Archives: Faculty

Heloise (Lois) Ridley, EdD, MBA, MA, LPC, NCC

Heloise (Lois) Ridley  is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Pennsylvania and a Level 3 AEDP therapist. She earned a doctorate from Wilkes University, where she researched Counselors’ Experiences Utilizing Culturally Attuned, Trauma-Informed Care to Support BIPOC College Students’ Mental Health: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study, which included AEDP and attachment-focused therapists. Lois also holds a Master of Arts in Professional Counseling from Liberty University and an MBA from Pennsylvania State University.

Lois specializes in supporting adults struggling with connection, healthy boundaries, and communication in relationships impacted by early childhood trauma. She also provides strategic and encouraging support for caregivers navigating challenges with their children. Her work emphasizes creating corrective relational experiences that foster healing from attachment trauma.

Lois has presented on topics including Transformational Synergies in AEDP, Spirituality, and Psychedelics (AEDP Institute, 2022), Using AEDP to Access the Spiritual Core of BIPOC Clients and Facilitate Recovery from Racial Trauma (AACC World Conference, 2023), and as a guest presenter in the AEDP Immersion course on cultural considerations in promoting transformative change.

She is a founding member of the AEDP Vision Collective working to develop approaches to using AEDP to heal racialized trauma. Lois has served as an Experiential Assistant in programs such as AEDP with Applications to Racialized and Other Relational Developmental Trauma (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023), the AEDP Vision Collective seminar Courageous & Restorative Conversations: Building Cultural Bridges, and in the AEDP Immersion course.

Carrie Ruggieri, LMHC, BCETS

Carrie has been an active member of the AEDP Institute since completing the Immersion course in 2007. She is the Editor in Chief of Transformance: The AEDP Journal (since 2024) where she served as Associate Editor since 2019. Her written contributions to the Journal include: Laura Hillenbrand: Author as True Other—Inspiring Quantum Resilience (Vol. 3); AEDP-Informed Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (Vol. 8); AEDP Author as True Other: A Successful Application of the AEDP Ethos in a Self-Help Book—A Review of Ron Frederick’s Loving Like You Mean It (Vol. 9); and An Ecology of Core Self Flourishing (Vol. 13).

Carrie earned her Master’s degree in Psychology at The New School for Social Research and is a Board-Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress. In her Rhode Island psychotherapy practice specializing in complex trauma, drawing on her developmental research background from the Margaret S. Mahler Observational Research Lab at The New School and the Infant Behavior Clinic at Women & Infants Hospital, Brown University. Alongside AEDP psychotherapy, she once offered Equine Assisted Psychotherapy and conducts trauma evaluations through the Brown Human Rights Asylum Clinic.

Maria Angelina, PhD

Maria Angelina, PhD, I am a clinical counselor with over 15 years counseling experience and am a certified AEDP therapist and supervisor. I work both in post-secondary and in private practice in Vancouver, B.C. My foray into the AEDP world started with my doctoral research which aimed to better understand the attachment processes within psychotherapy. Like many, I immediately found and continue to “find home” in AEDP as my therapeutic orientation. Within this modality, I have felt a deepening, a honing of skills, a grounding into self and other, a releasing into process, into relationship, a synchrony, all of which continue to feel infinitely meaningful and creative. (more…)

Peter Muhwati, CSW

Peter Muhwati, CSW, is a Clinical Social Worker from Zimbabwe living in Johannesburg, South Africa who has been a guest presenter in many Immersion courses.

He uses attachment-based, experiential approaches to therapy with individuals and couples. His clinical experience also includes work within palliative care in Zimbabwe.

Peter hopes one day to be Certified in the AEDP model. He completed his higher education at Penn State University and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Following his undergraduate degree, he entered the religious life of the Franciscan Friars. He is still guided by Franciscan Spirituality. Peter is married with two children.

Della Mosley, PhD

Della Mosley, PhD  is the President of the non-profit The WELLS Healing Center (formerly the University of Florida based WELLS Healing and Research Collective). She co-founded Academics for Black Survival and Wellness (#Academics4BlackLives) with Pearis Bellamy and is the co-founder (with David Oh) of the Radical Healing Collaborative Group Practice. Della is also a proud member of the Psychology of Radical Healing Collective, and an American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellow.

In Dr. Mosley’s words, “I intentionally use my education and training in counseling, skills and experience conducting culturally mindful and award-winning research, history counseling Black youth and queer and transgender People of Color, experience organizing and (more…)

Shigeru Iwakabe PhD

Shigeru Iwakabe, Ph.D., is a professor of Clinical Psychology at Ritsumeikan University in Osaka, Japan. He received his PhD at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 2001. Shigeru conducts psychotherapy research on client emotional processes from an integrative perspective with a particular interest in the transformational phenomena in AEDP.

Shigeru is a natural fit with AEDP both as a researcher and a clinician.  Since becoming more deeply involved with AEDP in 2011, Shigeru has undertaken several research projects studying the affective emotional processes in AEDP with his colleague, Nuno Conceicao from Portugal. His research interests include: training and professional development in psychotherapy, case study research methods, psychotherapy integration, and cultural and social issues related to the practice of psychotherapy.

Shigeru also practices in the university clinic and a private practice and is interested in cultural issues associated with practicing AEDP in Japan. He has completed Level 2 AEDP training.

Netta Ofer

Netta Ofer is an Educational Psychologist and a certified AEDP supervisor. Netta started (informally) practicing and teaching AEDP in 2006 and laid the first milestones in establishing the Israeli AEDP
community, supervising and teaching for many years many of which are now part of the Israeli assistant team. In 2011 together with prof. Esther Cohen, Ofer Maurer and Osnat Cohen Ganor, she helped establish the cooperation between the AEDP institute and The IDC “New School of Psychotherapy” and was the first ambassador of the AEDP Institute to Israel.

Today Netta is a senior faculty in the “New School of Psychotherapy” in the IDC and Geha Hospital, where she teaches courses in AEDP and in the treatment of complex trauma as well as supervises groups and individuals. (more…)

Marc Cecil, PhD

Marc is a Licensed Psychologist with over 40 years of experience in a variety of clinical and community settings, currently in private practice in Rutland, Vermont. Marc has immersed himself in AEDP since 2012 and has done extensive training and supervision with SueAnne Piliero and Ron Frederick. He has been a Lead Assistant in ES1 and an experiential assistant in several AEDP courses over the years, including traveling to Israel, where he helped launch their first Essential Skills Course. Marc has a special interest in working with complex trauma and often integrates AEDP with other experiential therapies, including ego state/parts work, EMDR, and Core Self Reclamation Therapy (CSRT). He enjoys sharing his clinical work and videos with other therapists, bringing his work to life through a story of transformation and healing, not only of his clients, but of himself and others in his life.

A frequent contributor to the AEDP Clinical Discussion Listserv and Bulletin Board for community expression and connection, Marc has a passion for sharing stories about his own AEDP experience and journey. He also has a paper on therapeutic presence in the AEDP Transformance Journal (August 2020), where he conveys his personal process and model of how he brings AEDP to life within himself and his clients. Like his clinical work, Marc uses an experiential approach to supervision which focuses on helping other clinicians integrate themselves into the therapy process and develop therapeutic presence. (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, (more…)

Maria Candida S. Soares

Maria Candida S. Soares holds a psychology degree from PUC-RJ (1973). She initiated her clinical training at IBRAPSI (Brazilian Institute for Psychoanalysis, Groups and Institutions), attending adults in her private practice. In the 1990’s she felt the need for new sources of tools and theories, and, therefore, studied Brief Psychotherapy based on ISTDP and more specifically, the Leigh McCullough’s theory, and graduated from the Department of Psychiatry at Santa Casa da Misericordia Hospital in Rio de Janeiro (1998). After graduation from this course, she became part of the staff as teacher and supervisor and conducted therapeutic groups for eating disorders and unemployed people. Her first encounter with AEDP happened when Diana Fosha came to Brazil to facilitate a workshop in 2000. The focus on the relational dyad, the clear picture of emotional moments expressed during the session and the (more…)

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