Meet Our Leadership

Brief Biography

Mark Hyman Rapaport, M.D., is the current President of the American Psychiatric Association. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and serves as Chairman of the Board of Stop Stigma Together. He previously served as the founding CEO of the Huntsman Mental Health Institute at the University of Utah and as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. Prior to that, he was Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, Chief of Psychiatric Services for Emory Healthcare, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Emory Brain Health Center. Earlier in his career, Dr. Rapaport served as Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai Health System and as Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Dr. Rapaport has dedicated his professional life to advancing psychiatry through patient care, research, teaching, and community engagement. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed research papers and has maintained continuous peer-reviewed research funding since 1992. His work has focused on the interactions between the brain and the immune system, as well as clinical psychopharmacology and complementary medicine.

He founded the NCDEU New Investigators Program in 1992, now the ASCP New Investigators Program, and has served as its Co-Chair since its inception, mentoring generations of early-career researchers. In 2003, he co-founded the American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. (APPI) journal Focus and later served as its Editor-in-Chief through 2025, helping translate advances in psychiatric research into practical knowledge for clinicians.

Dr. Rapaport has been a national leader in efforts to reduce stigma in mental health. He founded and leads the “Stop Stigma Together” initiative, a broad coalition of organizations committed to eliminating the prejudice, shame, and inequities faced by individuals with mental illness. He has also partnered with the Ad Council on the “Love, Your Mind” campaign to promote mental health awareness and normalization.

Brief Biography

Dr. Darrell G. Kirch is president emeritus of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which represents the nation's medical schools, academic health systems and teaching hospitals, and related academic societies. He served as President and CEO of the AAMC from 2006 until 2019, when he was succeeded by Dr. David J. Skorton.

A distinguished educator, biomedical scientist, and clinician, Dr. Kirch speaks and publishes widely on the need for transformation in the nation’s health care system and how academic institutions can lead change across education, research, and health care for their communities and beyond. As a respected university leader, Dr. Kirch has chaired the Washington Higher Education Secretariat and served as a member of the American Council on Education Board of Directors. In 2007, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and has been active in multiple initiatives of the National Academies. As an ardent champion for the well-being of the nation's health professions workforce, he currently serves as co-chair of the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience. Dr. Kirch also serves as a member the Board of Regents of the American College of Psychiatrists.

Prior to becoming AAMC president, Dr. Kirch served as dean, university senior vice president, and academic health system leader of two institutions, the Medical College of Georgia and the Pennsylvania State University Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. He has co-chaired the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting body for U.S. medical schools, and chaired the national AAMC Council of Deans.

A psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist by training, Dr. Kirch began his academic career at the National Institute of Mental Health, becoming chief of the Schizophrenia Research Branch, serving as the acting scientific director in 1993, and receiving the Outstanding Service Medal of the United States Public Health Service. A native of Denver, he earned his BA and MD degrees from the University of Colorado, and in 2002 received the Silver and Gold Award from the University of Colorado Medical Alumni Association.

Brief Biography

Anita Everett, M.D., was President of the American Psychiatric Association from 2017 to 2018. Dr. Everett is the Chief Medical Officer at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and Director of the Office of Chief Medical Officers (OCMO). The OCMO is strategically positioned within SAMHSA to facilitate the development of policies, practices, and programs that comport with best practices and current trends in contemporary health care.

Dr. Everett has held several leadership roles at APA, including trustee-at-large on the APA Board of Trustees; chair of the APA Task Force on Healthcare Reform 2015; chair of the Scientific Program Committee of the Institute on Psychiatric Services; Assembly Representative; and chair of the Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing.

Prior to her arrival at SAMHSA, she served as the Section Chief of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Community and General Psychiatry in Baltimore, Maryland. She was an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and served on the faculty of the Bloomberg School of Public Health. At Hopkins, she directed 22 community psychiatry programs that provide a range of services to individuals from preschool age to older adults and through a range of programs that include intensive acute services as well as recovery support services for persons with Serious Mental Illnesses. More recently at Hopkins, she has been involved with the leadership of health system behavioral health integration into accountable care structures.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Everett served as the Senior Medical Advisor to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. There she worked on the promotion of access to quality services and access to medications in the Medicare prescription drug benefit. From 1999 to 2003, she served as the Inspector General to the Office of the Governor in the Department of Mental Health in Virginia. During this time, she completed over 80 inspections of institutions operated and licensed to provide mental health services in Virginia. She received the Patrick Henry Award for her outspoken advocacy.

Dr. Everett has served on the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Advisory Council. She is a past president of the Maryland Psychiatric Society and the American Association of Community Psychiatrists. She has been engaged in several international projects, which have included consultation with the Ministries of Health and the Department of Mental Health in Iraq and Afghanistan on the implementation of mental health services in these countries.

Brief Biography

Seth Kahan is a recognized thought leader, strategist, and expert in tackling complex global challenges. With a background at the World Bank and extensive experience collaborating with organizations that take on some of the world’s toughest problems, he has pioneered frameworks for addressing “Grand Challenges”—the world’s most pressing issues. Known for his ability to unite diverse organizations and drive systemic change, Seth’s work focuses on creating social movements and mobilizing collective action to solve intractable problems. Currently, he leads Stop Stigma Together (stopstigmatogether.org), a national Grand Challenge aimed at eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health and substance use disorders.

Brief Biography

Dr. Glen Kreiner is the L.S. Skaggs Presidential Chair in Business Ethics Management at the University of Utah. He received his Master’s in Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Arizona State University. He has taught a wide range of audiences, from undergraduates to doctoral students and from MBAs to executive education. He has taught in-person and online courses and workshops on many topics, including workplace mindfulness, leadership skills, authenticity, identity-based leadership, work-life navigation, diversity/inclusion/belonging, and teamwork. Professor Kreiner has won multiple awards for his research, which has been published in the leading management journals. His research focuses on topics such as identity at work, mindfulness, work-life dynamics, and ethics. He is currently conducting multiple research projects regarding workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (such as autism and Down syndrome) and seeks to make workplaces better for this population. He is also working with a nationwide initiative (StopStigmaTogether.org) to eliminate the stigma of mental health. Outside of work, he enjoys traveling, hiking, and theatre, especially when he can do those things with his wife and three children.

Brief Biography

John MacPhee serves as CEO of The Jed Foundation (JED), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting mental health and preventing suicide among teens and young adults. Under his leadership, JED has become a national leader, collaborating with schools, districts, and community organizations representing more than 1,500 organizations and 10 million youth to develop comprehensive mental health and suicide prevention programs. JED’s resources and campaigns have reached tens of millions of people.

Previously, MacPhee held executive roles in the pharmaceutical industry, where he gained extensive experience in commercial operations, business development, clinical, and regulatory affairs. His career includes leadership and board positions in which he played key roles in advancing innovative treatments for conditions such as depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

MacPhee has served on several boards, including as the inaugural board chair of Bottom Line New York and in roles with the S Jay Levy Fellowship for Future Leaders at City College, HIV Hero, and the Benebikira Sisters Foundation of Rwanda. He has also served as an advisor to public health organizations such as the health policy and management department at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Crisis Text Line, and Trek Medics.

A graduate of Columbia College, MacPhee earned a master of public health from Columbia University and a master of business administration from New York University. His work has been recognized with the John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional Experience from Columbia College and the Allan Rosenfield Alumni Award for Excellence in Public Health from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Brief Biography

Bernice Pescosolido is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Indiana University and Founding Director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research (ICMHSR) and the new Irsay Family Research Institute that targets research in the sociomedical sciences. She is an elected member of both the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Trained as a medical sociologist at Yale, her research focuses broadly on how social networks and culture provide insights into health, illness and healing phenomena, and more specifically on four areas – stigma, suicide, health care use, and health care systems. Her concerns have spanned local, national and international questions and problems, primarily targeting mental illness.

In particular, she is concerned with how social and organizational networks facilitate or frustrate people’s responses to problems. In the early 1990s, Pescosolido developed the Network Episode Model, which shifts health care utilization research to understanding patterns and pathways to care, adherence to treatment and the care outcomes. This model has been deployed nationally and internationally in numerous studies and has been expanded to embrace disciplinarity in the Network Embedded Symbiome. Regarding stigma, in 1996 Pescosolido initiated the first major, national study of stigma of mental illness in the U.S. in over 40 years which produced some of the groundwork for the Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, the 2013 White House Conference on Mental Health, and the 2016 NASEM Report, Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change. This was followed by the National Stigma Study–Children, the National Stigma Study–Replications in 2006 and 2018, and the Stigma in Global Context–Mental Health Study. In addition, as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Council of Glenn Close’s Bring Change to Mind advocacy organization, she developed and piloted a 4-year, IU-based, team effort to make college campuses “safe and stigma free zones.” She is currently concerned with moving the contact hypothesis further by coupling both Goffman’s original conceptualization with complex system theory and social network analysis. In the area of suicide research, she has examined claims on the utility of official suicide statistics, the contemporary effects of religious affiliation, and the potential of a network translation of Durkheim’s theory. Currently, using a big data solution, she is working on harmonizing novel data to move past US data barriers on completed suicide to allow a more direct understanding of the role of and potential to leverage social connectedness to reduce the personal, family, and community tragedy and societal loss that is suicide.

Her research has been published broadly across disciplinary and general journals and has been supported by a number of NIH Institutes as well as the National Science Foundation and private philanthropic organizations. She has served as the Vice President of the American Sociological Association; and has received several career, teaching, and mentoring awards, including the NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award, the Taube Award from the American Public Health Association, the Reeder Award from the American Sociological Association, and the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal from Yale. Most recently, her paper on breaking through data and theory stalemates in suicide research, with colleagues BK Lee and Karen Kafadar, was named the 2020 PNAS Cozzarelli Prize Finalist in Social Science