Robert Geffner, PhD, ABPP, ABN, is President and Founder of a nonprofit international resource and training center, the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute (FVSAI) dba Institute on Violence, Abuse & Trauma (IVAT). Celebrating its 35th anniversary, IVAT started in Texas and now has been in California for more than 20 years. IVAT has seven departments, including direct professional and clinical services, training, international summits, research, publications, dissemination, and accredited to provide continuing education. Dr. Geffner was Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas-Tyler for 17 years, and now Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at Alliant International University in San Diego for more than 20 years. He is Editor-in-Chief of four professional peer-reviewed, international disseminated journals: Journal of Child Sexual Abuse; Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma; Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody, & Child development; and Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma. He has a Diplomate in Clinical Neuropsychology from the American Board of Professional Neuropsychology and is Board Certified in Couple and Family Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology. He is Fellow in several divisions of the American Psychological Association as well as in other professional organizations. Dr. Geffner has been a licensed clinician for more than 40 years. He is currently a Psychologist in CA and TX, and as a Marriage and Family Therapist in CA. He has built several private practice mental health clinics, three of which are still in operation. He directed a full-service private practice mental health clinic in East Texas for more than 15 years prior to relocating to California 20 years ago. Dr. Geffner has lectured and trained extensively, nationally and internationally, for more than 35 years on a variety of subjects, including child abuse, domestic violence, trauma, forensic psychology, child custody, expert witness, human aggression, sexual assault and abuse, long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences, the effects of abuse and victimization on the brain, neurobiology of trauma and aggression, interpersonal violence and abuse in criminal, civil, and family court cases, issues of victimization and offending for civil and criminal cases, and diagnostic assessment. He has presented over 625 keynote addresses, plenaries, workshops, and seminars at international, national, regional, and state conferences. He has written, edited, co-authored, or co-edited more than 100 professional books, chapters, journal articles, and technical reports. Dr. Geffner is Founding Member and Past President of the American Psychological Association Division of Trauma Psychology, Founding Co-Chair and Past President of the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan (NPEIV), and Past President of the American Academy of Couple and Family Psychology. He has been aresearcher, trainer, practitioner, and consultant for over 40 years.
Jacquelyn W. White, PhD, Emerita Professor of Psychology, is former Director of Women’s and Gender Studies and former Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is the Co-editor of Violence Against Women and Children and the Handbook on the Psychology of Women. She has conducted research on gender issues, sexual victimization, and intimate partner violence for over 40 years, and led one of the first longitudinal studies of sexual and physical dating violence among adolescents and college students. She recently led the US Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women’s research and evaluation strategic planning project, identifying a series of next steps to advance victim safety and perpetrator accountability built around community capacity and coordinated community responses. She is Co-founder and Past President of the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence, as well as one of the co-organizers of the AdministratorResearcher Campus Climate Consortium, a national group working to ensure that campus climate surveys of sexual misconduct are rooted in empirically based research. She is Past Editor of Psychology of Women Quarterly, Past President of the Southeastern Psychological Association, and Past President of the Society for the Psychology of Women. She received the Society for the Psychology of Women’s 2008 Carolyn Wood Sherif Award and the 2011 Sue Rosenberg Zalk Award for Service. In 2010, she received the American Psychological Association Committee of Women’s Leadership Award. In 2018 she received the IVAT Volunteer of the Year Award. Dr. White has also been involved in a number of advocacy activities based on her research, including discussing priorities of VAWA-funded grant programs for the Committee on Law and Justice, National Academies of Science, Washington, DC; prov
