Invited Speakers for 2025 World Conference

2025 Plenary Speakers

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D. 

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., is among the top 0.1% most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior. Dr. Barrett has published over 275 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes published by Guilford Press. She writes regularly about science in the popular press, including The New York Times, The Guardian, Scientific American, BBC Science Focus, Popular Science, Nautilus, BigThink, Cosmopolitan,  Time magazine, MIT Technology Review, and more (see full list). Her popular TED talk has been viewed over 7 million times.

Dr. Barrett received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multimillion dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, the APS Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, and the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology in 2021.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. 

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 33 languages and include Making Great Relationships, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha’s Brain, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well podcast – which has been downloaded over 16 million times. His free newsletters have 260,000 subscribers, and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial needs. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.

Rhonda M. Merwin, Ph.D. 

Rhonda M. Merwin, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor for the Duke University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Merwin completed her doctorate at the University of Mississippi and an NIH-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship in Behavioral Medicine at Duke University Medical Center before joining the Duke faculty in 2008. Dr. Merwin has expertise in eating disorders, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and psychological concerns in the management of Type 1 diabetes. She is 1 of 111 peer-reviewed ACT trainers worldwide, a Fellow, and current President of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. 

Baljinder Kaur Sahdra, Ph.D. 

Associate Professor Baljinder Kaur Sahdra is a researcher at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, Australia. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. She has made substantial scientific contributions in the areas of well-being, mindfulness, compassion, nonattachment, intensive meditation, discrimination and social identity, compulsive internet use, educational psychology, and personalizing psychology (see more here: https://bit.ly/BaljinderSahdraPhD). Her research articles are highly cited (7,000+ Google Scholar citations; 950+ media mentions). She has been awarded with several prestigious awards and competitive research grants ($7+ million). She is passionate about the role of idionomic methods, which integrate individual-level and group-level insights to advance data-driven personalized psychological care. Most relevant for this plenary talk, her recent research focuses on idionomic analyses of psychological processes of change, such as, compassion, valued-action, mindfulness, and psychological flexibility.  

Michael Tomasello, Ph.D.

Michael Tomasello, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, has applied a comparative and developmental approach toward seeking answers. His studies on the psychological processes of social cognition, social learning, cooperation, and communication shed light on human uniqueness as well as on the cognitive abilities of our closest ape relatives. Tomasello, who is emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017. 

2025 Invited Speakers

Maysa Akbar, Ph.D., ABPP

Maysa Akbar, Ph.D., ABPP, is a respected scientist-practitioner and APA’s chief diversity officer (CDO) and chief of psychology in the public interest, charged with infusing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) into the fabric of the association’s work. Before assuming the CDO post, Akbar was the founder and chief executive officer of a clinical practice based in New Haven, Connecticut, that specialized in race-based trauma. She also created a consulting firm and educational network focused on organizational cultural transformation. Her firm delivered cutting-edge programs anchored in EDI to city governments, public schools, and court systems, among other entities.

Akbar’s areas of specialty include racial identity development, racism, urban trauma, and allyship, topics on which she has written research articles, books, and book chapters. Akbar is an experienced instructor and master trainer in EDI for both the medical and the broader community. Akbar held a faculty appointment from 2004–21 at the Yale School of Medicine Child Study Center as an assistant clinical professor with multiple roles, including conducting research, teaching, and serving as an administrator and supervisor. Akbar also completed her pre- and postdoctoral training at the Yale Child Study Center with a specialty track in early childhood development. She is certified in child and adolescent psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Robert Johansson, Ph.D.

Robert Johansson is an interdisciplinary researcher with dual PhDs: one in clinical psychology (2013) and another in computer science (2024), specializing in the development of adaptive AI systems informed by learning psychology. His pioneering work in Machine Psychology integrates principles from learning psychology with the Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System (NARS) to create AI systems capable of human-like relational reasoning.

Currently an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden, Robert has extensive experience in emotion-focused therapies and in developing innovative psychological treatments, particularly through guided self-help delivered via the Internet. His interdisciplinary expertise allows him to bridge the gap between psychological science and artificial intelligence, contributing to the development of ethically adaptive AI systems that align with human values.

Jennifer Shepard Payne, Ph.D., LCSW

Jennifer Shepard Payne, is a Research Scientist and Clinician at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in the Center for Child and Family Traumatic Stress (CCFTS) and the Center for the Neuroscience of Social Injustice. She is also an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins    University School of Medicine, with a primary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

She received her doctorate in Social Welfare from UCLA and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with many years of experience in mental health clinical practice. For several years, Dr. Payne has been working on culturally tailoring Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for African American communities experiencing racial and systemic trauma. She developed a culturally-tailored ACT intervention called POOF™ and trains and consults on the model: www.POOF-PullingOutOfFire.com. Her book, Out Of The Fire, is a love note for Blacks and others suffering from the paralyzing effects of systemic racism.