Speaker Bios

Workshop Agenda

Workshop Speakers include:

Dr. Paula Clayton joined the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) as its medical director in 2006. Dr. Clayton graduated from the University of Michigan in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science degree. In 1960, she graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. She joined the faculty thereafter and became Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine in 1980. Most recently, she was a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine where she taught at the psychiatric outpatient clinic for five years. She has published four books and written more than 160 papers and 20 book chapters. Her research has been in mood disorders and bereavement.

Dr. Clayton has been a researcher, educator and perpetual student of psychiatry for more than fifty years. In addition to her research expertise and vast experience in education, Dr. Clayton is also a member of several editorial boards, psychiatric societies, and on other governmental and nongovernmental committees. She has received numerous awards during her career including the Alumni Athena Award in 1985 from the University of Michigan as the Outstanding Woman Alumna of the Year, and the First Aphrodite Jannapaula Hofsommer Award from Washington University in 1993. As a pioneering psychiatrist, she was the first woman chair of a department of psychiatry in the country and first woman chair at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

Robert Gebbia is the executive director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Prior to joining AFSP in 1997, he was with the United Way, and also worked as a senior health planner for the New York City Department of Health. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from Hofstra University and an M.A. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research.

Ari L. Goldman is a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism where he has taught a seminar called “Covering Religion” for nearly two decades. With the support of the Scripps Howard Foundation, Goldman has taken his “Covering Religion” students on study-tours of Italy, Ireland, India, Russia, Israel and the Palestinian territories to look at the role of religion in global conflict. He has also led groups of journalism students from various schools to Poland and Germany as part of a program called Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics.

Goldman pioneered a course at Columbia in “The Journalism of Death and Dying” which covers everything from writing obituaries to covering suicides, memorials and mass death. Goldman is a former New York Times religion writer and the author of the best-selling book “The Search for God at Harvard.” His most recent book is a memoir about death and loss, “Living a Year of Kaddish.”

Madelyn Gould, Ph.D., M.P.H is a professor of clinical  epidemiology in psychiatry at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her long-standing research interests include the epidemiology of youth suicide, as well as the evaluation of youth suicide prevention interventions.

Dr. Gould has received numerous federally funded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIMH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) for studies examining risk factors for teenage suicide, various aspects of cluster suicides, the impact of the media on suicide, the effect of a peer’s suicide on fellow students and suicide postvention programs in schools. She also received a W.T. Grant Faculty Scholar’s Award to examine psychosocial risk factors for teenage suicide and a Distinguished Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to investigate the role of the media in the initiation of suicide clusters.

She has participated in a number of state and national government commissions, including the 1978 President’s Commission on Mental Health, the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Task Force on Youth Suicide (1989), and she authored the chapter on youth suicide prevention, as part of the Surgeon General’s 1999 national Suicide Prevention Strategy. The recipient of the Shneidman Award for Research from the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) in 1991, the New York State Office of Mental Health Research Award in 2002, and the 2006 American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Research Award.

Jesse Green is a contributing editor at New York magazine since 2008. He has written dozens of cultural features and profiles as well as a wide range of dramatic stories, including reports on the massacre in Mumbai, a suicide at Dalton, transgender children, and the first Ellis Island immigrant. He previously wrote theater and other arts features for the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times while covering broader topics for the Times magazine. His work has also appeared in many other publications, including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, GQ, and The Yale Review. 

In addition to his journalism, Green is the author of The Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood, a memoir that was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Los Angeles Times Book Review, one of the ten best memoirs or biographies of the year by amazon.com and one of the best parenting books of the year by Child magazine. It was also the recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation prize in the biography/autobiography category. His first novel, O Beautiful, which Entertainment Weekly called “one of the best first novels of the year,” was published by Ballantine Books. His short stories and essays have been published in many collections.

Ann P. Haas, Ph.D. is the senior director of education and prevention at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Her work has focused in particular on suicide and suicide risk among teens and college students, LGBT populations and veterans. In 2005, she coauthored the chapter on youth suicide in a volume produced by the Annenberg Foundation’s Adolescent Mental Health Initiative, and was the lead author of a 2011 consensus report titled Suicide and Suicide Risk in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Populations: Review and Recommendations, which appeared in the January 2011 edition of the Journal of Homosexuality. She serves on the Task Force on LGBT Populations of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.

Dr. Haas’ primary interest is in developing research-based interventions for suicide prevention. Over the last decade, she has developed and directed AFSP’s Interactive Screening Program (ISP), an anonymous online method to engage individuals with untreated mental health problems to seek help. Initially designed as an outreach tool for college and university students, the ISP has been adapted for many other populations including corporate employees, law enforcement personnel, veterans and military service members. Before coming to AFSP, Dr. Haas was Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Sciences at The City University of New York, and held appointments at New York Medical College and the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Montrose, NY.

Thomas Joiner, Ph.D., received his undergraduate degree at Princeton and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. He is Distinguished Research Professor and the Bright-Burton Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Dr. Joiner's work is on the psychology, neurobiology, and treatment of suicidal behavior and related conditions. Author of over 395 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Joiner was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Residency Fellowship. He was elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and received the Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Shakow Award for Early Career Achievement from the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association, the Shneidman Award for Excellence in Suicide Research from the American Association of Suicidology, and the Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions from the American Psychological Association, as well as research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Defense, and various foundations.

He is editor of the American Psychological Association's Clinician's Research Digest, editor of theJournal of Social & Clinical Psychology, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior. He has authored or edited fifteen books, including Why People Die By Suicide, published in 2005 by Harvard University Press, and Myths About Suicide, also with Harvard University Press. Dr. Joiner is clinically active as Director of FSU's University Psychology Clinic, and thus oversees the supervision by five psychologists of 20 clinical psychology graduate students treating approximately 80 patients per week. Dr. Joiner provides six to twelve-hour workshops on suicidal behavior and mood disorders to nurses, social workers, psychologists and allied health professionals across the U.S. He runs a consulting practice specializing in suicidal behavior, including legal consultation on suits involving death by suicide.

Christopher (Kit) Lukas is an author and Emmy-winning television producer whose brother, renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Tony Lukas, and mother, died by suicide. For over 50 years, Lukas has produced, directed, and written films and video programs for public television and other non-profit organizations. In the 60’s and 70’s, he was at WNET in New York, first as a Producer, then as Director of Programming. He served as a Producer/Director and Executive Producer at KQED in San Francisco, and then spent ten years as senior producer with AHP, Inc., the documentary company in New York.

As a freelancer, he has created dozens of videos on end-of-life care, Jewish-Catholic relations, drug rehabilitation, and various arenas in the arts. In the 1980’s he spent six years as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Communications at CCNY, and was a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). From 1997 to 2011 he wrote and produced the Edward R. Murrow Awards for the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association (recently renamed RTDNA.) Recently, he taught himself camera and editing skills and has created four hour-long documentaries for television. As a writer, he has six books to his credit, including Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicideand Blue Genes: A Memoir on Loss and Survival, both looking into the effects upon those left behind after a suicide.

Alison Malmon is the founder and executive director of Active Minds, Inc., the leading national organization that uses students as the driving force to change the perception about mental health on college campuses. She formed the organization following the suicide of her only sibling, twenty-two year old brother Brian Malmon. Wanting to combat the stigma that had caused her brother to suffer in silence and ultimately take his own life, she created a group on her campus at the University of Pennsylvania that promoted an open, enlightened dialogue around the issues. Just after graduating Phi Beta Kappa with honors in Psychology and Sociology in 2003, Alison formed the 501(c)3 organization in order to develop and support chapters of the student group on campuses around the country. From that moment forward, she has served as Executive Director of the non-profit, leading the organization as it engages thousands of student leaders nationwide and promotes a unified national voice for young adults in the mental health awareness movement.

For her efforts, Malmon has been named one of the "Top 15 Emerging Social Innovators in the World" by Ashoka Changemakers and American Express, Washingtonian of the Year (2007) by Washingtonian Magazine, Citizen of the Year (2008) by the Potomac, Maryland Rotary Club, and a Woman of Distinction (2007) by the American Association of University Women. She has also received the Tipper Gore Remember the Children Award from Mental Health America, the inaugural Young Leadership Award from the National Mental Health Research Association (NARSAD), the Leadership Award from Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, and was named the first-ever Montgomery County Public Schools (MD) Distinctive Alumnus. Alison has been profiled as a "Person you Should Know" on CNN, and in stories in the New York Times,Washington Post, Glamour Magazine, and ABC's Good Morning America, among others.

Eric Marcus is the author of Why Suicide? Questions & Answers about Suicide, Suicide Prevention, andCoping with the Suicide of Someone You Know. He is also the author of several books, including Is It a Choice? and Making Gay History. And he is co-author of Breaking the Surface, the New York Times #1 best-selling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis. A former Associate Producer for “Good Morning America” and CBS Morning News, Marcus is a graduate of Vassar College and received a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University. In December 1970, Marcus’ father, Irwin, took his life at the age of 44 after struggling with depression since serving in the Navy during World War II. His 49-year-old sister-in-law also died by suicide on Election Day in 2008.

Brian Mustanski, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences and directs the IMPACT LGBT Health and Development Program at Northwestern University. A central focus of his research is on the clustering of psychological, behavioral, and physical health, particularly as they relate to HIV in vulnerable populations. Dr. Mustanski received his doctorate in Psychology from Indiana University, where he trained extensively at the Kinsey Institute. He has been the Principal Investigator for multiple National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and other foundation research and training awards, including being named a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar. The majority of his research focuses on the health and development of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. In addition, he conducts applied research on HIV prevention among young men who have sex with men (MSM). Dr. Mustanski was an early adopter of using the Internet for health research and his ongoing work seeks to apply new technology to improve research and interventions.

Dr. Mustanski also conducts research in the area of psychiatric and behavioral genetics. In 2005 he co-authored the first genome scan of male sexual orientation and he is currently the Principal Investigator of a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded natural experiment to study gene-environment interaction. Dr. Mustanski serves as a Co-Investigator on multiple other studies of gene-environment interplay, helping to serve as a bridge between biomedical and behavioral scientists. Dr. Mustanski is a licensed Clinical Psychologist with a focus on the treatment of sexual and relationship problems.

Matthew Nock, Ph.D., a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, received a B.A. (1995) from Boston University and an M.S. (2000), M.Phil. (2001), and Ph.D. (2003) from Yale University. Since 2003, he has been affiliated with Harvard University, where he is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology. He is the editor of Understanding Nonsuicidal Self-Injury: Origins, Assessment and Treatment (2009), and his scientific articles have appeared in such publications as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

In addition to winning a prestigious MacArthur award, Nock received an Award for Distinguished Early Career Scientific Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association in 2010. He has also earned awards from the American Association of Suicidology and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, as well as teaching awards at Harvard.

Joseph Pyle is President of the Thomas Scattergood Behavioral Health Foundation, a Quaker-based philanthropic organization in Philadelphia. He has more than 20 years of experience in behavioral health, serving eight years as a chief executive officer at various institutions, including Meadow Wood Behavioral Health System, Northwestern Institute of Psychiatry, Malvern Institute and Friends Hospital. Pyle joined Friends Hospital in 1999, and has been part of its executive team since that time. In 2004, he was named interim chief executive officer by the Board of Managers, and set into place significant changes that improved patient care, contained costs, and brought the hospital into full licensure and accreditation with all regulatory agencies.

Prior to his administrative positions, Pyle held various clinical positions, including clinical director of adolescent services at Meadow Wood Hospital and psycho-educational specialist at Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic. He held special education teaching positions in the Pennsauken, New Jersey and Montgomery County Intermediate Unit school systems. Pyle sits on several non-profit boards, including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the Family Planning Council, where he has recently been appointed treasurer. He also serves on WHYY’s Health and Science Advisory Board and the advisory board for the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the Drexel School Public Health. He has most recently been appointed to the Board of Friends Behavioral Health System. He has served on the boards of the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, the Delaware Valley Health Care Council, and served as co-chair of the Pennsylvania Health Funders Collaboration.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely is an award-winning feature writer and investigative journalist based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, SELF, GQ, The New Yorker, Mother Jones,Glamour, and Men’s Health, among other national magazines. Her articles have been anthologized inBest American Crime Reporting and have received a number of awards, including a National Magazine Award nomination. Erdely specializes in long-form narrative writing, especially about crime and health. She has written about con artists, murder investigations, vicious divorces, power brokers, lovable eccentrics, bioweapons, cults, sexual violence, medical ethics, forgotten artists, and teachers who have affairs with students — among other subjects.

Christopher Ruhm is professor of public policy and economics with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and the Department of Economics. Prior to joining UVA, he held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Boston University, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Brandeis University. During the 1996-97 academic year he served as Senior Economist on President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is currently a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany, associate editor of the Southern Economics Journal and Journal of Population Economics, editorial board member of the Journal of Labor Research, steering committee member of the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group and Vice President of the Southern Economic Association.

Phillip M. Satow has spent 35 years in the pharmaceutical industry. He spent 14 years at Pfizer, Inc. where his last position was as the vice president of Pfizer Europe. In 1985 he joined Forest Laboratories and was responsible for founding the marketing and sales organization. He served as executive vice president, president of Forest Laboratories, and a member of the board of directors, in addition to the Forest Laboratories Board, which he served on from 1999 to 2005.

Mr. Satow was formerly a member of the board of directors of Eyetech Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Noven Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Satow is currently a member of the Board of Curcell Inc, a Dutch publicly traded bio-tech company.  After retirement from Forest Laboratories, Mr. Satow and his son founded JDS Pharmaceuticals, LLC, a privately held company that was purchased in 2007 by Noven Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Satow and his family founded The Jed Foundation in 2000 after the loss of their youngest son to suicide. He currently serves as the Foundation's President of the Board.

Maiken Scott is WHYY’s behavioral health reporter and covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from new treatments for depression to the impact of foster care on children to the portrayal of mental illness in pop culture. Maiken started working at WHYY in 1997. Her first job with WHYY was as producer for the weekly mental health program Voices in the Family with Dr. Dan Gottlieb. She still serves as the executive producer for the show. Some of the most memorable shows Dan and Maiken produced together featured interviews with actor Christopher Reeve, mathematician Dr. John Nash, and Mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn. 

Maiken has also produced and hosted several award-winning radio documentaries for WHYY including Growing up Big, In The Shadow of 9/11, Healing Healthcare, and Childhood Lost and Found, for which she was honored with the prestigious Gracie Allen Award.

Bruce Shapiro is the executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. An award-winning reporter on human rights, criminal justice and politics, Shapiro is a contributing editor at The Nationmagazine and U.S. correspondent for Late Night Live on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National.  As an investigative journalist and commentator, Shapiro has covered terrain ranging from inner-city neighborhoods to the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the mid-1990s, he began extensive reporting on crime victims and American society, and documented the intersection of politics and violence on issues ranging from capital punishment to combat trauma. He was national correspondent for Salon.com and has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and numerous other publications worldwide. Shapiro’s most recent book isShaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America. He is co-author of Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America's Future, with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. He teaches investigative journalism at Yale University, and has been featured as a commentator on the BBC, CNN, Fox News and NPR.

Jonathan Singer, PhD, is an assistant professor of social work in the College of Health Professions and Social Work at Temple University. His clinical and research interests focus on family-based interventions for suicidal and cyber-bullied youth, service access and service utilization, and use of technology in education and clinical practice. Dr. Singer’s recent research has focused on how technologies such as podcasts and social networking sites can be used to disseminate information about prevention and intervention of youth suicidal behaviors, cyber-bullying, and social work education and training.

Al Tompkins is a senior faculty member for broadcast and online at The Poynter Institute. For nearly 30 years, he worked as a photojournalist, reporter, producer, anchor, assistant news director, special projects/investigations director, documentary producer and news director.

Tompkins has trained thousands of television news producers, reporters, photojournalists and managers in his One-Day Storytelling Workshops in 45 states, Canada, Denmark, Iceland and South Africa. He has taught and coached print newsrooms in the U.S. and abroad on how to build interactive news websites, how to use video more effectively online and how to manage ethical issues that arise online. Tompkins was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and in 2008 was awarded The Governor’s Award, the highest honor given by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. During his two and a half decades as a journalist, Tompkins has won the National Emmy, the Peabody Award (group award), the Japan Prize, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel for Court Reporting, seven National Headliner Awards, two Iris Awards and the Robert F. Kennedy Award.

For almost ten years, thousands of people a day read his online journalism story idea column “Al’s Morning Meeting” on Poynter.org. Tompkins is the author of the book Aim For The Heart: A Guide for TV Producers and Reporters, which was adopted by more than 90 universities as their main broadcast writing textbook. He co-authored four editions of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation’sNewsroom Ethics workbook.