Hear New Voices in Our reTHINK Sessions

Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NY. She explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological disorders with the aim of developing novel treatments. She is also interested in the brain basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Clinically, she specializes in lifespan (child, adolescent, and adult) treatment of anxiety, mood, and impulsive and compulsive disorders (e.g. ocd), blending her neural perspective with cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and humanistic approaches.

Dr. Berlin received her doctorate from the University of Oxford, Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and Master’s in Psychology from the New School for Social Research. She completed her NIMH post-doctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and trained in clinical neuropsychology at Weill Cornell Medicine in the Department of Neurological Surgery. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in textbooks and high-impact journals.

Dr. Berlin is a visiting scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and was a Visiting Professor at Vassar College, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/University of Zurich, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association, the Young Investigator Award from the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, and the Clifford Yorke Prize from the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. She was honored as one of Stony Brook University’s “40 Under Forty”, and won the BBC’s “University Challenge” quiz show as part of the Magdalen College, Oxford team.

Passionate about science communication, destigmatizing mental illness, and promoting women in STEM, Berlin is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange and on the inaugural committee of the National Academies’ Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communication. She has also served on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Committee on Science and Technology Engagement with the Public. She co-hosts StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and has hosted television series on PBS and the Discovery Channel. Dr. Berlin also co-wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway and Edinburgh Fringe Festival shows, Off the Top, about the neuroscience of improvisation, and Impulse Control, about the science of impulsivity. She has made numerous media appearances including on the BBC, History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, and TEDx, and was featured in the documentary film Bill Nye: Science Guy.

Robin is the Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor in Neurology and Psychiatry and Director Neuroscape’s Psychedelics Division at the University of California, San Francisco. He moved to Imperial College London in 2008 after obtaining a PhD in Psychopharmacology from the University of Bristol. Robin has designed human brain imaging studies with LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and DMT, and clinical trials of psilocybin therapy for severe mental illnesses. He has authored over 130 papers, with over forteen thousand citations. Robin founded the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London in April 2019, and in 2021, was named in TIME magazine’s ‘100 Next’ – a list of 100 rising stars shaping the future.

Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD is an Associate Professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, where she directs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress (GLASS) Lab, which investigates the effects of grief on the brain and the body. Her work primarily focuses on trying to tease out the mechanisms that cause ongoing or severe reactions to loss. In particular, she is curious about the neurobiological, immune, and cardiovascular factors that vary between individual grief responses. Dr. O’Connor earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona in 2004. Following a faculty appointment at UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, she returned to the University of Arizona in 2012. She is the author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, and Psychological Science, and featured in Newsweek, the New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler holds a Doctorate in Psychology, and is an author, keynote speaker, digital health advisor, frequent media contributor, founder of a pre-teen puberty course called Start with the Talk, and board member at Tennyson Center for Children. She is the author of Mommy Burnout, one of the top Parenting books of 2018 and winner of the Best Parenting/Family Book as awarded by International Latino Book Awards. Dr. Ziegler also wrote a chapter in Advice for Working Moms (Harvard Business Review Press), May 2021 and was also a contributor to the book, Self-Care for New Moms.

Most recently, Dr. Ziegler was a founding member of the digital behavioral health company, BeMe Health in 2020 and 2021. She has also contributed to clinical content for Teladoc Health related to depression and anxiety.

Dr. Ziegler has appeared as a mental health expert in 100+ news related shows including The Today Show with Megyn Kelly, The Katie Couric Show, The Doctors, The Jenny McCarthy Show, CNN (Head Line News/HLN), 9 News, FOX31, CBS4, and KWGN. Articles she has contributed to have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Yahoo, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, Huffington Post and more. She also hosts a popular podcast called "Dr. Sheryl's PodCouch."

Born as a first generation Cuban American from an immigrant family, Dr. Ziegler draws from her early childhood in New York City to her tween and teenage years being raised in a blended family in upstate New York. These unique life experiences have created incredible perspectives on parenting, mothering and raising all types of children in the modern world.

Dr. Saundra Jain is executive director of the Mental Aerobics Project, focused on wellness and the impact of positive psychology on client outcomes. Dr. Jain provides workshops to healthcare practitioners, organizations, businesses, and individuals interested in learning more about the power of wellness. In 1992, she launched a private practice of psychotherapy, where she currently provides services for a wide range of mental health issues.

Dr. Jain is very active in the area of peer-to-peer education, especially in the disease states of depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, and ADHD. Another strong clinical and educational interest involves differential diagnosis of major psychiatric disorders. She is the co-creator and co-presenter of a novel and extremely well-received interactive workshop/program addressing the challenges of dealing with psychiatric comorbidities through the use of psychiatric scales and screeners. This program reached a national audience, and according to many attendees changed the way they practice medicine. She has been instrumental in developing several other innovative tools/programs to fill current gaps in this area. She is the co-creator and co-presenter featured on an interactive DVD titled Differentiating Bipolar Depression from Unipolar Depression. Recently, Dr. Jain served as the co-host of Depression in Relationships, a medical education program broadcast in 20 major cities in the United States on several major television networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX) and the Voice of America national news and talk radio system. She is also senior co-author of two very well-received books that were written for clients: Unleashed: Transforming My Battle With Depression and Unleashed: 12-Weeks to Total Mental Fitness, both directed toward the needs of patients struggling with mental health issues.

She obtained her master's degree from the University of Houston-Clear Lake and a doctoral degree from Southern California University for Professional Studies. She demonstrated her professional versatility by obtaining an MBA from Texas Woman’s University. She is a licensed professional counselor and a clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. She has extensive clinical training in multiple sites, covering the gamut of childhood, adolescent and adult experiences in the private and the public sectors. She was selected for a postgraduate clinical fellowship at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, where she trained in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.