The tasks of the WAIMH Board
The Board of Directors manages the business of the association and exercises all corporate powers. You will find the Bylaws of the association in the Resources section.
Article seven of the Bylaws describes the purpose, power, election process, meetings and actions of the Board of Directors.
Please note: You can contact Board Members and Central Office Staff via Contact Us Form.
The composition of the current Board of Directors
Executive Committee
According to WAIMH Bylaws (Section 15, Part 1), The Executive Committee shall be composed of the four elected members of the ASSOCIATION, the President’s Executive-at-Large, the Chair of the Affiliate Council, the Affiliate Council’s elected
representative, the Past President, the Executive Director and the Associate Executive Director. The Past President, the Executive Director and the Associate Executive Director shall serve in as ex officio, and are non-voting members.
President
Term 2024-2028
Astrid Berg, MB ChB, FCPsych (SA), M Phil (Child & Adolescent Psychiatry)
Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Cape Town Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital Rondebosch, Cape Town South Africa
At large member, President Elect
Term 2024-2028
Maree Foley, BSW, PG Dip Chi Psych, MPhil (Dist), PhD (Management)
Profession: Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist Research and Practice Consultant: Children, Families and Organisations Geneva, Switzerland
Affiliate Council Chair
Term 2023-2026
Juané Voges, MSc (Clin. Psych.), PhD (Psychiatry)
Profession: Clinical Psychologist Stellenbosch University Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Tygerberg Campus Cape Town South Africa
Affiliate Council Representative
Term 2023-2026
Azhar Abu Ali, Ph.D.
Profession: Senior Child and Family Clinical Psychologist CLMH and Psychotherapy Fellowship Training Lead IMC-ESCAM-UAE Affiliate Chairperson Dubai United Arab Emirates
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Campbell Paul, Assoc Prof, MBBS, FRANZCP, Cert Child Adol Child Psych
Campbell Paul is a Consultant Infant and Child Psychiatrist at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, paediatric consultation liaison psychiatry service.
He has a special interest in the understanding of the inner world of the baby and infant-parent psychotherapy. He is an Honorary Principal Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and has developed
postgraduate training programs in infant mental health.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the World Association for Infant Mental Health and has been a visiting psychiatrist to the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service.
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Astrid Berg, MB ChB, FCPsych (SA), M Phil (Child & Adolescent Psychiatry)
Astrid Berg is a Psychiatrist, Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist and Jungian Analyst. Astrid is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town and a senior consultant in the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town where she heads the UCT Parent-Infant Mental Health Service. She also holds an honorary position as Associate Professor Extraordinary in the Department of Psychiatry at the
University of Stellenbosch.
Astrid has been involved in working in a community in Cape Town since 1995 where she is in charge of a weekly mother-baby mental health clinic. She has written about this work and presented it extensively internationally. Her interest
is in the psychodynamics of the first relationships in life, as well as articulating the challenges and opportunities of living in a cultural diverse country.
She has recently published a book “Connecting with South Africa – cultural communication and understanding”.
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Anna Huber
orem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type
specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum
passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed
to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover
many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
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Jane Barlow, DPhil, FFPH Hon
Jane Barlow (DPhil, FFPH Hon) is Professor of Evidence Based Intervention in the Early Years at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. Jane’s main research interest is the role of early parenting
in the aetiology of mental health problems, and the evaluation of interventions aimed at improving parenting practices during pregnancy and the postnatal period. She also undertakes research to evaluate the effectiveness of
interventions aimed at preventing child abuse.
She is currently President of AIMH UK, and a member of PreVAiL (Preventing Violence Across the Lifespan).
At large member; Special Advisor to the Board, USA Incorporation Status
Term 2024-2028
Julie Ribaudo, PhD, LMSW
Profession: Clinical Professor of Social Work University of Michigan School of Social Work 1080 S. University Ann Arbor, MI 48109 United States
At large member, Secretary-treasurer
Term 2024-2028
David Oppenheim, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair, School of Psychological Sciences Head, Center for the Study of Child Development University of Haifa Haifa, Israel
President's Executive at Large
Term 2024-2028
Anusha Lachman, MBCHB, MMED, FCPSYCH, MPhil, Cert Child Psych, PhD
Profession: Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist Tygerberg Hospital Stellenbosch University Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Cape Town South Africa
Past President of WAIMH
Term 2024-2028
Campbell Paul, Assoc Prof, MBBS, FRANZCP, Cert Child Adol Child Psych
Profession: Consultant Infant Psychiatrist Integrated Mental Health Service Royal Children's Hospital Flemington Road, Parkville, Victoria, 3052 Australia
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Hisako Watanabe. M.D., Ph.D.
Hisako Watanabe is a child psychiatrist in Japan, with medical training in pediatrics, psychiatry, neurology and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She was trained at the Tavistock Clinic in the early 90’s, and has integrated Western
trans-disciplinary, neurobiological and psychodynamic approaches with Japanese concept of Amae. (Amae is a concept referring to the affective, non-verbal mental wellness activated within the infant-caregiver relationship.)
She developed innovative comprehensive approaches to resolve divergent psychosocial problems of children and families in rapidly industrializing yet deeply traditional society of Japan. Her Amae therapy empowers the primary
caregiver by inducing intuitive parenting, facilitated by the child’s attachment needs, and leading to a new encounter with reciprocity and affect attunement.
On her return from London to Yokohama in 1994, she established a community-based NPO organization for people with schizophrenia, named ‘Mind Club,’ which has established three workplaces, two group homes and one café that sells
baked goods made by the individuals with psychiatric illnesses. During her 20 years in the pediatric department at the Keio University Hospital, she has applied infant mental health principles in her training of 330 pediatricians
to address emergent issues in the rapidly industrializing Japanese society, such as transgenerational transmission of psychopathology in eating disorders, and mothers with postnatal depression, prematurely born, low-birth weight
infants,infants born with multiple anomalies and diseases.
In 1997, she founded the FOUR WINDS (Forum Of Universal Research for the Workings of Infant and Neonatal Developmental Support), a nation-wide forum for Japanese professionals working with infants and their families. She has led
FOUR WINDS’ activities to gather together Infant Mental Health professionals to create the culture of ongoing shared learning. The 20 years of work accumulated through the FOUR WINDS activities served as the foundation for
the newly established Japanese Association for Infant Mental Health. In 2008, Watanabe chaired the organization of the 11th World Congress of WAIMH, the first ever to be held in Asia.
Immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, she reached out to City of Koriyama in Fukushima, devastated by radiation contamination by the nuclear plant accident and set up a multidisciplinary community
team, named the Koriyama Post-disaster Child Care Project (KPCCP). With a relationship-based, trauma-informed, family-focused approach, the project has enhanced the morale of parents and community workers through activities
of traditional play and picture book reading that had traditionally been embedded in the local community culture. This led to the successful opening of Pep-Kids Koriyama, the largest indoor playground in the Northeastern Japan,
providing a place for families with young children to come and gather, where they are protected from the threat of radiation outdoors. The indoor playground has been visited by more than 2 million children and parents.
In 2014, Watanabe was given the WAIMH Award, and in 2016, she was elected as an Executive Board Member of the WAIMH. Watanabe continues to work to bring perspectives of families and professionals in Asia and other parts of the
world to diversify the voices represented in IMH work. She believes in the wisdom of the workers on the ground from many parts of the world unrepresented by the Members of the Board, and hopes to continue to reach out to learn
from their voices. One of her most recent work includes her outreach visit to Bangladesh, where she witnessed a creative and well- grounded humanitarian work in infant mental health. She observed families, despite having been
geographically dislocated from their homeland and having experienced adversity, being supported to use play, music and narratives to preserve their traditional culture. Watanabe believes that the WAIMH community and the field
of Infant Mental Health can be improved by increasing the diversity of voices and representation, and by addressing institutionalized racism and oppression She hopes to continue learning from families and professionals of under-represented
regions of the world.
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Catherine Maguire B.A.(Hons)Psych, M.Psych.Sc.(Clin.Psych.) IMH-E®
Catherine Maguire, is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist and an Endorsed Infant Mental Health Mentor. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork, where she is also a PhD candidate.
Catherine is currently on secondment from the national Health Service Executive to an Area Based Childhood Programme in Cork city where she leads an Infant Health and Wellbeing Programme for the pre-birth to three populations.
Her specific interests include the establishment and evaluation of infant mental health programmes and building and consolidating interdisciplinary workforce capacity. She provides master classes locally and nationally and
is the co-creator of Infant Mental Health Network Groups, a process driven group learning environment developed to facilitate the consolidation and integration of core skills and competencies into frontline practice.
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Chaya Kulkarni, BAA, M.Ed., EdD
Dr. Chaya Kulkarni is the Director of Infant Mental Health Promotion (IMHP) at The Hospital for Sick Children, a national organization which improves outcomes across the lifespan through translating and promoting the science of early mental
health into practice with families during pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood. Dr. Kulkarni has over 25 years of experience in a number of leadership roles including frontline service delivery, policy analysis, research, and curriculum
and resource development. Prior to joining IMHP, she was VP, Parent and Professional Education at Invest in Kids, and has also served as Senior Policy Analyst and Researcher for the Office of the Official Opposition, Queen’s Park.
Dr. Kulkarni is an adviser to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and a member of the Board at Family Day Care Services.
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Kai von Klitzing, PhD, MD
Kai von Klitzing, MD, borne 1954, married to Walli, three daughters. Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics at the University of Leipzig,
Germany, Psychoanalyst, Member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and German Psychoanalytical Association/IPA, Training Analyst, Editor of the Journal Kinderanalyse/Child Analysis, Board Member of WAIMH since 2004, host of the 2010
WAIMH congress in Leipzig.
Professional career: education in Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Adult Psychiatry in Germany, 1988 – 1997 Child Psychiatrist at the Children’s Hospital in Basel, Switzerland (with Dieter Bürgin); 1997 – 1998 Visiting Researcher at the
Program for Early Developmental Studies (with Robert Emde), 1999 – 2006 Professor for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University of Basel, Switzerland; since 2006 Chair of Child Psychiatry at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
Scientific interests: Developmental psychopathology, early triadic relationships (mother – father – infant), children’s narratives, psychotherapy (individual and family), neurobiology. Kai von Klitzing has published many clinical and empirical
papers in German, French and English (e.g. two papers on the role of fathers and triadic development in the IMHJ) and books on immigrant children, psychotherapy in (early) childhood, and attachment disorders.
Other members of the Board of Directors
Editor of Infant Mental Health Journal; Chair of Program Committee
Holly Brophy-Herb, Ph.D., IMH-E® (IV)
Profession: Professor of Child Development Department of Human Development and Family Studies Room 7 Human Ecology Building, Michigan State University 552 W. Circle Drive East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA
P: +1- 517-355-3397
Editor of Perspectives in Infant Mental Health (formerly, The Signal)
Jane Barlow, DPhil, FFPH Hon
Department of Social Policy and Intervention University of Oxford 32 Wellington Square, OX1 2ER United Kingdom
Past Chair of Program Committee
Term 2023-2026
Elisabeth Hoehn, MBBS, FRANZCP, Cert Child Adol Psych
Profession: Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Medical Director, Queensland Centre for Perinatal and Infant Mental Health, Children’s Health Queensland 31 Robinson Road Nundah Queensland, 4012 Australia
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Holly Brophy-Herb, Ph.D., IMH-E® (IV)
Holly Brophy-Herb, professor and IMH endorsed (IMH-E®), Michigan State University-USA, examines emotion socialization practices and toddlers’ social-emotional development. Her community-based research and training initiatives have resulted in parenting/caregiving program development and the establishment of the Michigan Infant/Toddler Research Exchange, a consortium of infancy researchers focused on identifying evidence-based, IMH-informed early intervention research and practices. She is a core collaborator in national initiatives to articulate competencies for infant/toddler workforce preparation and is a member of the Network of Infant/Toddler Researchers. She serves on the board of the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health and was Associate IMHJ Editor until she assumed
the role of Editor in Chief of the Infant Mental Health Journal in 2019.
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Maree Foley, BSW, PG Dip Chi Psych, MPhil (Dist), PhD (Management)
Maree Foley is a past President of the Aotearoa/New Zealand IMH association (IMHAANZ) and completed her PhD at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
She is a Child, Family and Organisational consultant in private practice, in Switzerland.
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Miri Keren, MD
Was born in Paris, France, 07/06/53. Immigrated to Israel in 1970. Lives in Kfar-Saba, married and mother of 4 children. Works as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, director of the first Community Infant Psychiatry
Unit in Israel, created in 1996, and affiliated to the Geha Mental Health Center. Has been since 1999 the supervisor of a National project of Infant Mental health units implementation, under joint sponsorship of
the Ministry of Health and Sacta-Rashi Foundation.
Also functions as a consultant of the Tel Aviv Residential nursery for infants waiting for adoption, consultant at the FTT Clinic, Schneider Children's Hospital, Petah Tiqva. Teaches as Lecturer at the Child Psychiatry
department, Tel-Aviv Sackler Medical School, and is the Head of a two-year Early Childhood Psychiatry Course, Faculty of Continuing Education, Tel-Aviv Sackler Medical School.
Has created the Israeli WAIMH Affiliate in 2000, has been its President from 2003 to 2007, is now Honorary president of the Israel WAIMH Affiliate, and President Elect of the WAIMH. Is currently the Editor of the Consulting
Editor of the Infant Mental Health Journal.
Her research domains are Infant mental health diagnostic classification, feeding disorders in infancy, symbolic play development, parent-infant dyadic and triadic relationships characteristics among clinic-and non clinic-referred
families, abandoned babies and adoptive parents.
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David Oppenheim, Ph.D.
David Oppenheim, Ph.D. is Professor and former Chair in the Department of Psychology and a member of the Center for the Study of Child Development at the University of Haifa, Israel. Dr. Oppenheim’s research focuses
on the central importance of attachment relationships for children’s social and emotional development. In particular, his research has examined the role of parental Insightfulness and parent-child open communication
in the organization of attachment relationships throughout childhood.
Dr. Oppenheim’s studies on these questions involved longitudinal studies, and included typically developing children, children at high risk such as those in foster care and those whose parents experienced trauma, and
children with atypical development such as Autism and Mental Retardation. In addition to a focus on basic research, Dr. Oppenheim's writing and teaching stresses the clinical application of developmental research
for work with young children and their families. This includes work of mental health professionals and also the work of other professionals working with young children experiencing stress or with special needs.
Ex Officio, Executive Director
Kaija Puura, PhD
Profession: Professor of Child Psychiatry Tampere University Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences Arvo Ylpön katu 34 33520 Tampere Finland
P: +358-(0)3-3116 5131
Fax: +358-(0)3-3116 3579
Ex Officio, Associate Executive Director
Reija Latva, MD, PhD
Profession: Head of Department, Tampere University Hospital, Department of Child Psychiatry Central Hospital
PO BOX 2000 FI-33521 Tampere Finland
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Holly Brophy-Herb, Ph.D., IMH-E® (IV)
Holly Brophy-Herb, professor and IMH endorsed (IMH-E®), Michigan State University-USA, examines emotion socialization practices and toddlers’ social-emotional development. Her community-based research and training initiatives have resulted
in parenting/caregiving program development and the establishment of the Michigan Infant/Toddler Research Exchange, a consortium of infancy researchers focused on identifying evidence-based, IMH-informed early intervention research and
practices. She is a core collaborator in national initiatives to articulate competencies for infant/toddler workforce preparation and is a member of the Network of Infant/Toddler Researchers. She serves on the board of the Michigan Association
for Infant Mental Health and is Associate IMHJ Editor.
Close
BIO 13
orem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen
book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more
recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content
here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their
infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
Close
BIO 14
orem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen
book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more
recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content
here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their
infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
Staff at the Central Office
Administrator
Neea Aalto
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