Board Members

President: Dr Russ Harris:

Russ's background is in medicine, but over the years, he has trained in many types of therapy and coaching. When he discovered Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, he was so deeply impressed that he promptly went to the U.S.A. to train with its creators, Steve Hayes and Kelly Wilson. Since then, he has been back several times for advanced training, and is now an experienced ACT trainer. Russ travels all around Australia, and internationally, providing workshops and training for a wide variety of health professionals, from coaches and counsellors, to psychologists and psychiatrists. He also regularly presents ACT workshops at a wide variety of national and international conferences.

Vice President: Darin Cairns

Darin Cairns is a Clinical Psychology who has worked in the public and private sector for the last 12 years. He has set up award winning intervention services for children with Autism and related conditions and has lectured in learning theory and is applications to audiences around the world. He was initially trained in Applied Behaviour Analysis and its clinical cousins, Clinical Behaviour Analysis and Functional Analytic Psychotherapy. After many years working with developmental specialists and clinicians his frustration at not being able to bridge the gap from ABA to complex behavioural and emotional domains lead him to Relational Frame Theory. He has since applied RFT to hundreds of developmental programs for children with special needs and continued to practice Clinically using ACT and RFT inspired interventions. Darin is passionate about the science and philosophy of Functional Contextualism and believes it has the potential to unite behavioural and cognitive psychology into a powerful new paradigm. He is proud and honoured to be associated with ANZ ACBS and the passionate, gifted and giving people who have helped make it such a wonderful organisation.

Past President: Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi is associate professor of psychology at the University of Wollongong. He has authored and edited five books, and has published over 40 peer reviewed articles related to the promotion of mental health and emotional well-being. Recently, he has written and published a book (with Ann Bailey) entitled A CBT Practioner’s Guide to ACT: How to bring the gap between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. He has also co-edited a book on ACT, and co-wrote a special journal issue on the link between ACT and CBT. Ciarrochi’s work has been cited over 1000 times in peer reviewed journals. Joseph has done extensive research on applying ACT in the workplace. In addition to his Academic work, Joseph has been active in promoting ACT and developing an ACT-based community in Oceania.

Treasurer: Linda Bilich

Linda is a clinical psychologist who has almost completed a research PhD at the University of Wollongong. Her project involves conducting an ACT intervention with NSW police officers. She has been involved with ACT in different ways since 2003, such as attending training / workshops and presenting at conferences (both in Australia and overseas), and has assisted Joseph Ciarrochi in numerous ACT projects. She has been involved in and helped out with the formation of the APS ACT Interest Group, the ACT Oceania Conference in Wollongong, and the recent Kelly Wilson workshops.

Student Representative: Priscilla Almada

Since 2006, Priscilla has been actively involved in the Association of Contextual Behavioural Science community and clinical and basic research. Priscilla is currently working on her Ph.D. in Psychology at University of Wollongong. Her dissertation research involves applying a RFT approach to verbal behaviour, to increase current understanding of the dynamic mechanisms of perspective taking, in order to better influence complex social skills (i.e. empathy, development of self, prosocial behaviour). Priscilla is doing her research under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi and Dr. Louise McHugh.

Members-at-Large (4):

Julian McNally

Julian has been a counselling psychologist since 1994 and switched from a largely solution-oriented framework to ACT in 2003. He currently works solely in private practice and has previously worked in correctional, welfare and educational environments. He is currently the ACT_ANZO listserve moderator and previously ran the Melbourne ACT Peer Supervision Group. Currently he supervises several practitioners in Melbourne in the ACT approach and has provided an ACT training workshop for postgraduate psychology students. He has trained in ACT with Russ Harris, Robyn Walser and attended both the ACT Oceania pre-conference workshops and conferences in 2007 and 2008, presenting a workshop at the latter.

David Mellor

He has been a clinical psychologist since 1976 and is currently working in AOD in New Zealand. Introduced to ACT in 2004 by a colleague, he found it brought his clinical life alive again. After a couple of years of rapid learning including a number of workshops (with Robyn Walser, John Forsyth, Georg Eifert and Kirk Strosahl) along with Jim Hegarty, he ran the 2nd Oceania conference in Christchurch at which the energy for this Chapter became a reality.

Louise Shepherd

Louise is a clinical psychologist who graduated from USyd in 1997 and since then have worked in a range of clinical settings including a private psychiatric hospital, oncology and now at UNSW in student counselling. She trained originally in CBT and has been greatly interested in ACT since first going to Melbourne in 2004 to see Steve Hayes. Since then she has been hooked and attended training with Robyn Walser, Kelly Wilson, at the London conference 2006, JT Blackledge, Kirk and Patti and both the Wollongong and Christchurch onferences. She has been involved with the Sydney CBD ACT peer supervision group for the past couple of years and previously with the Bondi Junction group since it commenced.

Carla Walton

Carla is a Senior Clinical Psychologist at the Centre for Psychotherapy, a specialist service of Hunter New England Mental Health Service for Borderline Personality Disorders and Eating Disorders. She is involved in treatment provision (individual and group) and supervision in both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. She holds a conjoint lectureship in the School of Psychology at the University of Newcastle and also work in private practice, using ACT (almost exclusively). Carla has been involved with ACT since 2003 and attended ACT training with Kelly Wilson, Robyn Walser, Steve Hayes, Kirk Strosahl and John Forsyth. A co-ordinator of the Newcastle ACT interest group, she has run a number of workshops on ACT and lectures on the topic in the postgraduate clinical program at the University of Newcastle.