Gabor Maté M.D. is a physician and best-selling author whose books have been published in twenty languages internationally. His interests include child development, the mind-body unity in health and illness, and the treatment of addictions. Gabor has worked in palliative care and as a family physician, and for fourteen years practiced addiction medicine in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. As a speaker he regularly addresses professional and lay audiences throughout North America. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Simon Fraser University Outstanding Alumnus Award and an honourary degree from the University of Northern British Columbia. His most recent book, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, won the Hubert Evans Prize for literary nonfiction. He is Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Criminology, Simon Fraser University.

Margaret E. Blaustein, Ph.D., is a practicing clinical psychologist whose career has focused on the understanding and treatment of complex childhood trauma and its sequelae. Dr. Blaustein is co-developer of the Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency (ARC) treatment framework (Kinniburgh & Blaustein, 2005), and co-author of the text, Treating Complex Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Fostering Resilience through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency(Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2010). 

Dr. Blaustein’s work has been hailed as “a landmark for understanding and treating traumatized children” by world renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and has been embraced by over 300 agencies and/or child-serving systems in the U.S. and abroad who use the ARC framework. 

She has provided extensive training and consultation to providers worldwide. Dr. Blaustein is the director of the Center for Trauma Training in Needham, MA, and is actively involved in local, regional, and national collaborative groups dedicated to the empathic, respectful, and effective provision of services to this population.

Frank Guastella Anderson, MD, completed his residency and was a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is both a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He specializes in the treatment of trauma and dissociation and is passionate about teaching brain-based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the IFS model of therapy.

Dr. Anderson is the vice chair and director of the Foundation for Self Leadership. He is a trainer at the Center for Self Leadership with Richard Schwartz, PhD, and maintains a long affiliation with, and trains for, Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Center at Justice Resource Center in Boston, MA.

Dr. Anderson has lectured extensively on the Neurobiology of PTSD and Dissociation and wrote the chapter “Who’s Taking What” Connecting Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Internal Family Systems for Trauma in Internal Family Systems Therapy-New Dimensions. He co-authored a chapter on “What IFS Brings to Trauma Treatment in Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy” and recently coauthored the Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual. 

Dr. Anderson maintains a private practice in Concord, MA, and serves as an Advisor to the International Association of Trauma Professionals (IATP).

Bessel A. Van der Kolk, M.D., is a clinician, researcher and teacher in the area of post-traumatic stress.  His work integrates developmental, neurobiological, psychodynamic and interpersonal aspects of the impact of trauma and its treatment.

Dr. van der Kolk and his various collaborators have published extensively on the impact of trauma on development, such as dissociative problems, borderline personality and self-mutilation, cognitive development, memory, and the psychobiology of trauma.  He has published over 150 peer reviewed scientific articles on such diverse topics as neuroimaging, self-injury, memory, neurofeedback, Developmental Trauma, yoga, theater and EMDR. 

He is founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts.  The Trauma Center consists of a well-trained clinical team specializing in the treatment of children and adults with histories of child maltreatment, that applies treatment models that are widely taught and implemented nationwide.  He also created the Trauma Research Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Trauma Center, that is organized to promote clinical, scientific and educational projects.

His most recent 2014 New York Times best seller, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Treatment of Trauma, transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring – specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust.  He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, somatically based therapies, EMDR, psychodrama, play, yoga, and other therapies.

Dr. van der Kolk is the past president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and professor of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School.  He regularly teaches at conferences, universities, and hospitals around the world.

Matthew Sanford, yoga teacher, founder of Mind Body Solutions, and a paraplegic for the last 39 years.  Sanford is the author of Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence. He teaches people around the US living with trauma, loss, and disability how to re-inhabit their bodies. 

Rev. Gloria E. White-Hammond, MD, MDiv, co-pastor, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Boston; visiting scholar in medicine and spirituality, Harvard Divinity School; retired pediatrician, South End Community Health Center; cofounder, Do The Write Thing for high risk- adolescent girls, and My Sister’s Keeper for women in conflict zones.