Featured Speakers
Aditi Nerurkar, MD, MPH is Harvard physician, Forbes contributor & an NBC News medical commentator. Her expertise is in the science of stress, resilience and burn- out. She offers insights in optimizing mental health, well- being and productivity during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.
She is on faculty at Harvard Medical School in the Division of Global Health & Social Medicine and serves as the Co-Director of the Harvard Clinical Clerkship in Community Engagement. Prior, she worked in global public health in Geneva, Switzerland with a World Health Organization collaborating center.
Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNN, NPR, and Oprah Magazine, as well as the Top Doctors issue of Boston Magazine. Her published research can be found in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Dr. Nerurkar is also a media and health contributor. She is a col- umnist for Forbes and can be seen on-air as a medical commen- tator for NBC News. Most recently, she was recognized by The Washington Post for her work amplifying the Covid-19 pandemic in India.
She is an internationally-recognized speaker on stress, resilience, burnout and mental health with recent talks at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, the Harvard Business School Women's Confer- ence, and the keynote speaker for Dell Technologies
Dr. Lisa Kearney is the Executive Director for the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) within VA Suicide Prevention for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Her work focuses on the development of VA’s comprehensive public health approach to suicide prevention and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the VCL and VA Suicide Prevention.
Dr. Kearney recently served as the Associate Director of Education at the VA Center for Integrated Healthcare. Previously, she worked nationally as part of the executive team in the VA Office of Mental Health Operations as the Senior Consultant for Technical Assistance, overseeing mental health policy implementation through quality improvement site visits across the VA system. At the VA field level, Dr. Kearney served as the Chief of Psychology, Assistant Chief, Director of Training, and Director of Primary Care Mental Health Integration at the South Texas Veterans Health Care System.
Dr. Kearney is also a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health San Antonio. She is the Associate Editor for Psychological Services and an Editor for Psychology of Men and Masculinity. She currently serves as the Past-President of the American Academy of Clinical Health Psychology. Dr. Kearney is a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin with a PhD in Counseling Psychology and is board certified in Clinical Health Psychology.
My mantra:”Look what I get to do.”
I knew from high school that I wanted to be a helper, maybe becoming a counselor, a doctor or a teacher…..I’ve had the privilege of being two out of the three.
Since becoming an LPC in 1996, I’ve been on a course of learning about and advocating for all things that promote healthy development of individuals, children and families. As the Chief Program and Strategy Officer at The Up Center, I get to innovate and participate with many trajectory-changing services in our community. These include mental health, early childhood home visiting, foster care, services to individuals with different abilities, mentoring…I honestly cannot decide which one I feel more passionate about.
I love studying about how experiences and relationships shape the brain and lay the foundation for our development, and how our growth and recovery from those experiences is improved with knowledge and tools and skills ……because we all need better tools at some point.
I love that I received my BA in Psychology from our country’s first HBCU- Lincoln University in PA, and then went on to Columbia University with students from literally every corner of the world, for my Master’s in Counseling and another in Education.
As a College Professor I revel in making the textbook meaningful through examples and application, helping students understand that it is not “what is wrong with people, but what has happened to people”, that must be attended to.
What makes me the best me I can be is spending time with my husband, my sons, music, books, my bicycle, spray paint, outside with nature… and with my thoughts, often about people who were here before me – who endured much and maybe even did more with less….. and I’m reminded…….Look what I get to do.
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