Psychology and Counselling Summit 2021

Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 350 peer‐reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines that have been cited in approximately 40,000 peer-reviewed papers. He holds several patents involved in monitoring and regulating autonomic state. He is the originator of the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral, mental, and health problems related to traumatic experiences. He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (Norton, 2011), The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe, (Norton, 2017) and co-editor of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (Norton, 2018). He is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol ™ , which currently is used by more than 1500 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, and to improve language processing, state regulation, and spontaneous social engagement.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (A.B., summa cum laude, Harvard; PhD, social psychology, Stanford) is Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness, translated in 36 countries. Lyubomirsky’s teaching has been recognized with the Faculty of the Year (twice) and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards. Her research – on the possibility of lastingly increasing happiness via gratitude, kindness, and connection interventions — has received many honors, including the Diener Award for Outstanding Midcareer Contributions in Personality Psychology, the Christopher J. Peterson Gold Medal, the Distinguished Research Lecturer Award, and a Positive Psychology Prize. Lyubomirsky lives in Santa Monica, California, with her family.

Barry Schwartz is an emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and a visiting professor at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. He has spent forty years thinking and writing about the interaction between economics and morality. He has written several books that address aspects of this interaction, including The Battle for Human Nature, The Costs of Living, The Paradox of Choice, Practical Wisdom, and most recently, Why We Work. The Paradox of Choice was named one of the top business books of the year by both Business Week and Forbes Magazine, and has been translated into twenty-five languages. Schwartz has written for sources as diverse as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, Scientific American, The New Republic, the Harvard Business Review, and the Guardian. He has appeared on dozens of radio shows, including NPR’s Morning Edition, and Talk of the Nation, and has been interviewed on Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), the PBS News Hour, The Colbert Report, and CBS Sunday Morning. Schwartz has spoken three times at the TED conference, and his TED talks have been viewed by more than 20 million people.

Marina Vogt is Hong Kong's first Chief Happiness Officer. She served this role for the past 3 years at Fung Group leading global employee engagement and community engagement as the head of Li & Fung Foundation. Marina is a certified Applied Positive Psychology Coach with over 16 years of experience in leadership roles spanning academia, creative arts, non-profit and corporate. She is passionate about making a positive impact and creating a better model for the future of work.

Patrick Bensen is both an Organizational Psychologist and a Clinical Psychologist.
He is the Director at Leaders of Tomorrow Institute and PB Consulting Ltd.
He is a member of the council at Forbes Business Council, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Harvard Business review.
Patrick has consultation right at the United Nations and Expert at the European Commission.

Organizational Psychology:

Patrick helps companies to deal with work-related issues and leadership, notably in Leadership and Management development, people and culture, recruitment profiling and HR training, employee evaluation, workplace ergonomic, working conditions, psychological health analysis and prevention, job analysis, job satisfaction, and rewards program, team effectiveness, and work motivation.

Other specialties include Workplace Redesign | Change Management | Organizational Culture | HR Consulting.

His companies, Leaders of Tomorrow Institute (www.leaderoftomorrow.org) and PB Consulting Ltd (www.pbconsultingonline.com) provide:

a) Training courses for Leaders and Entrepreneurs in advanced management and development
b) Wellness medicalized retreat center for Leaders (Burnout - Mind & Body Harmonization Programs)
c) Workplace redesign, HR Consultation, Health, and Safety Consultation

Graham Barkus has 30 years of experience in guiding personal, organisational and systemic change, in senior organisation development roles and as an external coach and consultant. His focus is helping people master complexity, uncertainty and change, both to deliver and sustain peak performance and to reduce the costs of work-related stress on organisations, their people and the wider community.

From his base in Hong Kong Graham’s experience has spanned employment and consultancy roles to clients across Asia and the UK/Europe, in diverse industries including banking and finance, insurance, aviation, logistics, healthcare, real estate development, engineering consultancy and FMCG. His work has typically involved spanning boundaries of language, culture, structure, interests and habit in personal as well as professional contexts. Graham holds postgraduate degrees with distinctions in Clinical Organizational Psychology (INSEAD); Strategy & Innovation (University of Oxford), and an LLM in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution from the University of Hong Kong. He is certified in cognitive-behavioural and integrative healthcare coaching; he is a Founding Fellow at the Institute of Coaching at Harvard University and a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and the Australasian Society for Lifestyle Medicine.

Dr. Vanessa Wong is an empathetic, respectful and dedicated doctor who has always been fascinated by the human psyche. She gravitated towards psychiatry because it combined her love of medical science with the study of humanity. She believes in taking an integrative approach by looking beyond symptoms and identifying root causes, and in doing so treat the person as a whole rather than a cluster of problems.

Having been born and raised locally, Dr. Wong studied in England during her formative years and returned to Hong Kong to undertake her medical degree. She completed her specialist training under the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists' training program, which included general adult, old age, child and adolescent, consultation and liaison, and substance abuse psychiatry. At the same time, she obtained her membership to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the United Kingdom. Dr. Wong has fifteen of experience working in the Hong Kong healthcare services and has an intuitive knowledge of, and cultural sensitivity towards, issues that we face every day in this dynamic and cosmopolitan city.

With over a decade of experience using conventional treatment modalities, she realised there are shortfalls to a "symptom management" approach, and began to explore functional medicine to help her patients who struggle with not only mental health issues, but also physical problems that are now understood to be inherently linked in a mind-body connection.

Learning from her own experience of chronic fatigue, hormonal imbalances, disrupted gut health and many other medically unexplained symptoms, she eventually started to heal with a holistic approach by addressing the gut, replenishing nutrients, focussing on sleep, movement and relaxation, and most importantly the detoxification of toxins such as mould, endocrine disrupting chemicals and environmental pollution.

This put her on a path of learning about functional medicine, herbs and supplements, complementary and alternative therapies, and innovative technologies, to bring them into her practice with the aim of providing a holistic approach to her clients. She combines lifestyle medicine, stress management, nutritional support and other scientifically proven methods and functional laboratory testing to optimise health and well-being.

Dr. Wong is passionate about learning, and continuously updates her knowledge by studying both via online courses and in-person workshops, attending seminars and conferences such as the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health and the Institute of Functional Medicine, where she can be exposed to new ideas and network with like-minded people. She is currently in the process of obtaining her Fellowship of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine and her board certification in lifestyle medicine from the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine, expected to be completed in 2020.

She also gives back to the community by giving talks on topics related to lifestyle medicine, ranging from sleep, diets, fasting, gut health, hormonal health, mindfulness, and a broad range of psychological topics such as burnout, depression and anxiety, and addiction. She hopes to pay forward the mentoring she has gratefully received along her career by taking on supervisees in both psychology and nutritional field.

Dr. Scarlett Mattoli is a clinical practitioner, researcher, university lecturer and supervisor, public speaker, and author. She has studied multiple disciplines in-depth which has afforded her a unique clinical perspective and an unusually broad range of skills she utilises in her life-long passion for and in the pursuit of supporting mental health and wellbeing for everyone.

Whilst she addresses the clinical presentation specialities of neurodevelopment, addictions, families/systems, and wellbeing on a daily basis with patients aged 5 and upwards, she has also obtained targeted training in the areas of psychometrics/assessments, play/sandtray therapy, mindfulness practices, positive psychology practices, polyvagal directed approaches (eg. Dr. Porges “SSP” and “Focus” progammes), “Forbrain”, neurofeedback/QEEG, CogMed, and more, all of which she incorporates into her everyday work.

She has shared her knowledge and learning opportunities whilst living and working around the world, including the US, UK, Europe, and now in Asia for the past 16 years. She does this through her written work, public speaking, supporting masters level university students on programmes based in Hong Kong, Australia, and the UK as a part-time lecturer and supervisor in positive psychology and coaching psychology and supervisor of counselling students.

Through her dedicated efforts to pursue and uphold professionalism and maintain the highest ethical standards, she pursues ongoing professional development learning opportunities, supervision, and recognition of this through well-established professional membership. She has been granted multiple international professional memberships and accreditations in psychology, counselling, coaching psychology, assessments, and supervision. This includes achieving Chartered Psychologist status with the British Psychological Society (BPS) in the UK (CPsychol), full membership with the Australian Psychological Society (MAPS), Level 4 Counsellor with the Australian Counselling Association (MACA4), full membership with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (MEMCC) with accredited practitioner status, amongst others. His also includes specialist certifications, for example, “Certified Senior Addictions Counsellor” (SAC) with the Asian Pacific Association for Addictions Professionals (APAAP) and entry onto the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Registered Qualified Test User (RQTU) as an assessment user and centre director. She also upholds membership to recognised local professional organisations such as the Hong Kong Psychological Society, Hong Kong Association of Counselling and Psychology, and similar.

She also volunteers her time to give back to her professional communities, serving at board level in office bearing roles for international organisations such as President of the ICF Hong Kong Chapter, Vice President European Mentoring and Coaching Council (Asia Pacific Region) spearheading learning for the region, as well as serving on local professional membership organisation boards (eg. Psychotherapy Society Hong Kong, Dyslexia Association Hong Kong), private club and international school boards of governors and counsels, again, in leadership roles such a chairing subcommittees and/or Presidential capacities.

In her personal time, she loves looking after her family, volunteering with the church and communities in need, and reading to continually expand and develop her understanding of others and the world.

Dr. Laurena Law graduated from Newcastle University, Australia. She has been practicing in both Hong Kong and Australia as a general practitioner with a special interest in Nutritional Medicine.

She has completed her training in Psychological Medicine and combines principles of Lifestyle medicine in optimizing metabolic, hormonal and mental health.

Dr Law completed her Nutritional Medicine training at the Australasian College of Nutritional Medicine and The Australasian Institute of Medical Nutrition.

In addition, she is Board certified by the American Association of Anti-aging and Regenerative Medicine and has received an Advanced Fellowship in Anti-aging, Metabolic and Functional Medicine.

As a part of her cosmetic practice she optimizes gut health as an integrated approach to chronic skin diseases.

Dr Law is passionate about her fitness and has represented Hong Kong and Muay Thai and powerlifting championships and received several professional fitness qualifications.

Her interest in education for medical professionals include presentations on topics related to intravenous use of Vitamin C and teaching courses in nutritional therapies.

Rachel Winston is an experienced registered play & creative arts therapist in Hong Kong and founder of Full Cup Play Therapy, dedicated to helping children heal from trauma. In her clinical work, she combines elements of art and sand tray therapies and therapeutic storytelling, along with music, dance, drama, yoga and puppets as part of her integrative play therapy toolkit.

Rachel has experience with a wide range of difficulties and backgrounds in Hong Kong, treating pre-schoolers through to young teens suffering from anxiety-related conditions such as selective mutism, trauma and skin disorders. She also works with issues such as depression, trauma, developmental stress, ADHD, ASD, special educational needs and peer difficulties.  For almost a decade, Rachel worked with children in Hong Kong as a teacher, giving her a unique insight into the barriers to learning and a desire to address the emotional wellbeing of children to reach their full potential.

Many children are not able to verbalise their emotions, however children are communicating to us all the time without words through behaviour and our first language, that is play! Through years of training in play therapy, Rachel is able to meet children where they are at in terms of their brain development and help them to feel deeply heard and understood.  Play therapy allows the child to play out their feelings and past traumas, make meaning and heal from those experiences that have no words. This approach is also particularly useful for older children or teens who have experienced trauma in their pre-verbal early life.  Play therapy helps them express themselves through art and metaphor to heal on a deep experiential level.

Rachel also uses the power of play to empower parents in connecting with their children using the infant mental health programme, Baby Bonding, and through filial play coaching for toddlers and children.  Through therapeutic play, parents are able to strengthen their bond with their child, better attune to their child’s needs and have a more harmonious relationship. 

Rachel has been featured in local and international magazines including Playtimes, Play for Life and as a guest on RTHK Radio 3. Follow FullCupPlayTherapy.com where she publishes free articles for parents and educators to spread awareness of Play Therapy and child mental health.

Dr Adrian Low is a Chartered Psychologist in the UK and he has attained his Doctor of Psychology in I/O and Clinical Psychology from the California Southern University in the US. He has been invited to speak on workplace stress worldwide. He is also serving as President of the Hong Kong Association of Psychology where he provides professional psychotherapy and psychological health evaluations. Adrian is privileged to have been influenced and mentored by world-class scholars and practitioners in the field such as Professor Daniel N. Robinson, Dr. Rollin McCraty, etc. Adrian is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the HKU Space and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Qualifications:

Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology

M.A. in Clinical Psychology

B.A. in Psychology and Sociology

Registered Clinical Psychologist, Hong Kong

Licensed Psychologist, USA (California)

EMDRIA Approved Consultant, Certified EMDR Therapist

Erica Liu Wollin, PsyD, MA is a Registered Clinical Psychologist in Hong Kong and Licensed Psychologist in the US (CA). She is a Certified EMDR Therapist, an EMDRIA-Approved Consultant, and a Certified Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) Provider; she is also pursuing training in Brainspotting. Her private practice in Hong Kong specializes in adults, adolescents, and children with Complex Trauma. She is also an adoptive parent and works with adoptive and foster families using the Integrative Attachment Trauma Protocol for Children as well as the ARC model, Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART), and the Safe and Sound Protocol. Dr. Wollin also serves families dealing with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and started a Hong Kong group for practitioners and parents interested in FASD. She serves on the Steering Committee of Adoptive Families of Hong Kong as the Professional Adoption Resources Coordinator, and is a consultant and trainer for Mother's Choice, an NGO serving adoptive and foster families and children at risk. She is also a consultant for City University of Hong Kong’s Student Development Services given her 10 years of working in university mental health in the US. She is a regular speaker and trainer, including a popular TEDx Hong Kong talk on Attachment and Resilience, and has been a clinical supervisor and adjunct instructor for a number of graduate psychology programs.

Teressa Siu is an international wellness speaker, lifestyle educator and consultant. She has spoken to thousands of people in Asia and around the world, including on cruise ships, at international conferences and corporates. She specialises in holistic wellness curriculum/programme design, integration and facilitation.

“Nutrition-based wisdom” is her niche content design where she integrates a holistic toolbox for “staying sane in this insane world”. Her signature talks are often integrated into existing communication, leadership, training, health, wellness, learning and talent development programmes.

Siu is an award-winning broadcast journalist, university lecturer, media consultant and trainer, emcee and moderator, certified yoga teacher, energetic kinesiologist, memory mentor, reset practitioner, raw foods chef and a holistic integrative health and nutrition coach.

She easily optimises on her coaching, teaching, consulting and training expertise in education, media, communication, journalism, health and wellness to serve her mission to create happier people and a healthier world.

David Chan is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Behavioural Sciences Institute at the Singapore Management University and Adjunct Principal Scientist and Scientific Advisor at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. His research includes areas in longitudinal modeling, personnel selection, adaptation to changes and subjective well-being. His works, published in top psychology, management and methods journals, have been cited over 12,000 times in various disciplines. He has authored or edited 13 books published by Routledge, Sage and World Scientific in various areas of social and behavioural sciences.

Together with Nobel Laureate in Economics Professor Daniel Kahneman and Professor Ed Diener, Professor Chan served on an international committee that submitted to the United Nations a report on measures of national well-being across countries, which was subsequently incorporated in a report published by the United Nations. In 2000, he was ranked 9th world-wide in the Top 100 most published researchers of the 1990’s in the top journals of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. In 2020, a Stanford University study of researcher impact named him in the top one percent worldwide among all scientists across all disciplines. He is the first scientist in the world to receive Elected Fellow status of all six international psychological organizations namely, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the International Association of Applied Psychology, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the American Psychological Association’s Division for Personality and Social Psychology.

Professor Chan has received several international scholarly awards such as the Scientist-Practitioner Presidential Recognition Award, the Distinguished Early Career Contributions Award, the Edwin Ghiselli Award for Innovative Research Design, and the William Owen Scholarly Achievement Award. In Singapore, he serves on numerous national councils, taskforces, scientific panels, international advisory panels and boards of directors, and he has received several national awards for his contributions. He writes op-eds in an invited column in The Straits Times and he is consultant to Channel NewsAsia on several documentary series. Prior to entering academia, he was a police officer in the Singapore Police Force for nine years.

Dr. KOT specializes in psychological assessment, individual, marriage and family therapy.  She has worked extensively with Children, adolescents and adults who suffer from depression, anxiety, death and losses, marital conflicts, family problems and spiritual issues.  She has completed the certified training in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and is specialized in treatment of trauma, phobia, sexual abuse and anxiety. 

Being a Registered Psychologist by profession and a Marriage & Family Therapist, Dr. KOT is well experienced in consulting problems in relation to marriage and family disputes for professional executives and apart from being a visitation lecturer and supervisor.She is currently an Expert Columnist for the South China Morning Post.  She was also a Visitation Lecturer and Clinical Supervisor for Baptist Seminary, ex-president of Psychotherapy Society of Hong Kong and a Column Writer for Pre-school and Happy Family Magazine.  She also published article on the issues on Homosexuality, as well as books on emotions and spirituality: “The Orchestra of Emotions - Walking through the four basic emotions in life”; “Journey into the Wilderness: Transformation of Emotion in Life” and “Life-transformed Healing - Walking through Emotional Moments with Jesus”.

Dr. KOT is a popular speaker and has conducted more than 500 workshops or lectures worldwide.  She was also invited by the Fire Asia Conference as a speaker for 2006.  She was also the guest speaker for the Divorce Recovery program, the Media Evangelism’s Life Hotline and Life Hotline Emergency Manual series.  She is also being selected into the “Who’s Who in the World”, 24th Edition, 2007- 2009.   She has also trained many professional counselors to lead groups and provided many hours of clinical supervision.

Dr. Hamlett received her doctorate in clinical psychology from The University at Albany, State University of New York. She completed pre-and postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and served as an Instructor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at YSM for six additional years. Dr. Hamlett also holds a Master’s Degree in Special Education from the University at Maryland, College Park. For nearly two decades, beginning with her career in special education, Dr. Hamlett has worked with youth and families struggling with educational and cultural marginalization as well as related mental health and psychosocial challenges. Dr. Hamlett is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Connecticut College and also works as an independent psychological evaluator and consultant. In this latter regard, she helps individuals, legal professionals, and mental health agencies conceptualize and address complex referral and diagnostic questions. Specifically, she specializes in the following: psychodiagnostic and educational evaluation, trauma-related and behavioral assessments, violence risk, and other forensically-oriented assessments.