Early Career Professionals & Students SIG

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Unites students and early career professionals interested in the clinical treatment and research of anxiety and depression. The group develops ADAA conference activities organized around topics specifically relevant to students and early career professionals, and offers an initial avenue for students and early career professionals to become involved in ADAA.  Early Career is typically defined as 5 years post degree attainment. View the SIG's 2021 Career Spotlights video series here.

To join this SIG, please login to your member account and choose Groups from the green menu bar at the top of your screen.  Please contact ADAA with questions. Please view the ADAA SIG Guidelines for responsibilities and expectations. 

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SIG Co-Chairs:

  • Rachel Lippin-Foster, LMSW
  • Ashley Howell, PhD

SIG Co-Vice Chairs:

  • Lana Ruvolo Grasser, PhD
  • Alnardo Martinez, LMHC 

Chair Emeritus: Lillian Reuman, PhD, Olivia Bogucki, PhD, Stephanie Woodrow, LCPC, NCC; Ashley Clausen, PhD; Krystal Lewis, PhD; Amanda Baker, PhD; Alex Bettis, PhD; Elle Brennan, PhD; Gopalkumar Rakesh, MD

Board Liaison: Mbemba Jabbi, PhD


Using Road Bumps as Ramps: How Temporary Setbacks and Challenges Can Positively Shape Careers

Video Series - Career Spotlights - 2021

Content focuses on wellness, work-life balance, and finding your professional path even when things don’t go smoothly. Presenters include five established professionals (bio information included below) with a mix of clinical and research career focuses. Watch interviews here.

Thomas Adams, PhD (University of Kentucky) - Tom Adams has an established track record with research in anxiety disorders, PTSD and OCD. Having trained at Yale University before moving to University of Kentucky, he has a K23 looking at effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on fear extinction learning with neuroimaging correlates. 
 
Dominique Apollon, MEd, LPC (NVision You) - Dominque Apollon is a clinical mental health therapist at a Chicago-based private practice. She received her masters in clinical mental health counseling from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Dominique specializes in evidence-based treatments, including mindfulness, for individuals and couples who are struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression, social anxiety, and other stress-related disorders.   

Patrick McGrath, PhD (NOCD) -  Patrick McGrath is an international lecturer and trainer for anxiety disorders and OCD. He also heads NOCD which is an established platform to disseminate treatments for OCD. 
 
Rajendra Morey, MD MS (Duke University) -
Rajendra Morey is an expert in PTSD neuroimaging research, traumatic brain injury research and heads the ENIGMA Psychiatry Genomics Consortium for PTSD. 
 
Rachel Singer, PhD (Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change) -
Rachel Singer is Director of Postdoctoral training at the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change. She specializes in child, family, and group therapy to address concerns related to anxiety disorders. She also specializes in working with immigrants, refugees and asylees.  
 
Murray Stein, MD, MPH, FRCPC (UC San Diego) -
Murray Stein is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Family & Preventive Medicine and Vice Chair for Clinical Research in Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where he directs the Anxiety & Traumatic Stress Disorders Program. He also heads the Injury and Traumatic Stress (INTRuST) Consortium, which studies treatments for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. 


Video Series - Career Spotlights - 2020

This two-part series features videos of early career professionals describing their current position and career path. In our first set of videos, you will hear from Drs. Rozenman, Berman, and O'Keefe discussing careers in research and teaching. We hope you enjoy watching!

Michelle Rozenman, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the clinical child psychology PhD program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Denver (DU). She received her PhD from the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, and completed a predoctoral internship and postdoctoral T32 fellowship at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior. She subsequently held a faculty position in the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, where she conducted research and served as Associate Director of UCLA Health's Pediatric OCD Intensive Outpatient Program before joining the faculty at DU. Dr. Rozenman's research centers on elucidating processes that underlie anxiety and related disorders in children and adolescents in order to develop theoretically and practically efficient interventions. She is also a clinical supervisor at the DU Center for Child and Family Psychology.

Watch my interview here.

Learn more about my lab.

Noah Berman, PhD completed his undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College and his MA and PhD at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, under the mentorship of Dr. Jonathan Abramowitz. He then completed his pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and was promoted to an Assistant Professor in their Department of Psychiatry. In 2017, he transitioned to his current role as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at College of the Holy Cross and Director of the Holy Cross Obsessive Compulsive Processes and Experimentation (HOPE) Laboratory. Dr. Berman has published over 50 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters on OCD, presented over 75 posters and symposia at professional conferences, and is an editorial board member of both the Journal of Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders and Cognitive and Behavioral Practice. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Berman treats adults with anxiety and OC-spectrum conditions within his Boston-based private practice.
Watch my interview here.

Victoria O’Keefe, PhD is an Associate Director and Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health. Notably, Dr. O’Keefe is the first ever Native American tenure-track faculty in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health history. As a member of the Cherokee and Seminole Nations of Oklahoma, she is dedicated to working collaboratively with tribal communities to eliminate health inequities. Her primary research area is in developing and evaluating strengths-based suicide prevention programs that are grounded in tribal culture and implemented/sustained by Native communities. She is also interested in social, historical, and cultural determinants that relate to health status (e.g., microaggressions, historical trauma, cultural identity). 
Watch my interview here.
Connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn (@vmokeefe)

Amy Mariaskin, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and director of the Nashville OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center. She specializes in the treatment of OCD, anxiety, and related disorders across the lifespan (ages 6+). She is an active member of the International OCD Foundation and adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University. 
Watch my interview here. 
Follow Nashville OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center: Instagram (@ocdnashville) and Facebook (@ocdnashville

Amelia Aldao, PhD is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Director of Together CBT, a clinic in New York City specializing in anxiety, OCD, stress, sleep, and depression. She is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and on the Psychiatry Faculty at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she teaches cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to graduate students and psychiatry residents, respectively. She is currently involved in the dissemination of evidence-based approaches via her YouTube channel (Therapy Corner) and her free biweekly webinars for the community. She was previously a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at The Ohio State University, where she ran a lab studying emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic process and published over 60 scientific articles (Google Scholar). She was also a Management Consultant at a “Big 3” firm, Boston Consulting Group, where she specialized in developing consumer-centric strategies for some of the world’s largest companies. 
Watch my interview here.
Connect with me on Twitter (@DrAmeliaAldao) or my website.

Meredith Charney, PhD is currently a clinical psychologist at Maine Medical Center in the Portland Identification and Early Referral (PIER) program; PIER is a coordinated specialty care program providing care to individuals at high risk of psychosis. Dr. Charney is relatively new to Maine; she has spent the majority of her career in clinical research programs providing evidence-based clinical care to individuals with anxiety, trauma, and grief as well as participating in numerous research studies. This includes work at the Washington DC VA Medical Center, the VA Boston Healthcare System, and the Massachusetts General Hospital. In the more recent years, Dr. Charney was a psychologist in the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders (CATSD) and the Home Base Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Charney also has a strong interest in training and mentorship and has supervised a multitude of practicum students, interns, and postdocs over the years. In her later years at CATSD, she also served as the director of psychotherapy and training.
Watch my interview here.


Webinar Series: Preparing Yourself to be a Competitive Applicant: The Ins and Outs of Curriculum Vitae, Personal Statements and Cover Letters


2021-2022 Annual Report

SIG Philosophy & Function: 

The Early Career Professionals and Students (ECP/S) Special Interest Group (SIG) focuses on bringing together all ADAA members who identify as students and early career professionals. The group offers opportunities for networking and mentorship; distributes relevant information; promotes communication (e.g., Twitter #ADAAEarlyCareer and a quarterly newsletter); and develops ADAA conference activities, webinars, and online material throughout the year organized around topics specifically relevant to students and early career professionals. Our SIG offers an initial avenue for students and early career professionals to become more involved in ADAA by encouraging new and continued ADAA membership through varied programming.  

Accomplishments:

Over the past year, the ECP/S SIG leader engaged in many projects to help promote the SIG while supporting the broader ADAA community. For example, we developed a new video series of career spotlights on navigating challenges within clinical and research careers. We established a Twitter hashtag #ADAAEarlyCareer and created a quarterly newsletter to spotlight SIG members, share SIG updates, and publicize relevant ADAA resources. Finally, we distributed a survey to gain a greater understanding of our membership and the SIG activities and programming that they would like to engage with or participate in.  

Throughout the 2021-2022 year, the ECP/S SIG leaders have continued to connect early career professionals with open post-doctoral and staff positions advertised by ADAA members. We recruited two new vice chairs for the SIG and have maintained positive connections with previous chairs. Furthermore, we reformatted the “Membership Outreach” subcommittee to improve marketing for the SIG and better engage SIG members on Twitter and the new ADAA online member community. 

Plans for the Future:

The ECP/S SIG also plans to contribute meaningfully to the 2022 Conference. For example, we plan to host a luncheon between SIG members and established professionals, representing both clinical- and research-focused careers, to promote interdisciplinary connection and professional networking. We also plan to continue recruitment and networking at our inaugural SIG evening happy hour during the ADAA 2022 conference as an opportunity for casual interaction among SIG members.  

Additionally, the ECP/S SIG leaders will present a panel discussion entitled “Navigating the Pandemic’s Remote Job Market During Times of Uncertainty: Tips and Strategies for Early Career Members.” This panel aligns with the theme of this year’s ADAA conference, “Common Psychopathology: What Can the Past Tell us About the Future?” This panel is intended to assist current students and early career psychologists in their own career planning. During this panel, SIG leaders will present firsthand accounts of identifying, applying and interviewing for, and making decisions about clinical and academic positions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this panel is to share lessons and strategies to benefit early career professionals that anticipate applying for a job in the coming year. 

In addition to the above activities, the ECP/S SIG plans to continue collaborating with other SIGs across ADAA and liaison with the incoming early career professional board member. This is especially important as our members are often members of multiple other SIGs and networking is a key aspect of being an early career professional. We also plan to recruit new co-vice chairs for 2022-2023.