2026 Diversity Award

Selected for the 2026 Diversity Award is Bhadravathi Sridhar Sindhushri.  Sindhu was nominated by Lou Lasprugato.

I have been associated with ACBS since 2015 and since the day I joined the organization, I've been dedicated to advancing and disseminating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) across India.

I started by talking about ACT in my professional circles here in India, and went on to start my own mental health centre in 2018. At the time I started my centre, I was the only one in the entire country doing exclusive ACT as part of a professional practice in India.

My major contribution towards diversity, equity, and inclusion has been to make ACT more accessible to mental health professionals through training, mentorship, workshops, and community-building initiatives. India is a country of 1.3 billion people, with 9 religions, and more than 19000+ languages are in existence. ACT is honestly the best fit for my country's diverse cultural context and to amplify this message, I founded the India ACT chapter in 2020, and after running it successfully for many years, I demoted it to affiliate status in 2025. I am still the primary person running the affiliate.

As part of running the chapter, I have coordinated with ACT experts such as Russ Harris to make his courses accessible to the chapter members, and set up RFT workshops with Lou Lasprugato to include more people in the ACT journey. The affiliate's Whatsapp group is active with people messaging about queries regarding ACT and I have made myself as available as possible to continue nurturing a sustainable ACT community in India.

In addition to this, I have been actively involved with ACBS through multiple roles over the years. I was the co-chair of the Developing nations committee (September 2019 to March 2021), and also ran the ACT across cultures SIG (from January 2020 to June 2024). I have also been a Member-At-Large with the ACBS board (July 2021 - March 2023).

More importantly, my commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion has extended beyond India. I co-chaired the ACBS Emerging Voices conference in the year 2021, and included professionals from historically underserved regions, including several African nations, to participate in and contribute to the global ACT community. People from the Indian subcontinent and African nations had a more affordable conference rate. Additionally, I ran a panel discussion in the conference, in which ACT clinicians from the countries of Uganda, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Bulgaria, Malaysia and India participated.

Finally, I know firsthand how important representation is. As the first peer-reviewed ACT trainer from India, I have built all of my professional journey without ever having the opportunity to attend an ACT conference in person. I would be deeply grateful if the ACBS Diversity Award could help me finally be physically present at an ACBS conference and participate in person in the global ACT community that I have worked for years to build.