Gwen Mitchell and Brieanne Kohrt have both done outstanding work together as a team for the past three years chairing and organizing the last three SSPC Annual Meetings. Their work has been superlative. Organizing an annual conference is a challenging task that involves coordination of many different aspects of the meeting, including structuring and ensuring the quality of the scientific program, coordinating continuing education approval, dealing with all details of the meeting location and execution, and optimizing budget solvency. Successful annual meetings are essential for SSPC to fulfill its core missions in cultural psychiatry.

Dr. Mitchell is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the International Disaster Psychology: Trauma & Global Mental Health program at the University of Denver. With over two decades in clinical psychology, she has dedicated more than 10 years to humanitarian aid in post-conflict and refugee settings.

Dr. Mitchell has worked with Doctors Without Borders, The Center for Victims of Torture, the United Nations, and Open Society, providing clinical services, consultation, and training in trauma counseling, child development, gender-based violence, and victim support. She has also contributed to mental health policy development in Liberia and consulted for various NGOs on trauma and mental health initiatives.

Her expertise includes immigration and asylum testimony, PTSD, intergenerational trauma, and stress responses, with her research and presentations spanning topics such as post-traumatic growth, moral distress in humanitarian workers, re-entry trauma, and group counseling in crisis settings. At DU, she oversees both the clinical and academic components of the IDP program while continuing to advance global mental health initiatives.

Dr. Kohrt is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health, complex trauma, and cultural adaptation of interventions for Spanish-speaking communities. She is a Perinatal Psychologist at the Developing Brain Institute (DBI) in Washington, DC, where she directs the Latina Perinatal Mental Health Fellowship, and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Sciences, and Pediatrics at George Washington University.

Dr. Kohrt is committed to reducing barriers to mental health care for Spanish-speaking families. Her research focuses on task-sharing models to address perinatal mental health needs in low-resource settings across Latin America and the U.S. She leads projects in Guatemala training community health workers in perinatal mental health and is the PI on a study culturally adapting Perinatal Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (P-ACT) for Central American immigrant women. She is also the Director of PASEO Salud Mental, a non-profit expanding access to mental health care for Spanish speakers in the U.S. and Peru. Through PASEO, she co-leads a Spanish for mental health immersion program in Peru focused, and also developed the PASP-MH, an assessment of Spanish skills specific to the mental health field, in order to ensure that Spanish-speaking patients receive high quality mental health care. Her work with PASEO led to her receiving the Division 52 (International Psychology) Early Career Psychologist Award in 2023. She is active in several organizations, including the National Latinx Psychological Association, where she co-chairs the Bilingual Special Interest Group, the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture, Postpartum Support International, and Divisions 52 and 53 of the American Psychological Association.