Our Team
Co-Principal Investigators for Overall Project
Steven J. Sandage, Ph.D., LP, is the Albert and Jessie Danielsen Professor of Psychology of Religion and Theology with a joint appointment in the School of Theology and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University (BU). He is also Research Director and Senior Staff Psychologist at the Albert and Jessie Danielsen Institute at BU and serves as Visiting Faculty in the Psychology of Religion at MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo. His research integrates the fields of (a) positive psychology and virtue, (b) psychology of religion and spirituality, (c) psychotherapy research, and (d) intercultural competence, and he has received funding from the Lilly Endowment, the Fetzer Institute, and the John Templeton Foundation. He is currently PI on Templeton-funded projects investigating humility and spiritual formation among religious leaders and has published empirical and interdisciplinary research in a range of positive psychology and virtue areas, including forgiveness, humility, gratitude, hope, justice, relational development, and well-being. Dr. Sandage’s clinical specializations as a licensed psychologist include couple and family therapy, multicultural therapy, and spiritually-integrative therapy, and he has a demonstration video on forgiveness in couple therapy with the American Psychological Association. He has over twenty years of experience training clinicians in the fields of counseling psychology, clinical psychology, marriage and family therapy, school counseling, and social work. In addition to his role as Co-PI on this project, he will lead the Danielsen site project.
Jesse Owen, Ph.D., LP, is Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Denver. He has over 150 publications, book chapters, and has co-authored two books (Therapists’ Cultural Humility; Research Design in Counseling). He was funded by JTF’s Bridges project as a Co-PI of a project investigating spiritually-integrative therapy in a correctional context. He is also Co-I on two federally funded projects. His area of research focuses on psychotherapy processes and outcomes with an emphasis on therapist effects, multicultural processes (including cultural humility), and the interaction between techniques and the therapeutic relationship. Dr. Owen is the Editor of one APA top-tier journal (Psychotherapy) and was previously an Associate Editor for the Journal of Counseling Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Archives of Sexual Behavior. He was awarded the Early Career Award for two APA Divisions [Divisions 17 (Counseling Psychology); 29 (Psychotherapy)] and is also an APA Fellow for his contributions towards the promotion of psychotherapy. Dr. Owen also engages in clinical practice with specialties in treating both individuals and couples. In addition to this role as Co-PI on this project, he will lead the U. Denver project on virtue and flourishing among therapists.
Principal Investigators for Site Projects
Todd Farchione, Ph.D., LP, is Research Associate Professor of Psychology at Boston University and Associate Director of Unified Treatment Program, Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Dr. Farchione’s research interests are focused on the psychological factors associated with the development of anxiety and mood disorders. In particular, he is interested in the development of more effective treatments for these disorders and is currently working with Dr. David Barlow investigating a new unified transdiagnostic treatment for anxiety and mood disorders. In addition, Dr. Farchione directs the Intensive Treatment Program for Panic Disorder and Specific Phobias and is currently investigating the impact of cognitive-behavioral treatments on well-being and virtue. He will lead the CARD site project.
Mary Zanarini, Ed.D., LP, is Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Adult Development at McLean Hospital. During the past 30 years, she has studied the etiology, phenomenology, treatment, and course of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Her longitudinal study, the McLean Study of Adult Development (MSAD), is now in its 24th year. She has been PI on numerous treatment trials of psychosocial treatments and psychotropic medications for BPD, including an evidence-based internet-based early treatment for BPD—BPDPSYCHOED. She has also studied BPD in adolescents and children and in the offspring of adults with BPD. In addition, she has developed some of the most widely used interviews for diagnosing BPD (DIB-R and the DIPD) and the gold standard for assessing change in symptom severity over time (Zanarini Rating Scale for Borderline Personality Disorder or ZAN-BPD). She has recently established the prognostic relevance of virtues for BPD recovery and will lead the McLean site project.
Co-Investigators
Sarah A. Crabtree, Ph.D., LMFT, Academic Researcher and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist at the Danielsen Institute. Her clinical and research interests include the intersections of religion and spirituality, forgiveness and humility, couple/romantic relationships, intercultural competence, systems of power and inequality, and substance use. As a clinician, Dr. Crabtree brings experience working with individuals, couples, and families around a variety of concerns in community mental health, residential treatment programs for substance use disorders, and group practice settings. She will assist with quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses for the Danielsen project and will help oversee development of the software platform project.
Don Davis, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, Georgia State University and is an Associate Editor with the Journal of Positive Psychology. Dr. Davis is a counseling psychologist interested in basic and applied research on relational virtues such as humility, forgiveness, gratitude and their implications for human flourishing with extensive experience in collaborative interdisciplinary projects. He is also especially interested in perspectives on cultural adaption of therapy, measurement issues, and meta-analyses and has been previously funded by JTF. Dr. Davis currently provides clinical training in the fields of both counseling psychology and counselor education (CACREP). He will offer conceptual, methodological, and measurement expertise to the overall project and assist with writing and dissemination in counseling psychology and positive psychology networks.
Elizabeth H. Eustis, Ph.D., is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University. Dr. Eustis received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and completed her pre-doctoral internship training at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Her research focuses on the identification of mechanisms of change in evidence-based treatments for anxiety in the service of informing the flexible adaptation and implementation of these approaches in diverse settings. She also has experience in digital mental health and is especially interested in the use of technology as one way to increase access to evidence-based treatments. Dr. Eustis will be responsible for the day-to-day scientific and clinical management of the proposed study at CARD, and will work with Dr. Farchione to oversee recruitment, study retention, data collection, data management, and adherence to study procedures. She will also be responsible for providing training in the delivery of support for the digital intervention, and will serve as one of the clinicians who provides support.
Cassidy Gutner, Ph.D, LP, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and a researcher at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at VA Boston Healthcare System. Dr. Gutner is a fellow of both the National Institute of Health’s Implementation Research Institute and the Training Institute for Dissemination & Implementation Research in Health. Dr. Gutner’s research focuses on bridging the gap between research and practice by identifying effective interventions that meet the needs and fit the context of the practice setting, as well as testing the best methods for effective implementation and dissemination. She has worked extensively with the team at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University. Dr. Gutner will guide dissemination and implementation science research for each site project in collaboration with site leaders.
Karen Tao, Ph.D., LP, Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology, University of Utah. Dr. Tao’s research interests are focused on the reduction of disparities in the access, service, and quality of mental health and education for marginalized groups. Dr. Tao has published on multicultural orientation, cultural humility, and other multicultural processes in psychotherapy. She has utilized a wide range of methods to identify factors related to client improvement (e.g., meta-analyses, qualitative, mixed methods). Dr. Tao is a Co-Investigator on the U. Denver site project will lend her theoretical and clinical skills to researchers at the various sites and will assist with writing and dissemination in interdisciplinary cultural networks.
Brandon Unruh, M.D., is Director of the Mentalization Clinic, Assistant Director of the Gunderson Residence, and Assistant Director of the BPD Training Institute at McLean Hospital. He is also an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In addition, he has a national reputation as an MBT clinician, teacher, and sought-after speaker. He co-edited a book on the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder and has also published on a variety of topics including medical ethics, general hospital psychiatry, and literature and medicine. Dr. Unruh will co-lead lead efforts to disseminate the results of this new treatment at scientific meetings and co-lead workshops about this new treatment with Dr. Zanarini. These workshops will be sponsored by various BPD conferences and by the BPD Training Institute at McLean. These trainings will first be offered to McLean clinicians and trainees and later to sites around the country.
Advisors
Michael Constantino, Ph.D., LP, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Graduate Program Director, and Director of the Psychotherapy Research Lab, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Constantino’s professional and research interests center on patient, therapist, and dyadic factors in psychosocial treatments; pantheoretical principles of clinical change; and measurement-based care. He has published over 150 articles and chapters in leading journals and books in the field, and he has received extramural grant and contract support for his research. He is also co-editor of the book, Principles of change: How psychotherapists implement research findings in practice, and the in-preparation Handbook of psychotherapy to be published by APA. Dr. Constantino’s has received several early- and mid-career research awards, including from the International Society for Psychotherapy Research, the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy (APA Division 29), and the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Dr. Constantino is also an APA Fellow. Among other professional positions, he is a current Associate Editor for Psychotherapy and a Past-President of both APA Division 29 and the North American Society for Psychotherapy Research.
David Goodman, Ph.D., LP, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and External Relations and Associate Professor of the Practice in both Counseling, Developmental, & Educational Psychology and also in Philosophy at Boston College, which has a specialization in psychoanalytic theory. Dr. Goodman is also Director of the Psychology and the Other conference series, editor of the Routledge Psychology and the Other book series, a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and a Teaching Associate at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Hospital. He is a thoughtful critic of consumeristic tendencies in psychotherapy that diminish moral and diversity considerations, and he offers our project expertise in philosophical psychology, ethics, and virtue theory in relation to psychotherapy and clinical research. Goodman will lend his theoretical, philosophical, and clinical skills to researchers at the various sites and will assist with writing and dissemination in psychodynamic and interdisciplinary networks.
Y. Joel Wong, Ph.D., Dr. Wong is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at Indiana University and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Wong has a long-standing interest in the interface of psychotherapy and virtues, having developed what is one of the first known therapeutic approach that focuses primarily on identifying and cultivating clients’ character strengths (Wong, 2006). Dr. Wong is particularly interested in the character strengths of gratitude and encouragement. He recently developed a new measure of the character strength of encouragement as well as a therapeutic psychoeducational group program to help people cultivate gratitude in their lives. He also received a grant from the Greater Good Science Center (funded by the Templeton Foundation) to study the use of a gratitude writing intervention in psychotherapy. He will be assisting with the measurement development, integrating character strengths within mainstream orientations, as well as preparing for the therapist-focused studies.
Consultants
Dave Atkins, Ph.D., is a Research Professor in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences division at the University of Washington, and he is the CEO for the company, Lyssn.io, LLC. He has served as a statistical consultant/co-investigator and data analyst on over 30 NIH-funded grants, and he was also the director the Data Core of the Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors, which consists of a dozen investigators supported by a variety of primarily NIH grants. Currently, he is the Co-Director of the Behavioral Research in Technology and Engineering (BRiTE) Center focused on the development and implementation of evidence-based, technology-enabled behavioral health innovations and methods. Related to this project, he co-developed the software system Lyssn.io, which aims to support training, supervision, and quality assurance of evidence-based counseling interventions. He will work with Dr. Owen to assist the therapist flourishing project.
David Barlow, Ph.D., ABPP, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry Emeritus, Boston University and Founder and Director Emeritus of the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Dr. Barlow is also Past-President of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association, Past-President of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and was Chair of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Psychological Intervention Guidelines, as well as a member of the DSM-IV Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association. He is a leader in the fields of psychotherapy, psychotherapy research, and anxiety disorders with over 600 publications including 90 books or clinical treatment manuals. He will provide expertise in psychotherapy research and clinical training of empirically-supported treatments, including recent work on well-being as an outcome of treatment. As the founder of CARD and the Unified Protocol Institute, he will contribute to the CARD site project and the overall project from his experience as an international leader in integrating research, clinical practice, and training for shaping the overall project for optimal impact.
Laura E. Captari, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Psychology Fellow at the Danielsen Institute. She completed her doctorate in counseling psychology, where her dissertation explored links between emotional abuse/neglect, attachment processes, dissociation, and affect regulation. Dr. Captari’s research and clinical interests include the developmental and relational impacts of trauma, disaster, and loss across the lifespan, with attention to intersectionality, spirituality/religion, the mind-body connection, virtues (e.g., gratitude, humility), and pathways to resilience and flourishing. She will be assisting with both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses for the Danielsen project.
Nancy Devor, Ph.D., LP, Senior Staff Psychologist, Danielsen Institute. Dr. Devor will contribute expertise in areas she has published, including clinician humility, relational development, and the well-being and formation of helping professionals within clinical training. She will assist with the qualitative and DI research for the Danielsen project and add expertise on therapist virtue and flourishing to the overall project.
Eugene L. Hall, Ph.D., LAMFT, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Licensed Associate Marriage and Family Therapist at the Danielsen Institute. Dr. Hall’s clinical and research interests include Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) mental health, well-being, and intimate relationships, minority stress and SGM resilience, substance use, and virtues. He is trained in Structural Equation Methods, including dyadic data analysis, and his methodological interests extend into the areas of measurement and evaluation. Clinically, he works with from a Narrative framework with individuals, couples, families, and groups, and he will help with both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses for the Danielsen project.
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Zac Imel, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology and Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Utah. Dr. Imel’s primary expertise involves the analysis of patient-therapist interactions in substance abuse interventions and psychotherapy more generally. A recent focus has been on the application of sophisticated computational methods to developed automated methods for evaluating patient-provider interactions. He completed his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he received extensive training in psychotherapy research and quantitative methods, and from 2009-2011, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Seattle VA, where he worked closely with Dr. John Baer on his MI training research. He has been either PI or CO-I in the NIH funded research that developed the core AI technology and thus he has great familiarity with this tool and how to implement it in an active clinical setting.
Peter Jankowski, Ph.D., LMFT, Associate Professor of Psychology, Bethel University, a Visiting Researcher at the Danielsen Institute at Boston University, and approved as a supervisor by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). Dr. Jankowski will offer expertise on positive psychology and virtue research, statistical methods (e.g., latent trajectory and multi-level modeling of longitudinal data), and clinical practice and training in the field of marriage and family therapy for the overall project and the Danielsen site project.
Heidi M. Levitt, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology program within the Department of Psychology at The University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a past-president of the Society of Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (SQIP), section of Division 5 of the American Psychological Association (APA; Quantitative and Qualitative Methods). In addition, she has been an Associate Editor for the journals Psychotherapy Research and Qualitative Psychology. She chaired the development of the SQIP recommendations for reviewing and designing qualitative research (Levitt et al., 2017). Also, she chaired the development of the inaugural APA journal article reporting standards (JARS) for qualitative, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods and advised on their integration into the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the APA (APA, 2020). The APA Manual informs the reporting and reviewing of journal articles and is the central guide for publishing in the social sciences. Within the American Psychological Association, she has been awarded Fellow status via Division 5 [Quantitative and Qualitative Methods], Division 29 [Psychotherapy], Division 32 [Society of Humanistic Psychology], and Division 44 [Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity]. She has received the Carmi Harari Research Award for Inquiry from the American Psychological Association’s Division 32. In 2020, she received the University of Massachusetts Boston Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship. She also was honored to receive the Distinguished Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award from APA Division 5, which honors an individual who has "had a long and distinguished history of scientific contributions within the field of qualitative research methods." Her programs of research engage mixed methods and are concentrated around psychotherapy research and sexual orientation/gender diversity research. She provides expertise in qualitative and mixed methods for the Danielsen site project and dissemination and implementation science studies in the overall project.
David Rupert, Psy.D., LP, Director of Training and Senior Staff Psychologist, Danielsen Institute. Dr. Rupert will offer expertise in areas he has published, including relational approaches to psychotherapy and training, spirituality in clinical training and practice, clinician humility, and humility in psychotherapy. He has presented Danielsen research and practice to clinics and professional organizations such as Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers. Dr. Rupert will work on practice-based clinician collaboration for the Danielsen site project and assist other teams with theoretical and training implications of this work.
Shannon Sauer-Zavala, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky (UK) and is the founding Director of Clinical Services at the UK Clinic for Emotional Health. Her research is focused on exploring emotion-focused mechanisms that maintain psychological symptoms (particularly high-risk symptoms such as suicidal thoughts and behaviors) and using this information to develop more targeted, easily-disseminated intervention strategies. Her research has been supported by NIMH, NIAAA, the Center for Implementation and Improvement Sciences, and the Canadian Institute of Health Research. Dr. Sauer-Zavala has co-authored over 75 peer-reviewed articles, numerous book chapters, and three books.
Brad Shuck, Ed.D., is Associate Professor and Program Director in the Human Resource and Organizational Development Program at the University of Louisville (Louisville, KY). His research focuses on core experiences of work including how employees experience engagement in the workplace, compassionate leadership, and organizational development. Shuck holds faculty affiliate status with the Department of Counseling and Human Development (UofL) and has done extensive work with the United States Army. Shuck’s current research projects are focused on compassion fatigue and the relationships between compassion, wellbeing, and performance. His work integrates engagement theory alongside individual level health outcomes and performance. He will consult with the U. Denver project on therapist flourishing in the area of organizational development.
Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at Harvard University, where she conducts research targeting the interplay between mental and physical health. She is interested in whether and how positive and negative emotions change in the context of chronic conditions, and if they alter the maintenance of health over time. She is also the co-leader of a working group on the measurement of well-being and related constructs (e.g., positive emotions, flourishing, optimism) at Harvard University. Moreover, Dr. Trudel-Fitzgerald is a clinical psychologist, with experience administering cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety and mood disorders. She will consult on content development and treatment refinement for the Unified Protocol trial, especially about the measurement of positive emotions and flourishing, as well as participate in manuscript writing and findings dissemination.
Tyler VanderWeele, Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality, faculty affiliate of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He holds degrees in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance and applied economics, and biostatistics. His research concerns methodology for distinguishing between association and causation in observational studies, and the use of statistical and counterfactual ideas to formalize and advance epidemiologic theory and methods. His empirical research spans psychiatric, perinatal, and social epidemiology; the science of happiness and flourishing; and the study of religion and health, including both religion and population health and the role of religion and spirituality in end-of-life care. He is the recipient of the 2017 COPSS Presidents’ Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies and author of the book Explanation in Causal Inference, published by Oxford University Press. He will contribute his measurement and public health expertise on flourishing to the overall project and statistical expertise to the Danielsen site project.
Administration
Lauren E. Kehoe, M.A., is the Associate Director of Administration and Finance of the Danielsen Institute where she has worked for over twenty years. She holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Boston University and nearly got a doctorate in English Renaissance tragedies and histories before she realized that a tragedy that she could do something about was the inability of therapists to organize themselves. Having seen many clients through multiple transfers from clinician to clinician, she sees a definite connection between her literary studies of notions of the liminal and the administration of outpatient psychotherapy. She has co-authored a conceptual paper and an empirical study on the relational ecology of psychotherapy that highlights the complex and influential role of systemic and relational dynamics between clients and administrative dynamics, which will be part of the Danielsen research for this project. She will also help manage financial and other administrative aspects of this project and oversee the technological aspects of the software platform assessment project at Danielsen.