Masters in Psychology Podcast

Dr. Aldrich Chan was born in Canada, moved to Hong Kong for five years, moved to Seattle for two years, then moved to Costa Rica where he lived until he was 17 years old. When he thinks of home, he thinks of Costa Rica although he admits “Costa Ricans wouldn’t say I’m Costa Rican, the Canadians wouldn’t say I’m Canadian.” In this podcast, Dr. Chan shares his academic, professional, and a small part of his personal journey including what inspired him to specialize in neuropsychology and consciousness, how one can decide on which field or branch of psychology to focus, and we learn what it took for him to open his own practice and build a successful career in neuropsychology.

Dr. Chan is a neuropsychologist, author of the award-winning book Reassembling Models of Reality: Theory and Clinical Practice published in the prestigious Interpersonal Neurobiology Series, and Founder of the Center for Neuropsychology and Consciousness (CNC), a practice in Miami, FL that provides neuropsychological and psychological services, education, cognitive remediation, and independent consultation. He always knew that he was interested in psychology and philosophy since high school, but it wasn’t until his second year in college that he specialized in psychology. He states, “by mid second year, I ended up taking abnormal psychology and sensation and perception and these courses really changed the direction of my life because I absolutely fell in love with those courses.” His parents wanted him to get into business and he suggested that he would go the psychology route to get into marketing. He wanted to get into a field where he could “include [himself] in the process of healing and use that knowledge in a way that is practical.” So, he ended up volunteering for many projects.

During his volunteer work in Peru working at some orphanages, Dr. Chan realized a couple of things. First, he realized that he enjoyed working with people and was good at it. Second, his curiosity in sensation, perception, and psychology led him to decide to specialize in neuropsychology. He recalls, “I realized there’s so much information from neuroscience and psychology when put together could be so valuable to so many people and could really help direct treatment.” He then shares his experiences and research while attending Carleton University in Ottawa, ON Canada then at The Chicago School in Los Angeles, CA then at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA where he received his PsyD in Clinical Psychology.

In addition to his practice, Dr. Chan was sought out to teach as an Adjunct Professor for the doctoral program (ranked #5 Best PsyD program) and the master’s program (ranked #1, Best Online Master’s program) at Pepperdine University. He acts as the Course Lead for the master’s program and lectures on such topics as neuropsychology, consciousness, psychotherapy, interpersonal neurobiology, affective neuroscience, and cognitive psychology.

During our discussion, Dr. Chan shares the significant experiences and people that helped shape his journey and career. For example, while working on his Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy at The Chicago School, he read a book that really inspired him called The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy by Louis Cozolino. Dr. Chan read other books on interpersonal neurobiology and realized that Pepperdine was well connected and was one of the top schools (if not the top school). He remembers thinking “this is the person I need to work with.” So, working with Louis was the main drive for him selecting Pepperdine for his doctorate. When reflecting on his experiences at Pepperdine, Dr. Chan states “all the faculty there were just absolutely stellar and honestly my experience there was, is heartwarming. It’s an amazing experience and definitely grueling at times.” He continues to share that they put you through the ringer, but it was in a safe environment, and you get so much supervision and amazing mentors,

Hope Kelaher originally pursued environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore but quickly realized that she preferred helping people. She worked in the college’s career center as a career coach and had the opportunity to go to Cuba to study their public health system. After attending Johns Hopkins, Hope completed some internships with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva on postpartum depression. This was her initial entry into the world of psychology as she “did a lot of work in Inner City Baltimore at the Hopkins School Public Health doing family and child health research.” She then had the opportunity to go into the Peace Corp, where they commissioned her to Uganda doing AIDS Hospice work. However, when getting her physical, her doctor looked at her and said “why are you going to Uganda? You could do so much good here in Baltimore, why don’t you stick around?” Her doctor told her that hospice work is really hard and “I don’t really think this is the best thing for you.” Hope’s uncle also said the same thing. So, she decided to stay in Baltimore and worked at The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which was started by one of the founders of UPS, Jim Casey, and exists to help children thrive and survive in underdeveloped and low-income communities by providing services and grants to those in need. She also worked with the NECC Foundation and the Children’s Aid Society.

In this podcast, Hope shares her academic and professional journey, discusses why she went into social work and some of the requirements to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in the state of New York. She also discusses her private practice, Hope Kelaher Therapy, located in Lower Manhattan, NYC. Hope received her bachelor’s degree in public health and sociology from Johns Hopkins University and her Master of Arts in Social Work from Columbia University. She conducted her post-graduate study in Marriage and Family Therapy/Counseling at the Ackerman Institute for Family in NY.

Those interested in a career in social work or psychology may find that schooling can be expensive. In addition to internships, scholarships, grants, and other funding opportunities to help offset the cost of schooling, Hope shares how she attained funding from the Children’s Aid Society to help fund half of her tuition while attending Columbia University. Hope shares “so, Columbia and my agency had this agreement where I could, you know, go to school part-time and then work full-time, so that’s what I did.” She continues by stating “any recommendation I can give to people going into social work, social work does not pay a lot of money, so wherever you can find a deal, take it, right?” After graduating from Columbia, she decided to pursue family therapy, so she attended Ackerman Institute for Family.

When reflecting on her journey, Hope shares “so really, my journey into private practice and being more of a clinical person happened while I was working in a nonprofit agency.” After she completed the Ackerman Institute for Family’s clinical externship, she remembers doing a lot of hard work, working really long hours, and not getting compensated fairly “and so, that’s something that people have to really think about when they do this work.” Therefore, Hope started her own very small private practice in 2018 while she was still working full-time.

She explains that, in New York, a licensed clinical social worker can do therapy whereas in some other states, you have to have a PsyD or PhD. At this point, we discuss some of the requirements for becoming a LCSW in New York and share some valuable information and websites for those interested in this career path. Hope discusses some of the biggest challenges associated with opening your own private practice and provides helpful advice including making sure you “get a lot of experience working with many different people before you go into private practice because you never know who will show up.

Those of you who are in the field of psychology, take a moment to remember what originally sparked your interest in psychology. For Dr. Greg Neimeyer, it was having an outstanding high school teacher who taught honors in psychology and was an adjunct professor at a local community college. He fondly recalls “for us, as high school students, we [had] a real-life professor in high school, and we were in awe. He taught it like a very intellectually challenging course, not unlike a college course, [and] really lit the fire under us in terms of intellectual interest, so the spark for me was really an outstanding high school teacher.” Dr. Neimeyer decided to attend college at the University of Florida, where he received a speech debate scholarship, and first selected speech as his major then the psychology seed that was planted in him in high school began to bear fruit and he changed his major to psychology during his second year and, as he states, “the rest, as they say, is history.”

After attending the University of Notre Dame for his master’s and doctorate in psychology, he wanted to stay in the academic field and applied to multiple universities for his first faculty position. In this podcast, Dr. Neimeyer eloquently reflects on his career of over 42 years in the field of psychology highlighting the important experiences, people, and lessons he has learned while sharing important tangible and meaningful advice including how to select the right graduate program and university for you, tips on setting yourself apart from others when applying to graduate schools, and the importance of continuing education and paying it forward.

Interestingly, Dr. Neimeyer returns to his undergraduate alma mater for his first faculty position. He shares that he always knew that he wanted to become an academic but wanted to maintain the clinical practice side as he “always regarded that as a key ingredient to be able to, you know, bring the clinic into the classroom and the classroom into the clinic.” Dr. Neimeyer is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of Florida, where he served as Director of Training and Graduate Coordinator of the APA-approved doctoral training program in counseling psychology and has taught courses on the DSM, the ICD, and psychopathology. He currently serves as the Director of the Offices of Continuing Education in Psychology, the Center for Learning And Career Development, and the Center for Interprofessional Training and Education at the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C..

Throughout our discussion, Dr. Neimeyer shares his thoughts, suggestions, and experiences in the hopes that it will help those who are interested in the field of psychology. He provides his thoughts on how to select the right graduate program for you and how to decide on which branch or field of psychology is a good fit given your interests. He says, “psychology is present in just about everything. So that’s the good news and the bad news. I mean, the bad news is you’re faced with having to make some difficult decisions among a blizzard of different opportunities. The good news is that whatever your interests are, you can attach them to, and draft in behind, the graduate program that’s likely to support that.” If you are having a hard time selecting a branch of psychology to focus on, he suggests a few things such as looking at your undergraduate psychology book. There are probably 30-35 chapters in the book so look through the book and identify the ones that resonate with you or in which you are interested and pass over the ones that you find yourself yawning at or not the least bit interested. He shares “probably about 80% of students wind up going into the professional side which is clinical, counseling, or school [psychology]. Those are the only areas that are licensed eligible.” He continues “my experience is that about 80% of students wind up wanting to have at least part, if not all,

Dr. Katherine MacLean is a neuroscientist, writer, research scientist, mother, and adventure-seeker. Dr. Maclean thought she would study anthropology, religion, or pre-Med when she first started undergraduate school. She had many interests including genetics, spirituality, and the brain. She recalls “I took an anthropology of religion course, and that’s when I first learned about Shamanic and spiritual ceremonies that could trigger changes in the brain that created visions that created the experience of real-life entities.” At the time, she also took psychology courses and learned there was a rhesus macaque lab in the basement. She wanted to find out what those monkeys were doing in the basement so with the help of her undergrad mentor, Yale Cohen, she was able to corral all of her disparate interests and combine them with her passion to forge a new research path that combined her work on mindfulness research while earning her doctorate at UC-Davis and her psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins University where she completed her postdoctoral fellowship in psychopharmacology.

In this podcast interview, Dr. MacLean brings us back to her undergraduate and graduate experiences and shares the critical events and people that led her to obtain her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Neuroscience and attend UC-Davis for her PhD in Research Psychology as well as attending Johns Hopkins University for her postdoctoral fellowship in psychopharmacology. She shares her experience visiting graduate schools and how she mentioned her interest in studying psychedelics “just to see how they would respond.” At the time, serious research on psychedelics was not happening so Dr. MacLean combined her interests and passion to establish a legitimate line of groundbreaking research studying the effects of mindfulness meditation and psychedelics on cognitive performance, emotional well-being, spirituality, and brain function. Her research suggests that psychedelic medicines can enhance openness to new experiences and promote mental health and emotional well-being throughout the life span.

Dr. MacLean co-founded and directed the first center for psychedelic training and education in New York, was featured in the New Yorker article entitled “The Trip Treatment by Michael Pollan, and her TED Talks have been viewed nearly fifty thousand times. She was one of the lead researchers on the Shamatha Project, which was a groundbreaking study of the effects of intensive meditation on psychological and brain function. When she was a research follow and faculty member at Johns Hopkins, she apprenticed with and was supervised by two of the world’s top psychedelic therapists – Bill Richards, PhD, and Mary Cosimano, LSW – learning how to effectively and safely support people before, during, and after high-dose psychedelic experiences.

When reflecting on your journey and her professional career, Dr. MacLean shares practical advice for those “climbing the ladder of success.” She states, “I might have been very happy as a tenure track faculty member at Johns Hopkins. But, the thing that I want to impress upon young psychology students is something that a medical doctor told me when I was deciding whether to leave Hopkins, ‘sometimes as you’re climbing the ladder of success, you get to the top and realize it’s on the wrong wall and you have to get all the way back down and put the ladder up on a different wall and start from scratch.’”

Dr. MacLean spent the last two decades studying the effects of mindfulness meditation and psychedelics on cognitive performance, emotional well-being, spirituality, and brain function. Her professional journey takes an unexpected detour following the death of her sister from cancer. She left her faculty position and decided to travel the world. In her new book, Midnight Water: A Psychedelic Memoir, she shares her story of grief and redemption. During our discussion she shares more about her book, why she wrote it,

How much would you pay to spend almost 90 minutes with a world-renowned performance psychologist (a pioneer in the field), researcher, New York Times best-selling author, C-suite coach, co-founder of the Human Performance Institute (HPI), co-founder of APeak Tennis, advisor and coach of Evolve Leadership? In this podcast episode, I had the privilege of talking with Dr. Jim Loehr as he reflected on his more than 30 years of vast experience and applied research designed to successfully leverage the science of energy management to improve the productivity and engagement of world-class performers in the areas of sport, business, medicine, and law enforcement. He shares what he believes is the most important factor in success, personal fulfillment, and life satisfaction. Dr. Loehr also discusses his recently co-authored book that he believes is “the most important book [he has] ever written” called Wise Decisions: A Science-Based Approach to Making Better Choices.

Dr. Jim Loehr’s parents were deeply religious, devout Catholics so his whole life was centered around religious teachings and beliefs. His sister became a nun, and his brother became a Jesuit priest out of high school and was in the Jesuits for seven years. Dr. Loehr explained that “there was no choice as to where I was going to go to school…I had to go to a school that [my parents] approved.” So, he attended Regis High School then Regis University. The only graduate school his parents would accept, while staying reasonably close to home, was the University of Northern Colorado. Therefore, Dr. Loehr received his BA in Psychology from Regis University, and an MA and EdD in Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, CO.

During our discussion, Dr. Loehr reflects on his academic and professional journey highlighting the experiences and people that impacted him and explains the events that led him to become a pioneer in the sport and performance psychology field. Throughout our discussion, he offers thoughtful and practical advice to those interested in the field. He shares a story in which he wrote a book called Mental Toughness Training for Sports and sent it to 19 major league publishers and got 19 rejections where they all said, “what the heck is mental toughness?” Dr. Loehr’s father played professional baseball and read the book and said, “this makes sense…I’m going to go ahead and take a risk here” and he paid someone to produce the book and they sent it around to see what people thought of the book. The book became an underground bestseller and, all of a sudden, it was picked up by a major publisher and sold millions of copies all over the world. Dr. Loehr realized that the concept of mental toughness was so new and “because it was before its time, they thought it was absolute nonsense.” Resilience and toughness are needed when you are a pioneer and you are doing something different.

Dr. Loehr shares some of the most significant experiences of his career, the ones that impacted him and his journey the most, including his experience as Chief Psychologist and Executive Director of the San Luis Valley Mental Health Corporation. We discuss how he founded The Center for Athletic Excellence in Denver, CO and his involvement as the Executive Director and Sport Psychologist at the Jimmy Connors United States Tennis Center. Dr. Loehr shares the story leading up to getting that position. Essentially, there was an ad for someone to run the Jimmy Connors United States Tennis Center in Sanibel Harbor, so he called Bob Davis and said, “I’ll run all the facility for you, but I want to have access to Jimmy’s brain. I want to be able to do videos and everything else. I want to see what makes that competitive brain work. I need to learn. So, he didn’t check with Jimmy. He just said, ‘no, it’s done. We’d love to have somebody with a Doctor of Psychology down here.’”

He had such a reputation and following that many of the players at the Nick Bollettieri ...

Dr. Neil Lewis, Jr. was born in Jamaica and came to the United States as a kid. In this podcast, we discuss his academic and professional journey beginning from what originally sparked his interest in psychology including a demonstration by his high school economics teacher at Cornell University in Ithica, NY to what led him to the University of Michigan for his graduate degrees in social psychology leading to his dual appointment and recent promotion as Associate Professor at Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medicine. During our discussion, Dr. Lewis shares his experiences and advice with those interested in getting their graduate degree in the field of psychology and those wanting to stay in the academic field.

Dr. Lewis is a behavioral scientist who has a dual appointment as Associate Professor of Communication and Social Behavior at Cornell University and Associate Professor of Communication Research in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Lewis states, “the reason for the dual appointments, in this case, is I do a lot of health research including research on how the ways health clinics and health systems communicate information to patients affects the health behaviors the patients engage in and health outcomes.” So, in the Department of Communication, he is surrounded by communication scholars and other social scientists who are interested in the communication process. Then, in the Medical School, all of his colleagues are medical doctors who put these communication processes into practice. He believes “being in both worlds really allows me to get the broader set of perspectives that I need to have on health issues and that improves my ability to study those issues as well.”

He also co-directs Cornell’s Action Research Collaborative, an institutional hub that brings together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and community members to collaborate on projects and initiatives to address important equity issues in society. Dr. Lewis received the Early Career Scholar Award from the International Communication Association, the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, and Cornell’s Research and Extension Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Science and Public Policy. Outside of academia, Thinkers50 and Deloitte identified Dr. Lewis as one of the 30 up-and-coming thinkers whose ideas will shape management in the coming years due to his contributions to work motivation and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Dr. Lewis’s interest in psychology actually stemmed from a great high school economics teacher who sparked his interest in economics through his teachings and demonstrations. Dr. Lewis thought that an economics degree was a “practical degree to get…to be employable at the end of my undergraduate journey…but the most interesting part of economics for me were the parts that were fundamentally psychological.” For example, he recalls a demonstration in which the professor took out a $20 bill and a $1 bill and ripped both of them in half. When the professor asked the students to reflect on their reaction and explain why they were more upset about the $20 bill being torn in half than the $1 bill being torn in half, they replied that one was worth more than the other even though both were made of the same pieces of paper and used the same kind of ink. Dr. Lewis realized that as long as we share a collective belief, then that belief becomes part of our reality. He recalls, “I kept thinking about how much of these systems that govern our social world depend on people’s beliefs in those systems.” Dr. Lewis adds, “And, of course, the discipline that was really established to study belief systems and other thoughts and behaviors is psychology. And so that’s one of the reasons I ended up pivoting from economics to psychology.”

When discussing his graduate school opportunities and choices, Dr. Lewis states,

Since high school, Jessica Sinarski knew that she wanted to be a therapist. She found that empathy was a strength of hers and she wanted to lean into it. She originally didn’t want to work with kids but that all changed during an internship she had in graduate school at Boston College. She thought that she would work in the marriage and family counseling space or in premarital counseling but then everything shifted when she had a couple of kids in foster care on her caseload. Jessica recalls, “I found my calling.”

Jessica is a Licensed Professional Counselor of Mental Health (LPCMH) and a highly sought-after therapist, speaker, and instigator of hope. Her extensive post-graduate training and 15+ years as a clinician and educator led her to create the resource and training platform called BraveBrains which is “a resource and training platform for K-12 educators and beyond. Using innovative solutions rooted in brain science, we empower children and adults to reach their full potential.” In this podcast, Jessica discusses her academic and professional journey, how the mission and vision of BraveBrains has transformed over the years, and how she makes Social Emotional Learning (SEL) practical, available, and easy to understand for parents and professionals.

During her internship at Boston College, she was at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). Jessica shares “there were several kids in foster care on my caseload, and it was just heartbreaking. Growing up’s hard enough. And then there not only was there instability at home, but these seemed to be the kids that got passed around professionally as well and that broke my heart.” Her first job out of graduate school was at a foster adoption child welfare support agency in the South Bronx in New York City “and it became very clear, very quickly that I didn’t know what I needed to know to be helpful” so she studied to become certified as an adoption therapist. She also learned about attachment in the brain and Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s work around The Whole-Brain Child and making brain science really accessible. Jessica worked alongside Jonathan Baylin who is ”just a brain nerd, he just loves neuroscience. He’s a clinical psychologist and the author, co-author of a couple books and we would, we would talk about this stuff.”

Jessica is the author of multiple books including Your Amazing Brain, the award-winning Riley the Brave series, and Light Up the Learning Brain. One of her newest books is Riley the Brave’s Big Feelings Activity Book: A Trauma-Informed Guide for Counselors, Educators, and Parents. She admits “it’s kind of funny to me that I’m a therapist who writes kids’ books now. I mean, I write other books too, but I didn’t like therapeutic kids’ books. I very rarely found one that I liked. There are more out now that are great, but I struggled to find things that kids could relate to and so, I guess, that’s part of my passion now is how do we make the tough stuff a little less tough?”

Jessica offers a multitude of advice to those interested in the field of psychology, social work, and especially those interested in opening their own practice or business. She points out “I haven’t seen a school yet that actually talks about or has a course on how do you open and run and maintain a business or a practice.” So, she says don’t be afraid to ask for help. She states, “You don’t have to have everything figured out” and remember “the value of collaborating and networking, especially if you’re going into private practice like solo private practice because it can be so lonely.”

What other advice does Jessica offer? Pay attention to what lights you up. She says, “Pay attention to your passion because you’re much more likely to be persistent with it if you are passionate about it, that’s grit 101, right?” In response to my question “what’s one of the most important things you’ve learned in your life thus far?”,

Rebecca Kase grew up in Missouri and attended the University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU). She declared psychology as her major early in her freshman year of college, right after her first psychology 101 class. She recalls, “I love this. I get it. This makes sense to me. Something just really clicked inside, and I really felt like this is my path.” She also loved taking neuroscience classes and ultimately graduated in about 3 ½ years with a number of graduate level courses in her pocket. Rebecca then took a year to do volunteer work with AmeriCorps helping tutor inner-city elementary school kids in St. Louis, MO and she loved the experience. She used this experience and time to help figure out the next step in her academic journey. She knew she needed to go to graduate school because she thought she couldn’t really do anything with her bachelor’s in psychology, so she considered getting her master’s in counseling, social work, or psychology. In this podcast, Rebecca shares her journey and advice for those faced with a similar decision and discusses how she turned her passion into a successful, and prominent, training and consulting company, Kase & CO, which specializes in comprehensive Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma training for psychotherapists.

Throughout this podcast, Rebecca shares her experience and offers practical advice for those considering a career in psychology, social work, or counseling. She chose to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW); however, her advice can be applied to those in the counseling or psychology fields as well. How do you decide on which path to take or in which university or program to enroll? Rebecca says, “consider your end goal.” She suggests asking yourself “Where do I want to end up and based on what I want for my career, which program seems to fit best?” She also reminds us that “where we think we’re going to end up, isn’t necessarily where we end up.” For example, she admits that she never thought she would own one of the largest EMDR training programs in the country and that she would love running a business but that is exactly what she is doing with Kase & CO Training and Consulting.

Rebecca started EMDR training while she was still in graduate school, so she has been practicing EMDR since 2006. She started her LLC in 2009 and as her LLC grew, she became a trainer and consultant. In 2017, Rebecca started diving into Polyvagal theory as it “really resonated” and helped “explain why our nervous system does what it does.” After looking into Polyvagal theory, she realized that she could combine EMDR and Polyvagal theory to help supercharge therapy and the recovery process, so she started incorporating the two into her training and consulting at Kase & CO and has seen its incredible impact on her clients and their clients. Rebecca is also a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) and has been practicing yoga since she was 15 years old. She shares “it has been my saving grace and saved my life multiple times emotionally and physically.” She has integrated yoga into her EMDR training as she points out “research shows that yoga therapy is incredibly useful and powerful to bring into your sessions with clients no matter their presentation or diagnosis.” One of the 8 phases of EMDR focuses on preparation and where you learn about regulation skills and where you build somatic awareness. She says that yoga helps clients who have learned to “check out” from their feelings and sensations and who don’t know how to feel their body.

Rebecca is the author of Polyvagal-Informed EMDR: A Neuro-Informed Approach to Healing (W.W. Norton & Company, May 23, 2023). She said the book started as her pandemic project. She began pulling her thoughts and experiences together and organized them in such a way that one of her friends said “Rebecca, you have a book here.” She explains that both Polyvagal Theory and EMDR offer powerful pathways to healing.

Dr. Lauren Cook grew up loving theater, performing arts, and public speaking. She also loves the intimacy of the one-on-one connection and having deeper conversations. As an undergraduate student, Dr. Cook recalls being more interested in journalism, in fact, she had an internship at NBC News and E! and thought that is what she wanted to do because she loved the storytelling component of it. However, when she saw the lifestyle of the journalist (always on the go, always on the road), she reconsidered and thought that she could bring the storytelling component of journalism into psychology by helping people understand their stories and helping them on their journey. This is one of the reasons why she pivoted into psychology along with knowing that “one of the most rewarding aspects of our job is really feeling like we are making a difference in people’s lives.”

In this podcast, Dr. Lauren Cook shares her academic and professional journey, explains why she earned a PsyD instead of a PhD, and discusses how she has applied her experience, passion, and degrees to create her own personalized career where she could focus on clinical psychology, professional speaking, consulting, and writing. She shares how she created the opportunities to satisfy all of her passions and how to maintain a work-life balance.

Dr. Cook shares “it was always a dream of mine to have a private practice. And I would meet so many clinicians who were so afraid of having a private practice. ‘That seems impossible. How do you do it? I’m interested, but I just don’t even know where to begin.’ You know, it actually, it wasn’t too hard. I feel like if you want to do it, and you’re willing to ask other people who have done it, it’s very much possible.” She discusses how she started her own private practice called Heartship Psychological Services in Pasadena, CA during the pandemic. She always thought she would (or should?) have a brick and mortar, however, she now questions the need for one as most of her clients are virtual and PSYPACT exists now where if you are licensed in one state, you have the ability to provide services for people in other states. She is excited to see how PSYPACT plays out as it may mean that practitioners don’t need to have a traditional office as in the past. Dr. Cook also shares how she finds the majority of her clients (it’s probably not what you’re thinking…find out more around 22 minutes into our conversation).

Dr. Cook is a professional speaker with CAMPUSPEAK and shares how she got started when she went by “The Sunny Girl” and spoke about all of the happiness research. Her very first book, The Sunny Side Up! Celebrating Happiness was published in April 2013. Since then, she has published a couple more books including Name Your Story: How to Talk Openly About Mental Health While Embracing Wellness (2017) and her newest book Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023). Dr. Cook states “I really wanted to tailor it to millennials and Gen Z and also the family members who are supporting millennial and Gen Z person, we are just seeing anxiety go through the roof. I’m very candid about my own lived experience with anxiety and how I’ve been able to work through that in my own life. And so, I really wanted to give people the tools to really figure out how to cope with anxiety and it’s through what I call ‘empowered acceptance.’”

Not only is Dr. Cook available for speaking engagements (keynotes, seminars, courses, etc.), but she also offers consulting services, professional development, and clinical psychology services dealing with anxiety management, life transitions, couples dynamics, effective decision making, and identity development. She also enjoys doing her podcast, The Boardroom Brain, in which she has “insightful conversations with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders as we explore what makes up the psychology of success.

Dr. Kimberly Berens grew up around psychology as her father was a psychiatrist. Her mother was a biologist, so she was also very interested in the natural sciences. She recalls that family dinner time conversations were always interesting as they talked about various mental health issues, general psychology, and human behavior and development. As a result, Dr. Berens originally planned on majoring in biology and minoring in psychology when she started her undergraduate career at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Although her introduction to psychology class was unique in that each section of it was taught by a professor known in that area of psychology, she was somewhat unimpressed as she “didn’t see a lot of science involved in those sections.” However, that all changed when Dr. Maria Ruiz, her first mentor, walked into the classroom. Dr. Berens shares that Dr. Ruiz was “teaching the section on behavior science and that day changed my life forever because it was at that moment that I discovered that actually there is a natural science of human behavior, and that is what behavior science is.” She ended up switching her major from biology to psychology and Dr. Ruiz remained her mentor through her time at Rollins and beyond.

Dr. Berens shares her academic and professional journey in this podcast and reveals how she applied her degrees in psychology and behavioral science to co-create a powerful system of instruction based on behavioral science and the technology of teaching, which has transformed the learning abilities of thousands of students worldwide. As a doctoral student at the University of Nevada, Reno, Dr. Berens founded Fit Learning in a broom closet on campus and has expanded her business to more than 31 locations worldwide with 3 to 5 new locations opening each year. For more than 20 years, her system of instruction has produced one year’s worth of academic growth in only 40 hours of training.

In addition to Dr. Maria Ruiz, Dr. Berens discusses how other mentors have helped influence and shape her knowledge, career, and passion for helping improve the education and quality of life for students. She discusses, among others, Dr. Elbert (Eb) Blakely, Dr. Ogden Lindsley, and Dr. Seven C. Hayes who also appeared as a guest of the Master’s in Psychology Podcast in November, 2022. She explains that she received her theoretical basic science mentor in Maria and her clinical and applied mentor in Eb. Steven was another one of her mentors while in undergraduate school and she recalls, “I knew that I had found what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

Dr. Berens explains why she attended the University of Nevada for her doctorate in behavioral sciences and provides advice to those who are interested in the field of psychology or behavioral sciences. She recommends that you find a mentor who you look up to and who is doing research in the area of study you are interested in so that you can learn from them. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself and say, “I’m looking for a mentor” or “I’m looking for someone to guide me through the process of potentially exploring doctoral training or masters training in the field.” You may be surprised to learn how many faculty members are overjoyed when a student seeks them out for help and asks them to be their mentor.

Dr. Berens also discusses her newest book, Blind Spots: Why Students Fail and the Science That Can Save Them. Close to 70% of kids are now below proficiency in all academic subjects in America and this increases to more than 80% for students of color and those living in poverty. Dr. Berens explains “the reason is because science isn’t used in instruction and teachers aren’t trained in science and education is actually an ideological institution, not a pragmatic or scientific one.” We discuss the fact that most teachers are not taught how to effectively teach. We have all had that teacher or professor who obviously knew their subject but didn’t know how to t...