The Board

Elizabeth is an experienced public health professional with global and domestic health experience. She is currently the Executive Director of The Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University.

Prior to joining IQSS, Elizabeth served as the Chief Operating Officer at Greater Portland Health which provides high-quality, patient-centered healthcare that is accessible, affordable, and culturally sensitive. In several academic, community, public sector, and health settings, Elizabeth has provided health system and community strengthening efforts, led trauma-informed resilience trainings, and worked with partners to translate proven research into the implementation of effective programs in the U.S., Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Elizabeth received her Masters in Public Health from Yale University and her Bachelors from Bates College. Bringing experience from serving on other Boards, Elizabeth is honored to be part of Mindbridge and is committed to contributing to bridging psychological and neurobiological science to applied human rights work.

You can find Elizabeth personally recharging through physical activity in the beautiful outdoors with her family and friends.

Dr. Linda Silka is a social and community psychologist by training, with much of her work focusing on building community-university research partnerships. She has several decades of experience in leading community-university research partnerships on environmental, economic development, and environmental health issues.

Dr. Silka was the former Director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and is now Senior Fellow at the University of Maine’s George Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. Prior to moving to the University of Maine, Dr. Silka was a faculty member for three decades at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she directed the Center for Family, Work, Community, served as the Special Assistant to the Provost for Community Outreach and Partnerships, and was Professor of Regional Economic and Social Development.

Dr. Silka has written extensively on the challenges and opportunities of building research partnerships with diverse and has consulted internationally on how to build community-university research partnerships.

Allison Walker-Elders is a public health professional with nearly a decade of experience. Her education includes a degree in Neuroscience from Wellesley College and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

When not working toward reproductive justice and a world with fewer barriers to healthcare, Allison enjoys running, reading, and looking at pictures of baby goats.

Qasim Rashid is a human rights lawyer, author, and former Congressional candidate. Qasim received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Richmond School of Law. He has also served as a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Islamic Studies program.

His human rights work includes supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence, representing asylum seekers, uplifting the incarcerated through prison chaplaincy, and advocating for universal religious freedom. In addition to being featured on various media outlets, Qasim publishes daily on Substack about human rights issues - Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid.

Alaina Brenick (she/her) is currently an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Brenick received a pre-doctoral traineeship from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to obtain her Ph.D. (University of Maryland) prior to completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the international and interdisciplinary program, Human Behavior in Social and Economic Change, at Friedrich Schiller Universität of Jena, Germany.

She is a scholar-activist dedicated to the interdisciplinary and translational approaches fundamental to the field of Human Development and Family Sciences. Through a social justice lens, Dr. Brenick analyzes how diverse social groups—often with vastly different societal structures, norms, and expectations—experience, reason about, and respond to intergroup conflict, bias-based victimization, and systemic discrimination. Her scholarship utilizes a social-ecological framework to analyze the individual, micro-, and macro-system influences on these factors and is designed to be applied directly to policy, practice, and social action.

Dr. Brenick’s research provides a fundamental knowledge base for creating contextually and developmentally appropriate intervention programs, designed to reduce individual prejudice and systemic oppression and promote socially just and equitable intergroup relations.

Helen A. Neville is the Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology, a professor of Educational Psychology and African American Studies, and a Center for Advanced Studies Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She is past president of the Society of Counseling Psychology (APA Division 17) and the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race (APA Division 45) and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. She is active in the Association of Black Psychologists, having served on their Board of Directors and receiving their Distinguished Psychologist award.

Her research on race, racism, African American psychology, and radical healing has been published in a wide range of journal articles and she has co-edited 8 books in this area. 

Charissa S. L. Cheah, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology and Asian Studies Faculty Affiliate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

A cultural developmental scientist, Dr. Cheah’s research illuminates how individual, relational, and contextual factors shape the social-emotional, mental, and physical health of children and adolescents, with a sustained focus on Asian American and Muslim American families. Her innovative mixed-methods work advances conceptual frameworks on parenting, racial-ethnic identity socialization, and development, offering culturally grounded perspectives on development in the context of migration, marginalization, and resilience.

Dr. Cheah has published widely and served in key leadership roles across developmental science, including as President of the Society for Research on Adolescence. Her scholarship has been supported by federal agencies and private foundations. Dr. Cheah is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development.

A dedicated mentor and public scholar, Dr. Cheah bridges research, policy, and practice to amplify Asian American voices and foster equity in psychological science and youth well-being.  

Dominik Doemer (he/him) is the Director of Communications for the Scholars Strategy Network. In this role, he leads SSN's organizational communications strategy and media support for the organization’s over 2,000 members, including helping researchers connect with reporters, write opinion pieces for popular outlets, and develop a media strategy for their work. He has worked on hundreds of opinion pieces written by scholars and placed pieces in outlets such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, and many others. He frequently leads workshops on how to best communicate with reporters or write compelling op-eds.

Mitchell J. Prinstein, PhD, is APA’s chief of psychology strategy and integration. Prinstein previously served as APA’s chief science officer (CSO) and was the John Van Seters distinguished professor of psychology and neuroscience, and assistant dean of Honors Carolina at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began his academic career in 1999 as an assistant professor and later director of clinical psychology at the Yale University department of psychology.

Prinstein holds a PhD and an MS in clinical psychology from the University of Miami and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Emory University.

His developmental psychopathology research has focused on popularity and peer relations, particularly among adolescents. He also has examined the associations between adolescents’ interpersonal experiences and psychological symptoms, including depression, self-injury, suicidal behavior, and other health-risk behaviors.

Dr. Apryl Alexander (she/her) is the Metrolina Distinguished Professor of Health and Policy in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is also the Founding Director of the UNC Charlotte Violence Prevention Center. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Florida Institute of Technology with concentrations in forensic psychology and child and family therapy. She is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for the Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Abuse (ATSA). 

Dr. Alexander’s research and clinical work focus on violence and victimization, human sexuality, and trauma-informed and culturally informed practice. Dr. Alexander is an engaged public scholar who has been featured in numerous media outlets, including The Associated Press, Essence Magazine, USA Today, and NBC Nightly News, discussing her research and advocacy work. She is the recipient of the 2024 Karl F. Heiser Presidential Award for Advocacy from the American Psychological Association (APA) and the 2025 Sommer Klag Advocacy Achievement Award from the American Public Health Association (APHA).

As part of her public scholarship, Dr. Alexander also enjoys bringing psychology to the public through discourse on popular culture and media and has previously contributed to Black Panther Psychology: Hidden Kingdoms and The Handmaid’s Tale Psychology: Seeing Off Red.