The Steering Committee is an important part of AEDP™ Institute’s governance infrastructure. Its role is to receive, digest and act on -usually by delegating to sub committees of their design- substantial matters and opportunities brought to them by the Institute’s Director, the Administrative Team, Institute committees, other Institute groups and individual community members. And the Steering Committee uncovers challenges / opportunities and initiates projects on its own.
Examples of sub committees that have been formed by the Steering Committee are:
Education Committee – evaluates faculty applications, seminar proposals and more.
Certification Committee – reviews therapist certification process and requirements, and more.
Conference Committee – planning the 2025 conference for the AEDP community
Read all about how the Steering Committee works here.
If you are interested in participating in an Institute committee, please let us know by contacting us at steering-committee@aedpinstitute.org.
Meet the Steering Committee
Certified Supervisor Steve Carroll
Administration Team Leader Monica Hodges
Certified Therapist and Supervisor in Training Deborah Lee-Thornby
Senior Faculty Member Ben Medley
Certified Therapist and Supervisor in Training Cristina Mendonça
Level 3 Therapist Suad Mohamed
Steve Carroll, LCSW, New Jersey USA
Steve Carroll, LCSW is a psychotherapist in private practice since 1988 working with individuals, couples and families as well as supervision/consultation for colleagues. Prior to private practice he co-developed a treatment unit for families experiencing child sexual abuse, supervised a group home for adolescent girls and supervised an outpatient therapy program for a family service agency. He is a certified Imago therapist/ supervisor and other background training includes psychodynamic psychotherapy, object relations, family systems, Internal Family Systems and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy.
Steve completed the AEDP Immersion Course with Diana Fosha in 2008 and three years of Core Training with Eileen Russell. He has assisted in numerous Immersion, Essential Skills and Advanced Skills courses as well as the “Wired For Healing” workshop with Diana.
He became an AEDP Certified Therapist under Diana’s supervision and an AEDP Certified Supervisor under the supervision of Diana and Natasha Prenn. Steve also worked with David Mars and Karen Pando-Mars to be certified in AEDP for Couples and he assisted at several Couples Hybrid Courses. Steve has been a Lead Assistant since 2020 and is grateful to be part of this transformative work.
Steve loves woodworking, hiking/time in nature, traveling, golfing and spending time with family and friends.
Monica Hodges, MBA, New Jersey, USA
Monica Hodges (she/her) has been Lead Administrator of the AEDP Institute since 2016. Her role is to work side by side with Institute Founder and Director Diana Fosha and the Institute’s wonderful administration team to bring the mission of AEDP Institute to life and to help it grow in a way that is ethos-syntonic and culturally and financially sustainable. She brings a wealth of experience in all aspects of business management, and has especially loved helping smaller organizations navigate the challenges of growth.
Monica loves to garden and to sing in her town’s community chorus.
Deborah Lee-Thornby, MA, Oregon USA
Deborah Lee-Thornby, MA, is a certified AEDP therapist and an AEDP Supervisor in training. She has been a Lead Assistant for countless Immersions, Essential Skills, and Advanced Skills Modules. As a founding member of the Portland Oregon AEDP Steering Committee, she has hosted AEDP faculty lead workshops in Portland and Co-Lead a Portland-based Core Training.
Deb is in private practice in Portland. She works with couples and individuals, specializing in relationships and sexuality, and complex trauma. As a certified yoga instructor, she incorporates mindfulness, breath, and movement into her work with patients. Deb has a master’s in Applied Behavioral Science from the Leadership Institute of Seattle. She is an IPI-certified Psychedelic Assisted Therapist and continues exploring the varieties of psychedelic therapies that integrate well with AEDP.
Deb is astounded by the rapid changes she has seen her clients make when helped to surrender to the healing and wisdom inherent within themselves. AEDP provides an ideal framework for accompanying clients in transformative experiences. Deb delights in the unhindered expressions of love, compassion, creativity, and joy that are a part of clients opening to their authentic selves during AEDP sessions.
Deb enjoys time with her family, heading out on adventures with her husband and their dogs in their Sprinter van. She has an insatiable curiosity about the world and all the creatures in it.
Ben Medley, LCSW, New Jersey USA
Ben Medley (he/his) is an AEDP Institute Senior Faculty Member. He earned his degree in Clinical Social Work at New York University and has a practice in NYC where he specializes in working with sexually minoritized clients.
Ben developed the Triangle of Social Experience which helps the AEDP clinician consider and conceptualize internal working models of social groups, others and the self that are shaped by social dynamics and systems of power, privilege and oppression. 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 portrayals to process core affective experience for “Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering Into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0”.
Ben loves music (as you may have experienced in AEDP courses), getting outside and moving around, reading fiction and theater (his former career).
Cristina Mendonça, Clinical Psychologist, Rome, ITALY
Cristina Mendonça, is a clinical psychologist and an AEDP Certified Therapist and Supervisor in Training. She has a vast international private practice from Rio de Janeiro to Rome, where she now lives.
After completing the Immersion course in 2013, Cristina was absolutely taken by the AEDP model and since then has been deeply engaged in making it procedural. She has been a teaching assistant / experiential assistant at many, many in-person trainings held in Rio, London and New York as well as in many online trainings. Since 2021 Cristina has been Lead Assistant in Institute- sponsored Immersion, Essential Skills (many!) and Advanced Skills online courses; and she is very much on track to becoming an AEDP Certified Supervisor.
AEDP has “undone her therapist’s self aloneness” and changed Cristina’s professional life’s trajectory for good.
Suad Mohamed, MEd, RCC, British Columbia and Alberta, CANADA
Suad Mohamed (she/her), is a Level 3 AEDP therapist, and Registered Clinical Counsellor. Suad holds a Masters Degree in Counselling Psychology from Simon Fraser University and has over 15 years of experience working in various community and mental health programs. Suad has a private practice in Vancouver, Canada where she works with individuals, couples, and families.
Suad is also a Certified EFFT therapist (Emotion Focused Family Therapy) and provides caregiver workshops for Eating Disorder Programs in British Columbia, Canada. Suad provides supervision for graduate students, therapists, and group supervision to BIPOC therapists across Canada.
Suad has experienced the personal and professional transformative power of AEDP and appreciates supporting individuals in their healing using the model. Suad is inspired daily by watching her clients’ growth, flourishing, and thriving. Suad is grateful to be a part of the AEDP community and appreciates the guidance and supervision of faculty members in deepening her knowledge and connection to AEDP.
When not practicing, Suad enjoys spending time with her family, being outdoors, belly laughs with friends, and traveling to new places.
Former committee members are shown below, we thank you for your work on our committee!
Eden Abraham, Counsellor, Ontario CANADA
Eden Abraham (she/her), MSW is a Level 3 AEDP therapist. She earned her MSW from York University in Toronto, Ontario and is a Professional Counsellor working primarily with Black identified students at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Eden has witnessed the tremendous liberating impact on the self that AEDP can engender and feels grateful to have found her clinical home in a model that is not merely concerned with appearing to get it right but is committed to the brave/bold/messy/ever-changing work of truly getting it right. She feels profoundly grateful for the endless guidance and generosity of wisdom & expert knowledge that she has received from this community of teachers & healers. She humbly hopes to share the transformance driving gift of AEDP with other emerging Black therapists.
Kari Gleiser, PhD Psychologist, New Hampshire USA
Kari Gleiser (she/her) completed her doctoral work at Boston University and her internship through Dartmouth Medical School with a focus on trauma and PTSD. In her practice, she specializes in applying AEDP psychotherapy to the treatment of complex trauma and dissociation.
Dr. Gleiser is the co-founder/co-director of the Center for Integrative Health in Hanover, NH, a trauma center dedicated to multi-modal healing of mind, body and spirit. She has co-developed an “intra-relational” model of AEDP therapy that imports the model’s relational and experiential interventions to patients’ internal systems of dissociated self-states. Dr. Gleiser has written clinical papers and book chapters and has presented at international conferences. She explores the intersection of psychotherapy and spirituality, as well as the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Idit Ronen-Setter, MFT, Tel Aviv ISRAEL
Idit Ronen-Setter, MFT is an AEDP Certified Therapist and Certified Supervisor, working in Israel. Idit has received her MA and Family Therapy Certification from Tel Aviv University and has practiced therapy with individuals, couples and families, in Aluma Therapy Center and private practice, since 2006. She completed the certified studies of treatment of stress and trauma, at The Trauma Center (Boston, MA), directed by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk (2013-2014).
Nowadays, Idit is teaching family therapy and AEDP psychotherapy through the Ministry of Social Services, Shiluvim Institute, and the Israeli Association of Couples and Family Therapy. Idit served as the formal AEDP Institute liaison for the Israeli community from 2018 – 2022. In addition, since 2015 she is supervising a medical forum for couples and families in crisis. She has recently published two articles (with Prof. Esther Cohen), related to AEDP: One of them in Hebrew at Betipulnet, and the other at the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, called “Becoming ‘teletherapeutic’: Harnessing Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy for challenges of the Covid-19 era.”
Idit made her first encounter with AEDP during her training at The Trauma Center. Since then, feeling “positively hooked” with AEDP as a compass for psychotherapy in practice, she has travelled between Israel, the United States and Europe, in her quest for professional AEDP development. She is glad to have had the guidance of faculty members and senior faculty in enhancing her knowledge and expertise in AEDP. Alongside, she is profoundly learning from clients and supervisees who bring life into practice. With supervisees, she sees her role as part of a mutual quest towards grasping transformational healing processes, while promoting an affirmative sense of self within the therapist.