitudinal, population-based developmental epidemiological project in western North Carolina.

Current work includes tracking effects of war trauma in a matched sample of ex-child soldiers in Nepal, assessment of a sustainable intervention to improve maternal functioning and infant development in Cape Town, and the impact of media exposure (TV) on adolescent functioning in Vietnamese villages lacking television and electricity.

In two decades of venture investing at Advent, Shahzad has been actively involved with numerous successful investments in Europe and the U.S. in the biopharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics arenas. These include Algeta, Respivert, Biocartis, Powdermed and Axonics modulation technologies.

Shahzad came to Advent in 1999 with a strong background in science and clinical medicine. He gained invaluable experience at the London office of McKinsey & Company, serving international clients in the health care and investment banking sectors.

Shahzad gained an M.A. in physiological sciences while at Oxford University and an M.D. from Cambridge University. He then specialized in interventional cardiology while at the same time pursuing research interests in heart muscle disorders, both in the clinic and basic science laboratory.

Ann has over twenty years of experience in museum development and corporate and nonprofit marketing, and exceptional skill in launching new programming, and building relationships with institutional and high-level individual donors and influential supporters.

While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Ann served as the Director of Principal Gifts, partnering with individuals, foundations, and corporations to raise over $25 million in transformative gifts. She worked closely with the Museum’s Presidentially appointed Council, as well as with other lay leaders who played a key role in raising the profile of the Museum. She also spearheaded a national group for philanthropists in their 30-50s, introducing a new generation of donors to the Museum.

Before moving into the nonprofit sector, Ann worked at Ericsson, Inc., where her focus was internal communications, managing the global mobile internet division’s internal communications strategy, and working collaboratively with her colleagues in Sweden.

Ann received a M.S. in Mass Communications from Boston University and a B.A. from Bates College. She sits on the board of Common Denominator, an organization that helps in-need middle schoolers build math confidence through tutoring and mentorship. Ann is an avid runner, having completed three NYC marathons, collector of outsider art, and theater lover. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

​Emily Holmes, PhD, DClinPsych leads the Emotional Mental Imagery Lab (EMIL) at Uppsala University. Her research group is underpinned by a core interest in mental health science, and the translation of basic findings to create innovations to improve psychological treatments.

My driving force is improving mental health through science. My specialism is mental imagery.

In addition to being a Professor at the Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Holmes is affiliated to Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience.

Holmes received her BA (Hons) in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, UK, and her Masters in Social Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is also a clinician and completed a clinical psychology training doctorate at Royal Holloway University of London, and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, UK. She became Professor in 2010 at the University of Oxford. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien in Uppsala (KVS) and a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences. She is the recipient of several international awards, including from the American Psychological Association and the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Holmes was a founding contributor and then served on the Board of Trustees of the UK based research charity "MQ; transforming mental health” until 2022.

Holmes' field within psychology is experimental psychopathology in the areas of memory and emotion. Under the umbrella of "mental health science", her interdisciplinary research places cognitive science alongside clinical psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience for psychological treatment innovation. Work in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and bipolar disorder is linked by an interest in mental imagery and emotion.

Her research has demonstrated that mental imagery has a more powerful impact on emotion than its verbal counterpart. This is of clinical relevance given the historical focus on verbal thoughts (rather than imagery) in therapy. Her group’s particular interest is intrusive memories—imagery that springs to mind unbidden. She works on potential new methods to prevent intrusive memories after trauma. It also holds fundamental relevance to the science of mental life and the nature of human memory.

As founder of the consulting firm GiveResearch, Cynthia Joyce works to advance innovations in healthcare for individuals and families affected by disorders of the brain and mind.  With 30+ years of experience in the research funding, fundraising and industry, and having lived and worked in the US and the UK, she brings a unique perspective to the challenges facing healthcare systems in the post-pandemic world.

Most recently, Cynthia established the non-profit MQ Mental Health Research, the first international fundraising organization focused on mental health research. In prior years, Cynthia has served as Executive Director of the SMA Foundation (NY) and Executive Director of the American Academy of Neurology Foundation (MN); she has also held positions in industry. She holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MS from the University of Minnesota.   Cynthia currently serves  in an advisory capacity for several international research organizations and is as a member of the Board of Directors for  the Graham Boeckh Foundation (Montreal).

Dr. Jehannine Austin is Executive director of the BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services Research Institute, and is a Professor in Psychiatry & Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia.

Jehannine is a board certified genetic counsellor and their research work involves studying the impact of genetic counselling for people with psychiatric disorders and their families. They founded the world’s first specialist psychiatric genetic counselling service that has won an award for its impact on patient outcomes, and in addition to peer-reviewed publications, has written a book, and won awards for teaching, leadership, and research.

Jehannine is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Dr. Blumberg is a psychiatrist  the John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience, Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and in the Child Center, and Director of the Mood Disorders Research Program at the Yale School of Medicine.

Her research is devoted to understanding the causes of mood and related disorders across the lifespan and of suicide risk. Her program focuses on multimodal neuroimaging research integrated with translational research approaches to identify brain circuitry differences and generate strategies to target them for early detection, interventions and prevention.

Dr Blumberg leads international neuroimaging efforts to study bipolar and other mood disorders and suicide from childhood to older adulthood. She has published many seminal papers on mood disorders and received numerous awards, including the International Society of Bipolar Disorders Mogens Schou Award for Research in Bipolar Disorder, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Colvin Prize for research in mood disorders, and American Psychiatric Association Blanche F. Ittleson Award for research in children and adolescents.

She is Principal Investigator for the U.S. site for the MQ Mental Health Brighter Horizons consortium to study brain and psychosocial risk factors for suicide in adolescents with major depressive and bipolar disorders, HOPES: Help Overcome and Prevent the Emergence of Suicide.

She studied neuroscience as an undergraduate at Harvard University graduating summa cum laude, and completed her medical degree, and psychiatry and specialty training in neuroimaging, at Cornell University Medical College prior to joining Yale’s faculty in 1998.

Dr. Jessica L. Schleider is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University (SUNY).  She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Harvard University in 2018, along with a Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology at Yale School of Medicine. Her research on brief, scalable interventions for depression and anxiety in young people has been funded by the NIH, NSF, and HRSA and recognized via numerous awards, including the NIH Director's Early Independence Award; the ABCT President's New Researcher Award; the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology's Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Early Career Research Award; and the Society of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology's Abidin Early Career Award. Her work has been featured in the Atlantic, Vox, and U.S. News & World Report, among others. In 2020, she was chosen as one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 in Healthcare.

Dr. Schleider has published >75 scientific articles and book chapters. She has created or co-created five open-access, single-session mental health programs, which have served >10,000 teens and adults to date. Based on these programs, Dr. Schleider wrote a self-help workbook for adolescent depression (New Harbinger). She is also co-editor of a forthcoming handbook for therapists, Low-Intensity Evidence-Based Interventions for Children and Young People (Oxford University Press) and is writing a nonfiction book (Little, Brown Book Group) on how brief interventions and meaningful moments can transform mental health.

Peter is the chair of MQ’s science council and is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. Having been head of the department of psychiatry (2000-14) and deputy head of the Cambridge Clinical School (2014-20), he directs the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research & Care (CLAHRC) East of England.

Peter’s research concerns the epidemiology of mental illness, particularly the psychoses, early life course influences on adult mental health and illness, and the interface between population-based and biological investigations and explanations, including genetics. He also works in treatment research with randomized trials of drug and psychological treatments for psychotic illness. He became an NIHR senior investigator in 2010 and has been identified as a highly-cited researcher in psychology and psychiatry since 2015.

Clinically, Peter is honorary consultant to CAMEO, the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Foundation Trust’s early intervention service for young people with first-episode psychosis.
Peter has been a non-executive director of a specialist mental health NHS trust (2001-05 and 2016-21), served as a co-opted expert on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs consideration of the legal status of cannabis (2005 and 2008) and coordinated the Royal College of Psychiatrists Early Intervention Network.

Most recently, Helen served as the executive director of the Academy of Medical Sciences – the U.K.’s national academy representing the full spectrum of medical science, from basic research through clinical application to health care delivery. Helen joined the academy’s policy team in 2004, becoming executive director in 2009. She oversaw a major expansion in the academy’s resources, profile and impact, including a successful £5 million fundraising appeal to establish the academy’s first headquarters in 2010, influential policy reports, leading-edge public dialogue exercises, and a portfolio of innovative grant and mentoring initiatives to support early career researchers in the U.K. and overseas.

Prior to joining the academy, Helen completed a fellowship at U.K. Parliamentary Office for Science & Technology and worked for a short time in the BBC Science Team. She followed her undergraduate degree from The Queen’s College, Oxford, with a Ph.D. in molecular endocrinology from the University of Edinburgh.

Irene is head of department and Nuffield Chair in Anesthetic Science, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford. She was born in 1966 and performed her undergraduate and graduate studies in biochemistry at the University of Oxford in Merton College. She graduated with First Class Honors, winning the Gibbs Prize for joint top-First, and was senior scholar at Merton during her DPhil (Ph.D.).
Irene held a postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School (Martinos Imaging ) before returning to the U.K. in 1996 to help found and establish the FMRIB Center. In 2001, she was tenured and appointed to a university lectureship with tutorial fellowship at Christ Church at the University of Oxford. She became the director of the FMRIB Center in 2005 and professor of pain research. In 2007, while remaining as FMRIB director, she was elected to the chair in anesthetics with fellowship at Pembroke College.

Irene was an elected councilor to the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) until 2014 and was chair of its Scientific Program Committee for the Milan 2012 biannual world congress. In 2008 she was awarded the triennial Patrick Wall Medal from the Royal College of Anesthetists, and in 2009 was made an FRCA for her contributions to the discipline.
Irene was deputy chair of the U.K.’s Medical Research Council’s Neuroscience Mental Health Board for two years and board member from 2009-14. She was an REF panel member for neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology in 2014.

In 2015, Irene was elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She has been associate head for the Medical Sciences Division since 2014. After 10 years directing the FMRIB Center, Irene handed over the directorship in May 2015 to Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg in order to take a one-year sabbatical prior to becoming head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences in September 2016.

Irene is married to Professor Myles Allen, a climate physicist, and they have three wonderful children: a daughter, Colette, and two sons, John and Jim.

Sarah is the Chief Executive Officer of Asthma + Lung UK, formed after the merging of Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation in 2020. Sarah was previously the executive director of policy and information at Cancer Research UK. She was appointed to the board in 2012 and has responsibility for communications, public affairs, advocacy and campaigning, patient engagement and involvement, cancer intelligence, cancer prevention and early diagnosis, health professional engagement, health and cancer information, and the About Cancer award-winning patient information website, nurse helpline and patient forum.

Sarah has a background in government, policy development and influencing, having worked for two members of Parliament, in the civil service and for a national membership organization. Sarah was seconded to the Department of Health in 2011 to write the National Cancer Strategy alongside Professor Sir Mike Richards, then-national cancer director. Sarah is a trustee of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI). She is a previous trustee of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and Bliss, the special care baby charity. Sarah sits on a raft of national-level working groups, including the National Screening Advisory Group, the Public Health England Cancer Board, the National Prevention Board and the National Alcohol Advisory Board.
With a track record of successfully influencing government and other stakeholders, Sarah has led national campaigns to introduce standardized plain packaging for cigarettes, a new national strategy and funding deal for radiotherapy, and for updated cancer strategies in all nations of the U.K. Sarah was recently voted the most effective charity sector communicator in the PR Week Power Book.

Lea joined MQ in 2020 as the CEO, taking over the leadership of the organisation during lockdown 1.0. He is a passionate communicator & collaborator and advocates for a whole mind, body and brain approach to mental health research.

He has worked in the charity sector for over 15 years, leading teams and organisations supporting people in the secure estate, community education and prior to joining MQ, served for as the CEO of Mercy Ships UK, an international NGO delivering surgery, medical capacity building and infrastructure development across West Africa.

He has overseen multimillion pound fundraising and grants programmes supported by philanthropy and a range of government funding. Notable achievements include launching the Global Surgical Evaluation Centre in partnership with Harvard University, public fundraising campaigns in partnership with the Department for International Development and the publication of a British Medical Journal surgical supplement in support of the Lancet Commission’s findings on the global surgical crisis.

Professor O’Connor is Director of the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory at the University of Glasgow, the leading suicide and self-harm research group in Scotland. A registered health psychologist, he is also involved in policy work as a member of the Scottish Government's national suicide and self-harm implementation and monitoring group. 

Rory presents the award winning MQ Open Mind podcast.

Lisa was most recently a senior credit product specialist at Angelo Gordon, a leading alternative asset manager, where she focused on structured credit and direct lending.  She also established and co-led the firm’s product and strategy group.  In her role Lisa met with investors across the globe and helped launch and grow several of the firm’s key businesses.  Previously,  she spent over a decade in institutional fixed income sales at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers.  Prior to attending Columbia Business School, Lisa worked for the television division of IMG selling sports programming in Latin America and the Caribbean.  In this position she conducted the majority of her work in Spanish.  Lisa graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and received an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Lisa resides in Southern Florida and is an outdoor enthusiast and voracious reader, as well as a passionate cook and avid traveler.

​Dr. Chan Lai Fong, MD, MMedPsych, MSc, is an associate professor of psychiatry & consultant psychiatrist at the National University of Malaysia (UKM). Dr. Chan received the 2017 International Association of Suicide Prevention (IASP) De Leo Fund Award. She is the 3^rd Vice-President of the International Association of Suicide Prevention (IASP), a member of the Malaysian National Technical Working Group on Suicide Prevention and is a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Mental Health, Brain Health and Substance Use (STAG-MNS).

Dixon Chibanda started the Friendship Bench in one of Harare’s townships called Mbare in 2007 and conceptualized the first Friendship Bench intervention that has now been refined and adapted considerably.

He has been involved in mental health research for many years. Dixon is a key player in bringing the various stakeholders from local health authorities, health professionals, national and international researchers and donors together to form successful collaborations. In his role as PI, he has led the Friendship Bench team through the rigorous exercise of the randomized control trial (RCT) which was able to deliver evidence for the intervention’s effectiveness. He is currently leading the team as they scale-up the Friendship Bench to over 60 primary health care clinics in the country.

Dixon Chibanda is also Director of the African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI)

Professor Henriette Raventos is a full professor in human genetics at the University of Costa Rica. Her primary research has been on identifying genetic risk variants for complex inheritance psychiatric disorders, mainly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Alzheimer´s dementia.

After a short time working at the public national reference laboratory for the Ministry of Health and a clinical research institute, Henriette joined the faculty at the  University of Costa Rica and has directed the  neuropsychiatric genetics lab at the CIBCM for the past 25 years. The lab conducts whole genome scans and has identified genetic variants associated to major psychiatric disorders, which they are further characterizing at a functional level. The lab, under Henriette's direction, has publications on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, priorities for mental health according to different groups of social actors, including people with lived experience of a mental condition, and more recently, is part of the project YourDNA/YourSay for Latin America.

As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed Henriette and her team studied psychosocial effects in health-care personnel and the general population (white papers for the health-care authorities) and at present, risk factors for severity and sequelae, including genetic variants.

Henriette has been an invited speaker/professor for short courses and scientific meetings in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. She also has ample experience as a member of global scientific associations and as an invited expert and advocate for global and national mental health policy and priorities, bioethics, disability rights, and sexual and reproductive health.

Dr. Daisy Singla is a clinical psychologist by training and global health researcher at heart. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health.  In July 2022, she also became the first womenmind scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Dr. Singla’s research interests involve increasing access to evidence-based psychological treatments in both high-income country settings as well as low- and middle-income countries, and the application of lessons learned from global mental health to the local North American context. To date, she has led or contributed to large clinical trials focused on treating common mental conditions of depression, anxiety and trauma worldwide. She has collaborated with global mental health leaders and local NGOs in rural Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan. She now brings these innovative lessons to the United States and Canada.

Dr. Singla has gained an international reputation serving as a PI, co-PI and co-I on CIHR-, NIMH-, NICHD-, Grand Challenges Canada and AFP- funded grants, and winning multiple international awards. In 2021, Dr. Singla was the first awardee to concurrently receive the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Careers from the Association of Psychological Science, the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution in Applied Psychology from the American Psychological Association (APA), and the Gerald L. Klerman Young Investigator Award from the Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA). In 2022, Dr. Singla was named a fellow in the Association for Psychological Science. She has authored and co-authored over 50 peer reviewed publications, including in prestigious, high-impact journals such as Lancet Global Health, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, World Psychiatry and JAMA Psychiatry.

In short, Dr. Singla aspires to increase access to evidence-based psychological treatments to enrich the lives of all women, their children and their families.

Professor Stephani Hatch is the Vice Dean for Culture, Diversity & Inclusion and Professor of Sociology and Epidemiology leading the Health Inequalities Research Group at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London.

Professor Hatch has over 25 years of experience across sectors, locally and nationally, delivering interdisciplinary health inequalities research with an emphasis on race at the intersection of other social identities.  She co-leads the Marginalised Communities and Mental Health programme within the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, as well as the Health and Social Equity Collective.

Professor Hatch also leads the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services (TIDES) study, funded by a Wellcome Trust Investigator’s Award, that was expanded in 2020 with ESRC funding as part of UKRI’s rapid response to COVID-19 to focus on inequalities experienced by staff from ethnic minority groups working in health and social care.

Throughout her research, Professor Hatch integrates collaborative approaches to knowledge production and dissemination, action and outreach in training and research through the Health Inequalities Research Network (HERON), which she founded in 2010.  She also holds national and international advisory roles in health and community sectors.

Karoline Kuchenbaecker is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at the Division of Psychiatry, University College London, as well as the UCL Genetics Institute. She is also the Scientific Lead for the Diverse Data initiative at Genomics England which aims to reduce health inequalities and improve patient outcomes within genomic medicine.

Karoline trained in Psychology and Statistics before completing her PhD in Genetic Epidemiology in Cambridge.

Her research focusses on the genetic and environmental risk factors for depression by leveraging the unique characteristics of diverse populations. She is one of the Principal Investigators of the PARKH initiative, the largest study of mental illness in Pakistan. Her research is funded by the ERC’s Horizon 2020 programme, Wellcome and the NIHR.

Karoline is a co-founder of the London Genetics Network and leads the UCL HumGen initiative.

Kam Bhui is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow at Wadham college.

He undertakes research into socio-economic and health and social systems with an aim to improve policy and practice, reduce health inequalities, and adverse health outcomes to advance research methods and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Kam has a long-standing interest in preventing health inequalities in the experience and outcome of mental illnesses, improving health services and public health interventions, and developing appropriate health policy. His work includes understanding the role of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and inflammation in the development of mental illnesses such as depression and multimorbidity

Kam studied Pharmacology (BSc) at UCL and Medicine (MBBS) at United Medical and Dental Schools of Guys and St Thomas’ (now King's College) qualifying in 1988. He holds postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry, mental health studies, epidemiology, and psychotherapy. He completed clinical training in London, secured a first Consultant appointment in 1999, followed in 2000 and 2003 by Consultant/Senior Lecturer and Consultant/Professorial posts in East London Foundation Trust and Queen Mary University of London.

In 2017 he received a CBE for his services to mental health care and research.

Ann John is a Professor in Public Health and Psychiatry at the Swansea University Medical School and Co-Director of DATAMIND, the HDRUK Hub for Mental Health Data.

Ann leads a research programme with a focus on mental health data science Including the MQ funded Adolescent Mental Health Data Platform. It was when Ann started reading medicine that she developed an interest in studying health at a population level and epidemiology. Ann came top of her year in the sociology exam and was offered a place to do an integrated BSc in sociology.

This experience changed the way Ann looked at medicine, in terms of placing it in the broader context of society and culture. After she finished medical school Ann worked in A&E and then went into general practice where she developed a strong interest in mental health.

Ann kept this focus when she moved into public health and then research, studying anxiety, depression and self-harm which are conditions often seen in primary care. Throughout her career Ann has always been passionate about translating research into policy and practice in order to improve people’s lives, particularly in the prevention of self-harm and suicide. She has advised on a number of media story lines including Coronation Street and This is Going to Hurt.

Ann was previously a trustee of the Samaritans.