Leadership Team

She graduated from the Counseling Psychology program at the University of Kansas. Dr. Owens completed her pre-doctoral internship in child clinical psychology at Children’s Mercy Hospitals & Clinics in Kansas City, Missouri and a postdoctoral experience in neuropsychological assessment and child and adolescent therapy at the Achieve Center in Wausau, Wisconsin. Her research interests include: (a) the assessment, development, and use of strengths; (b) the clinical application of positive psychology; and (c) the mental health and well-being of underrepresented, under-served, and economically disadvantaged children and youth. She is currently an Editorial Board member for the Journal of Counseling Psychology, The Counseling Psychologist, and the Journal of Positive Psychology Wellbeing. She is also the President of the Positive Clinical Psychology Division of the International Positive Psychology Association and the Chair of the Section on Positive Psychology of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Owens received the Shane J. Lopez Award for Professional Contributions in Positive Psychology and the Student Award for Distinguished Contributions in Positive Psychology from the Section on Positive Psychology, as well as the International Positive Psychology Association Honorable Mention Dissertation Award.

During her degree, she completed a few positive psychology related projects. She collaborated with local lead geriatric psychiatrists on the “Fountain of Health” initiative for seniors’ positive mental health. She conducted a study on the well-being of rural physicians and the findings were presented at the 4th World Congress on Positive Psychology. She carried out a project on workplace wellness for healthcare professionals, which was presented at the 5th World Congress. She’s passionate about promoting optimal health and currently works in natural health with essential oils (airanyuan.com). One of her biggest accomplishments in life is to have helped a close family member overcome Depression. She now volunteers in the Clinical Division as the communications lead.

Coming soon

He is Head of the Institute and the Academy for Child, Youth and Family (IKJF) e.U. in Graz, Austria, Director of the Institute for Positive Psychology and Mental Coaching, Coordinator for Seligman Europe and a current member of the IPPA Board of Directors. Dr. Streit has been working actively in the field of positive psychology since 2009, specializing in psychological interventions for counseling, coaching and therapy.

As part of the positive psychological platform, Seligman Europe, Dr. Streit organized symposia, lectures and seminars on positive psychology.  In 2011, he developed training for Applied Positive Psychology in German-speaking countries in collaboration with Prof. Martin Seligman and the University of Pennsylvania (USA)

That same year he founded the Institute for Positive Psychology and Mental Coaching in Graz, where he regularly conducts workshops and holds regular seminars entitled:  “Positive Psychology – practice-oriented concepts and interventions for school psychologists and school psychologists “and “Applied Positive Psychology – Positive Leadership.”

His current research includes a project of the Institute for Positive Psychology and Mental Coaching in cooperation with the Department of geriatric psychiatry at the Landesnervenklinik Sigmund Freud in Graz about wellbeing “A positive psychological intervention program for depressed people over 65 years.” He has also  recently embarked on a project to develop the German version of Positive Psychotherapy Inventory (Rashid, 2013) and the PERMA profiler (Kern, 2012).

He is the former Editor of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology and former director of the clinical psychology doctoral program at George Mason University. He is the co-editor (with Barbara Winstead) of Psychopathology: Foundations for a Contemporary Understanding (now in its 4^th edition) and editor of the forthcoming Social Psychological Foundations of Well-being and Life Satisfaction. Maddux is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association’s Divisions of General, Clinical, and Health Psychology and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.  For the past several years his professional activities have included giving lectures, teaching graduate students, and organizing workshops on evidence-based clinical interventions in Europe and South America. He is also a Visiting Professor at Klaipeda University in Lithuania.

He is also an adjunct faculty at the Executive Master’s Program in Positive Leadership at the IE University, Spain.

Dr. Rashid developed and validated Positive Psychotherapy (PPT) with Dr. Martin Seligman at the Positive Psychology Centre, University of Pennsylvania and published several PPT studies with clients experiencing depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, borderline personality symptoms and psychosis.  Also trained in Hath Yoga and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Dr. Rashid has trained mental health professionals and educators internationally in positive psychology interventions and strengths-based resilience skills.

Dr. Rashid is current co-chair of Campus Mental Health, a Canadian initiative, and also directs award-winning program Flourish (www.utsc.utoronto.ca/flourish/) at UTSC.  Dr. Rashid, consults with several non-profit organizations and has worked with 9/11 families, Asian tsunami survivors and refugee families. Author of numerous scholarly papers, and book chapters, Dr. Rashid’s work has been featured in Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, Macleans’ magazine, TEDx and at the Canadian Broadcasting.

For the past two years, Dr. Rashid has served as the Chair of IPPA’s Positive Clinical Psychology Division’s Steering Committee and served as the lead author on the division charter.