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 or will be formed by the Steering Committee are:
TeachAEDP Committee – evaluates faculty applications, seminar proposals and more.
Certification Committee – reviews certification process and requirements, and more.
Worldwide Conference Committee – plans a worldwide conference for the AEDP community
Read all about how the Steering Committee works here.
The inaugural committee, introduced below, was launched in April, 2023.
To contact us please email steering-committee@aedpinstitute.org
Meet the Steering Committee
Level 3 Therapist Eden Abraham
Senior Faculty Member Kari Gleiser
Administration Team Leader Monica Hodges
Certified Therapist and Certification Track Supervisor Deborah Lee-Thornby
Senior Faculty Member Ben Medley
Certified Supervisor Idit Setter
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.
Kari loves being in nature, poetry, travel and trail running.
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 growing
Monica loves to garden and to sing in her town’s community chorus.
Deborah Lee-Thornby, MA, Oregon USA
Deborah Lee-Thornby (she/her) is an AEDP Certified therapist and an AEDP Supervisor in Training. She has attended numerous AEDP trainings, and assisted at many Immersion, ES1, ES2 and Core Training courses. As a founding member of the Portland Oregon AEDP Steering Committee she hosted several AEDP faculty led workshops in Portland. She was a co-presenter in the Institute-sponsored seminar, “Transformational Synergies in AEDP, Spirituality and Psychedelics” in July, 2022.
Deb is in private practice in Portland. She works with couples and individuals, specializing in relationships and sexuality. As a certified yoga instructor she incorporates mindfulness, breath and movement into her work with patients. Deb has a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Science from the Leadership Institute of Seattle where she learned to lead process groups and create experiential curriculum for adult learners.
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. She delights in accompanying clients in transformative experiences and the unhindered expressions of love, compassion, creativity and joy that are a part of opening to their best selves.
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).
Idit Ronen-Setter, MFT, Tel Aviv ISRAEL
Idit Ronen-Setter, MFT is a certified AEDP therapist and 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.