Transformance Journal: Senior Faculty

Ben Medley, LCSW

Ben is an AEDP senior faculty member and has taught AEDP internationally with the AEDP Institute, the National Institute of Psychotherapy, the Cape Cod Institute, NASW and in mental health organizations and clinical practices. He has a private practice in New York City and specializes in working with the LGBTQ+ community.

Ben earned his degree in Clinical Social Work with the NYU Silver School of Social Work. Before private practice, Ben worked in Greenwich House’s HIV mental health program and the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services’ LGBTQ+ mental health treatment unit. His paper “Recovering the True Self: Affirmative Therapy, Attachment and AEDP in Psychotherapy with Gay Men” is published with the SEPI Journal: the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration and he has written a chapter on using (Read More…)


Kate Halliday, LCSW

Kate Halliday, LCSW, is Senior Faculty, AEDP Institute from Ithaca, New York.

Throughout Kate’s nearly 30 years as a psychotherapist, She has always been better at noticing the ways her clients are remarkable, resilient, and lovable than theorizing about the ways they are wounded.

Kate has always been drawn to images, representations, and experiences of transformation. Music, poetry, literature, the natural world, and emotional relationships have always been her education. When Kate started learning to be a teacher of young children (in her first career she worked for Head Start and in elementary schools), and then to be a therapist, it was the magic of witnessing change and growth in other human beings that enlivened the experience for her. In psychotherapy, this led Kate to study Family Systems Theory and Narrative Therapy, then EMDR, and finally AEDP. (Read More…)


Gil Tunnell, PhD

Gil is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City. He is a founding Senior Faculty member of the AEDP Institute and now serves as Consulting Editor for Transformance: The AEDP Journal. With Jenna Osiason, he wrote “Historical Context: AEDP’s Place in the World of Psychotherapy,” Undoing Aloneness & the Transformance of Suffering into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0, APA Books, 2021. Dr. Tunnell is co-author with David Greenan of Couple Therapy with Gay Men (Guilford, 2002), and has presented and published widely on working with gay men, most recently, “Unequivocal affirmation” of True Self in 16-session AEDP with Gay Men: Using Relational Metaprocessing to Increase Receptive Affective Capacity, Transformance Journal, 2023, 11 (1). His special interest is applying AEDP to couple therapy. (Read More…)


Jennifer Edlin, MFT

Jennifer Edlin, MFT  is a psychotherapist in private practice in Oakland, California, and is a Senior faculty member of AEDP™ Institute.  Jenn received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, a JD/MBA degree from New York University and an MA in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. From the moment she attended her first AEDP Immersion Course, Jenn was taken by AEDP and the permission to be authentic and to use the therapist’s whole self in service of clients’ healing and transformation.

Jenn is developing AEDP theory and clinical interventions to use with dysregulated and underregulated clients, and has presented her work in 2019 in Boston, Portland and the Denver Immersion course.  In the years since she joined the AEDP Institute Faculty Jenn has been a Co-Director of the AEDP research project, (Read More…)


Danny Yeung, MD, CCFP, MDPAC(C), FCFP

Danny is Chair of International Development and Senior Faculty of the AEDP Institute, is a trainer and supervisor of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) for post-graduate mental health professionals in Hong Kong, China, South Korea, United States and Canada. Danny is the author of The Instinct to Heal: Practicing Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, the first original AEDP book to be published in China.

Danny is a contributor of a chapter titled What Went Right: What Happens in the Brain During AEDP’s Metatherapeutic Processing, in the award winning book Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering Into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0 and has served as the Translation Reviewer for the Chinese version of The Transforming Power of Affect and Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering Into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0. He is also the lead author of The Rainbow After: Psychological Trauma and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, arguably one of the original trauma treatment manual published in Chinese. (Read More…)


Barbara J. Suter, PhD

Barbara J. Suter, PhD, co-chair at the Washington School of Psychiatry’s Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy program, has been a clinical psychologist for almost 40 years, practicing psychodynamically oriented work with individuals- child, adolescent, adult–and with families, communities, schools, and agencies. She is involved in training both new and experienced therapists. A lifetime of a rich, rewarding experience helping people has culminated in experiential work: through AEDP, and its holistic, healing, helpful approach, Dr. Suter has found a way to integrate many decades of previously disparate experiences. Dr. Suter has found that AEDP uniquely lends itself to therapy, supervision and front line helping people in their communities and families. She has found it particularly useful with those suffering from trauma, reeling from life, and unable to find help despite a long time of seeking help, healing and change. (Read More…)


Eileen M. Russell, PhD

Eileen M. Russell, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and a founding faculty member of the AEDP Institute. She began studying and training in AEDP in 1996 with Drs. Diana Fosha and Jenna Osiason. Dr. Russell has been an adjunct faculty member at NYU
Medical/ Bellevue Hospital Center where she completed her internship training and later worked as a senior psychologist with individuals struggling with addiction and psychiatric diagnoses. She is currently also on the faculty of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies (NIP) Integrative Trauma Program. Her passion is AEDP, which she has taught to individuals and groups since 2004 nationally and internationally. She combines a warm and gentle clinical style with a probing and articulate interest in theory to bring out the depths of the AEDP approach.

In addition to her practice with patients and consultees, Eileen enjoys expanding clinical and theoretical ideas through writing. (Read More…)


Natasha Prenn, LCSW

Natasha Prenn, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, speaker, educator, author and life coach. As a senior faculty member of the AEDP Institute (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), she pioneered the AEDP Essential and Advanced Skills Courses, and is well known as a therapists’ therapist across the U.S. and abroad.

Natasha, an engaging presenter, is noted for her ability to translate AEDP theory into user-friendly steps, and for her enthusiastic belief that the mechanisms of the magic of experiential-dynamic work are teachable and therefore learnable skills. Her obsession with languaging interventions and skills training (Read More…)


Yuko Hanakawa, PhD

Yuko Hanakawa, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York City. She was “raised” by AEDP from the very beginning of her career. While a doctoral student at Adelphi University, she met Dr. Diana Fosha who was a faculty member. Dr. Hanakawa has been captivated by the unfolding process of healing and growth that AEDP powerfully facilitates ever since.

Dr. Hanakawa has been particularly interested in the body-mind connection, memory reconsolidation, and the role of positive emotions in the process of transformation. Her paper, “Receiving Loving Gratitude: How a Therapist’s Mindful Embrace of a Patient’s Gratitude Facilitates Transformance,” was published in the AEDP Transformance Journal, in 2011.  In addition to being trained by Dr. Fosha, she was in small group supervision with Dr. Jenna Osiason, (Read More…)


Karen Pando-Mars, MFT

Karen Pando-Mars, MFT, is a psychotherapist in San Rafael, California, and Senior Faculty of the AEDP Institute. She was irresistibly drawn to AEDP in 2005 and captivated by the depth and breadth of this transformational model. She immersed herself in training and consultation with Dr. Fosha and three years of core training with Dr. Frederick. Ms. Pando-Mars is one of the founders of AEDP West and chaired the AEDP Institute Education Committee from 2011-2018.  Since 2020, Ms. Pando-Mars is a member of the AEDP DBEI (Diversity, Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee).

Ms. Pando-Mars’ passionate interest in what cultivates deep connection between Self and Other has been furthered by attachment theory and related neuroscience. She is known for her presence, warmth, and the clarity of her presentations. Videotapes of her clinical work are moving and inspiring examples of how AEDP explicit relational and experiential practices can help patients heal from relational trauma. (Read More…)