A renowned speaker, and bestselling author.

Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté (pronounced GAH-bor MAH-tay) is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of five books published in nearly 40 languages, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. For his ground-breaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His most recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is a New York Times and international bestseller.

Professor, Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer and Therapist

Janina Fisher

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School.  An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is an Executive Board member of the Trauma Research Foundation and a Patron of the John Bowlby Centre.  Dr. Fisher is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022).  She is best known for her work on integrating mindfulness-based and somatic interventions into trauma treatment.  More information can be found on her website: www.janinafisher.com

Distinguished University Scientist/Professor, Polyvagal Theory Neuroscientist and Action Trauma Network Ambassador

Stephen Porges

Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award.

He has published approximately 400 peer‐reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines that have been cited in more than 45,000 peer-reviewed papers. He holds several patents involved in monitoring and regulating autonomic state. He is the originator of the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral, mental, and health problems related to traumatic experiences. He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (Norton, 2011), The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe, (Norton, 2017), Polyvagal Safety: Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation (Norton, 2021), and co-editor of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (Norton, 2018).

He is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol™, which currently is used by more than 2000 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, and to improve language processing, state regulation, and spontaneous social engagement.

Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican, Columbia University-trained Psychologist, intergenerational trauma expert, and the author of the book Break the Cycle

Dr. Mariel Buqué

Dr. Mariel Buqué is an Afro-Dominican, Columbia University-trained Psychologist, intergenerational trauma expert, and the author of the book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Her clinical framework is holistic and infuses ancient and indigenous healing practices into a modern, comprehensive therapeutic approach. During her clinical training, she co-developed and completed a 3-year immersive holistic mental health care fellowship in collaboration with the United States Health Administration and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where she offered holistic psychotherapy, in the Spanish language, across multidisciplinary clinics in the Columbia hospital system, including cardiology, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, and primary care.

She has utilized her training in holistic care to integrate holistic practices, like sound bath meditation and breathwork, into therapy, which has helped to deepen trauma healing for her clients. She additionally provides healing workshops to Fortune 100 companies including Google, Twitter, Capital One, and Meta and lectures within the psychology department of Columbia University. Dr. Buqué is widely sought out for her clinical expertise and trauma approach and has been featured on major media outlets including The Today Show, Good Morning America, and ABC News. During her doctoral training and then within her clinical position as a psychologist at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, Dr. Buqué was able to see the profound impact of intergenerational trauma, which led to her adopting a more holistic lens to healing layered trauma. This is now the underlying methodology behind her proprietary intergenerational healing approach. Dr. Buqué now makes her healing practices accessible through her book Break the Cycle, her newsletter, and a growing community on social media. As such, she has been named as a School of Greatness 100 Greatest People Doing Good in 2022 and an inaugural Verywell Mind 25 Mental Health Champion.

Her book can be found at https://sites.prh.com/breakthecyclebook.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Author

Dan Siegel

Dan Siegel is the executive director of the Mindsight Institute and founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, where he was also co-principal investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain and Development and clinical professor at the School of Medicine.

An award-winning educator, Dan is the author of five New York Times bestsellers and other books which have been translated into over forty languages.  The founding editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, he has overseen the publication of over eighty textbooks in this transdisciplinary framework focusing on the mind and mental health.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dan completed his postgraduate training at UCLA specializing in pediatrics, adult, adolescent, and child psychiatry.  He was trained in attachment research and narrative analysis through a National Institute of Mental Health research training fellowship focusing on how relationships shape our autobiographical ways of making sense of our lives and influence our development across the lifespan.

Founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project

Fritzi Horstman

Fritzi Horstman is the Founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project, an organization dedicated to creating trauma-informed prisons and communities. The first day Fritzi stepped inside a maximum security prison she realized it was actually a trauma center. She knew at that moment something needed to be done to change the system so she produced and directed the now viral video “Step Inside the Circle” with 235 incarcerated men addressing their Adverse Childhood Experiences. Currently, she is creating a 12-part video series about childhood trauma to be distributed to every prison across the U.S. and abroad. Fritzi has also produced HBO’s “The Defiant Ones” directed by Allen Hughes which has garnered several awards including a Grammy for Best Music Film. Her first feature, “Take A Number,” which she wrote, produced, and directed, debuted at the Slamdance festival and premiered on HBO. Fritzi studied at New York University’s summer film program and received a Bachelor of Arts in Film and English from Vassar College.

Creator of the Internal Family Systems Model (IFS)

Richard Schwartz

Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom
relief and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called
“parts.” These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks
of inner relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that
as they focused on and, thereby, separated from their parts, they would shift into a state
characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence and compassion. He called that inner
essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized
patients. From these explorations the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early
1980s.

IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly
with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a
practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and
more recently, corporations and and classrooms. In 2013 Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA where is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Psychiatry Professor, Harris-Woodman Chair at Western University of Canada, Director of the Clinical Research Program for PTSD

Ruth A. Lanius, M.D., Ph.D

Ruth A. Lanius, M.D., Ph.D. is a Psychiatry Professor and Harris-Woodman Chair at Western University of Canada, where she is the director of the Clinical Research Program for PTSD.
Ruth has over 25 years of clinical and research experience with trauma-related disorders. She established the Traumatic Stress Service at London Health Sciences Center, a program that specializes in the treatment of psychological trauma. Ruth has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the Banting Award for Military Health Research. She has published
over 150 research articles and book chapters focusing on brain adaptations to psychological trauma and novel adjunct treatments for PTSD. Ruth regularly lectures on the topic of psychological trauma both nationally and internationally. Ruth has co-authored two books: The Effects of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease: The Hidden Epidemic and Healing the Traumatized Self: Consciousness, Neuroscience, Treatment. Ruth is a passionate clinician scientist who endeavours to understand the first-person experience of traumatized individuals throughout treatment and how it relates to brain functioning.

A double Board-Certified Physician, boarded in both Preventive and Addiction Medicine with Double Master's degrees in Biochemistry and Public Health.

Dr. Aimie Apigian

Dr. Aimie Apigian is a double Board-Certified Physician, boarded in both Preventive and Addiction Medicine with Double Master’s degrees in Biochemistry and Public Health. She graduated from Loma Linda University in 2010 with her medical degree where she then went on to 3.5 years of general surgery residency.     

Having been a foster mom and then adoptive mom, she had personal experience with trauma in her home and then non-profit working with other adoptive families and their children until trauma became her own personal story with her body giving in during her surgery residency training.  Through all of these life experiences, she has discovered that life experiences become one’s biology and that trauma is more than our psychology.  It requires a specific process and a holistic integrative approach for addressing stored trauma in the body.  She left her thriving conventional addiction medicine practice, is a certified functional medicine physician, and has numerous trainings and certifications in functional medicine, mental health, addiction, and trauma therapy modalities.  Seeing the huge gap in both medicine and mental health for addressing stored trauma and its effects on the body, her mission is now to help 1 million people accelerate their trauma healing journey by addressing the Biology of Trauma, and bringing the model of the Biology of Trauma to every medical and mental health educational system by the year 2041. 

She does this through her business, Trauma Healing Accelerated, her podcast, The Biology of Trauma with 130,000 downloads, an active YouTube channel, free Masterclasses, her annual Biology of Trauma Summits with almost 200,000 registrations, but ultimately inviting people to her educational and experiential courses for individuals and her professional certificate training program.

Creator of Therapeutic Coaching and the founder and CEO of The Optimum Health Clinic (OHC)

Alex Howard

Alex Howard is Founder & Chairman of The Optimum Health Clinic(OHC), one of the world’s leading integrative medicine clinics.  With a team of 25 full time practitioners supporting thousands of patients in 50+ countries, the OHC team integrates a therapeutic coaching approach with functional nutrition.

Alex is creator of the Therapeutic Coaching methodology, and since March 2020, has been documenting his therapeutic work with real life patients via his In Therapy with Alex Howard YouTube series.  In the last few years, Alex has created some of the largest online conferences in the health and mind–body markets; including the world leading Trauma Super Conference. Alex’s online conferences have been attended by over a million people. 

Alex has published academic research in publications such as the British Medical Journal Open and Psychology and Health, and is the author of the books Why Me? and Decode Your Fatigue.  Alex’s latest book, It’s Not Your Fault – Why childhood trauma shapes you and how to break free is out now. 

ACTIVIST CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST AND CO-FOUNDER OF UNYOKE FOUNDATION

Nomfundo Walaza

Nomfundo Walaza is a clinical psychologist who has worked as an activist in the human rights field for more than three decades. She served as the CEO of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre (DTPC) for 7 years. She also served for 11 years as the Executive Director of the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture in Cape Town. In this capacity, Nomfundo focused primarily on the empowerment and the healing of victims of torture, trauma and violence, many of whom suffered severely at the hands of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. She also served the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa in multiple roles.

Since leaving the DTPC, Nomfundo Walaza has been deeply involved in mediation, conflict transformation, dialogue facilitation, peacebuilding and assisting academic institutions with engaging in difficult conversation around issues of transformation and decolonization.  Nomfundo co-founded the Unyoke Foundation with Chris Spies in 2017. She currently accompanies a group of aspirant young leaders in South Sudan and in the refugee camps in Uganda.

Nomfundo Walaza co-facilitates unyoke reflective retreats for international peace practitioners. She is dedicated to finding innovative ways to accompany young and upcoming peacebuilders within the African continent. Nomfundo has a keen interest in exploring African Indigenous Knowledge systems as they pertain to peacebuilding, mediation, and conflict transformation. She firmly believes that intergenerational accompaniment and support are the keys to addressing Africa’s intractable conflicts.

Prof Derek Farrell MBE is a Professor in Trauma Psychology at the University of Northumbria (Newcastle)

Derek Farrell

Prof Derek Farrell MBE is a Professor in Trauma Psychology at the University of Northumbria (Newcastle), University of Worcester, and Queen’s University Belfast. Derek is President of Trauma Aid Europe and the Trauma Response Network Ireland. He is also Co-Editor of the Journal of EMDR Practice & Research.  He has been involved in several Humanitarian Trauma capacity-building programmes, including Pakistan, Turkey, India, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Lebanon, Poland, Philippines, Palestine, and Iraq. Derek has authored over 50 academic peer-reviewed publications and several book chapters and is the Co-Editor of the Oxford Handbook of EMDR.

Rachel Yehuda

Rachel Yehuda, PhD, is an Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience of Trauma.  She is also Director of Mental Health at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Dr. Yehuda is a recognized leader in the field of traumatic stress studies, PTSD, and intergenerational trauma.  In 2019, Dr. Yehuda was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for her seminal contributions to understanding the psychological and biological impact of traumatic stress.  In 2020, Dr. Yehuda established and now directs the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research.

Thomas Hübl, PhD

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator whose lifelong work integrates the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has been leading large-scale events and courses that focus on the healing and integration of trauma. He has been teaching workshops and presenting training for Harvard Medical School since 2019 and is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. In 2022, he received a PhD in Wisdom Studies from Ubiquity University. 

His non-profit organisation, The Pocket Project, works to support the healing of collective trauma throughout the world. He is the author of Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds and the forthcoming book Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World.

Creator of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Method

Pat Ogden, PhD

Pat Ogden, PhD, (she/her), is a pioneer in somatic psychology, the creator of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy method, and founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (sensorimotor.org). Dr. Ogden is a clinician, consultant, international lecturer and the first author of two groundbreaking books in somatic psychology: Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (2015). Her third book, The Pocket Guide to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in Context, advocates for an anti-racist perspective in psychotherapy practice.  Her current interests include couple therapy, child and family therapy, social justice, diversity, inclusion, consciousness, and the philosophical/spiritual principles that underlie her work.