2024 Annual Report - ACBS Foundation

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear ACBS members, 

On behalf of the board of the ACBS Foundation I want to sincerely thank you for the invaluable support that you continue to provide for our shared mission. Our members are at the core of what makes us great and why we have so much potential to make change in the future. 

We provide funds to people and projects who would otherwise not have access to funding. Through this, we serve our worldwide community by funding social/community initiatives and CBS research projects related to the environment, improving diversity, equity, and inclusion, and addressing institutional racism in real life contexts. Our work is focused on ending global disparities. This is exemplified by the diverse range of projects listed in the attached 2024 ACBS Foundation report.

As I’m sure you recall, the ACBS Foundation was established thanks to the generous donation of two longtime ACBS members, Jason Luoma and Jenna LeJeune. This donation was used as the basis for the Aaron S. Luoma Fund for Global Equity, which funds any initiatives matching its mission via the annual Foundation Grant. 

More recently, Mavis Tsai and Barbara Kohlenberg very generously funded a second grant award program called the Robert (Bob) J. Kohlenberg Research Awards. It is designed to support research focused upon advancing knowledge and expertise in Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) or its dissemination to the general public via the Awareness, Courage & Love Global Project. This funding was originally established to provide dedicated support for early career/graduate researchers, and based upon a second major donation from Mavis Tsai it will soon provide support for established FAP researchers also. 

We’re proud to say that we’re continuing to make an impact. Some of the steps we achieved over the last year include: 

• Awarding two Foundation Student Scholarships to attend the ACBS World Conference. To read about the impact the Foundation scholarship had for the 2024 recipient - Paula Rodríguez.
• Please see the names of the 2024 awarded grants below.

The ACBS Foundation board wish to expressly thank everyone who helped facilitate this work by making a donation or by peer reviewing all of the funding applications that we received. If you have not done so already, please consider volunteering to be a peer reviewer for this year’s grant applications (with submission deadline March 1st). To learn more about the ACBS Foundation, please click here.

Lastly, I would like to sincerely thank the establishing members of the ACBS Foundation board who completed their service to the board over the past year or so: Prof. Kenneth Fung, Dr. Joann Wright, Dr. Jessica Borushok, and Dr. Andreas Larsson. You have each contributed richly to the long-term development of the ACBS Foundation. 

We look forward to continuing the momentum this year and beyond in order to further support existing CBS activities and explore areas for future development. 

Kind regards, 

Nigel Vahey