At the Anxiety and Depression Association (ADAA), we value each and every one of our members and feel that all of them are a distinguished part of the ADAA “family”. But when we have members who are actually related – mother, son, father, daughter, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, etc – we can’t help but find a way to highlight not only the relationship that they have to each other but to ADAA’s work and mission.

Meet the ADAA members who have passed along their appreciation of and dedication to ADAA's mission along to their family members.  If you have a family connection within ADAA, please reach out to [email protected]—we would love to share it with our community!

• Order of Canada Recipient & Daughter Share Clinical Interests, Career Paths and ADAA Benefits

  Aleiia Asmundson might just be the youngest person to have ever attended an ADAA conference. Her father, renowned Canadian psychologist and professor, Gordon J. G. Asmundson, PhD, has been a member of ADAA for over 30 years, calling it his “professional home,” and attending the annual conference for just as long. Bringing his daughter to conferences when she was a toddler may have had an impact on the young Aleiia and perhaps influenced her decision to follow in her father’s footsteps. 

• An ADAA Conference Love Story!

  Sterling Winters and Lana Ruvolo Gasser, PhD first met at the ADAA conference Washington D.C. in 2018. It was Lana's first time attending an ADAA conference and two veteran ADAA members introduced Sterling and Lana since they would all be working together at Wayne State University. It wasn't long after Sterling moved to Detroit that he and Lana's relationship flourished. They got engaged in December of 2023, and they celebrated their engagement with their science family at the ADAA 2024 Boston conference. "We love this extended ADAA family, and we will always fondly remember that day we met at the conference," Lana wrote to ADAA.

• And Then There Were Three: Mom, Dad & Daughter Share Why ADAA Membership Matters

  Stan and Michelle like to joke that Cindy was the “original” member from the clan, joining ADAA in 2004 and becoming what Stan admiringly calls a “bigshot” in the organization. Cindy J. Aaronson, PhD, served on ADAA’s Board of Directors from 2013 to 2016 and co-chaired the 2020/21 annual conference. Stan Arkow, MD, accompanied Cindy for years to ADAA conferences, made his membership official in late 2011, and became a co-leader in the Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program (CDLP). “I pulled Stan in and then when Michelle Pievsky, PhD was a student, we brought her in,” Cindy told ADAA. 

• Mother, Daughter Share a Bond Beyond the Biological: ADAA Membership, Opportunities, and a Path to Making a Difference

  “I heard about ADAA and went to my first conference, and that’s when I found my professional home,”  Ruth Lippin, LCSW, JD, told ADAA. Ruth’s initiation to ADDA was over 20 years ago and she has been a co-chair for the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group (SIG) for several years. Her daughter Rachel Lippin-Foster, LCSW who became a member in 2017, was a co-vice chair of the Early Career SIG and a recipient of the 2022 Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program (CDLP) award. 

• Like Mother, Like Son: Passing the Torch to the Next Generation

  In 1992, Eda Gorbis, PhD, LMFT attended her first ADAA annual conference, albeit having to cut it short to return home to her three-month-old infant who had become sick. Little did she know then that her little boy Alex would grow up to be a lot like her. At the age of eight or nine, Alex witnessed for the first, but not the last, time his mother in action at a conference in Philadelphia. Thirty years after Eda's first ADAA conference at the #ADAA2022 conference, she shared that stage with her son Alex Gorbis, MA.