Speakers

Janja Lalich, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Sociology, is an international authority on cults and coercion. Researcher, author, and educator, she specializes in the dynamics of recruitment, indoctrination, and coercive methods of influence and control. She is Founder and President of the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide life-saving resources to survivors of cults, programs in the Troubled Teen Industry, and narcissistic families or relationships.

Dr. Lalich is the author and/or coauthor of six books, including the now classic, Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships; her theoretical work, Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults; and Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out and Starting Over.

In addition to working with survivors and their families, she leads workshops and educational sessions for government agencies, international intelligence agencies, private companies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and leads online psychoeducational courses for trauma survivors, families, and mental-health professionals. She has also served as expert witness in civil and criminal legal cases.

Dr. Hector Garcia is a psychologist, researcher, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is the author of the books: Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression; and Sex, Power and Partisanship. Dr. Garcia has published extensively on the evolutionary psychology of religion, warfare, politics, and PTSD. He has been featured on TED, PBS, and CSPAN. 

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Ling Lam, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the Counseling Psychology Department where he teaches courses on Complex Trauma, Crisis Intervention, LGBT Counseling, Family Therapy, Couple Therapy and Multicultural Psychotherapy. 

Ling is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a part-time practice in Palo Alto and San Francisco. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, a M.A. in Counseling Psychology from Santa Clara University, a M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.S. (with distinction) in Electrical Engineering, both from Stanford University. 

Pesach Eisen is a psychotherapist, researcher, and artist. Pesach explores the intersection of religious disaffiliation and mental health and is passionate about helping improve the quality of life of religious exiters and religious trauma survivors. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and neuroscience, as well as a Master of Arts degree in mental health counseling, from CUNY Brooklyn College.

WILLIE CARTWRIGHT is a speaker, entrepreneur, author, and advocate who holds a B.S Degree in Finance and an Executive MBA.Though he and his wife now own several successful businesses, Willie and his sister were raised by a single mother in the public housing neighbourhoods of Birmingham, Alabama.

As a child, he was relentlessly bullied due to his thick glasses and stutter. His stepfather was so verbally abusive that Willie threatened to kill him. Raised in a strict Christian household deep in the Bible belt, Willie walked away from organized religion and Christianity in 2015.

After doing exhaustive research on the topic, he wrote his most recent book: From Saved to Sane: My journey away from Christianity and how it has adversely affected the African American Community.

Mahrs Schoppman is a queer & trans somatic psychotherapist with a private practice based out of his home office in the redwood trees of Occidental, California, the traditional territory of the Graton Rancheria and Coastal Mi-wok people.  Mahrs specializes in working with the queer community and with those who live with the embodied traumatic impacts of growing up in an oppressive religious environment.  He is passionate about walking with people on their journeys of reclaiming embodied knowing, sensation, emotional range, and vitality as a means of recovering from the learned dissociation that comes with restrictive religion.  Mahrs facilitates therapy groups for queer survivors of religious trauma and is in the midst of writing a book about his experiences and ideas around religious trauma.  

Christy is a Texas based Licensed Professional Counselor and gender and sexuality therapist who uses mindful self-compassion to engineer emotional chemistry, relational bonds and sexual alchemy through kink, poly and queer affirming therapies for religious shame and trauma. He hosts and produces the Atheist Experience Network's Secular Sexuality and is a former member of the Atheist Community of Austin's Board of Directors, he practices under the name Valence Counseling in Austin, TX. 

Mary Burkhart is a Religious Trauma Life Coach who stumbled upon her passion after 10 years of religious deconstruction. Mary grew up Apostolic/Pentecostal and was heavily indoctrinated into her faith. 

After over 20 years in the church, Mary could no longer deny the conflicts and contradictions in her life and in her faith. When seeking answers inside religion gained her no traction or true satisfaction to the burning questions about a “good god” and what “holy” truly meant, she began to search outside of religion; and that is when her world and her critical thinking were blown wide open.

Mary has since gone on to coach clients on healing from religious trauma, discovering their identity outside of their faith, finding confidence in and truly loving who they are, unapologetically, and so much more. 

Today, Mary continues to work with clients all over the world, from several different religious backgrounds, helping people, one at a time, replace the remnants of their toxic religious influence with unfathomable self love and awareness, and shameless acceptance of individual inner truth.

“As long as religion continues to exploit and manipulate people, I will be coaching. If I can help people to find, within themselves, that deeper love that they seek from a religion, I know that they can leave my program with the tools they need to tackle any obstacles that life undeniably throws our way.

-Mary Burkhart

Mary Byler is the Manager and Founder of The Misfit Amish, an organization dedicated to providing secular support and resources to Amish and ex-Amish survivors. As an educator and advocate for Amish children, she collaborates with other organizations and agencies to provide best practice-based resources for Amish/Plain communities and survivors. A medical coder by profession, Byler also holds a Master certificate in life coaching, multiple certifications in trauma awareness, and specializes in working with survivors from cults and conservative sectarian religious groups. She is certified in social and behavioral research by the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative and is a researcher and cultural advisor for the Lock Haven University study on child sexual abuse in conservative Anabaptist communities. Byler was a co-creator of a recent exhibit in Lancaster County on Amish/Plain clothing and sexual assault. She produces audio and video recordings of Amish/Plain survivor stories, with a focus on LGBTQ survivor stories.

Erica Smith is an experienced, award-winning and nationally recognized sexuality educator who provides public and private sexuality education, consulting, training, and speaking. She is frequently sought out as an expert on various sexuality topics by major media platforms and publications.

Angel is a Mental health advocate, cult survivor, storyteller and creator of The Process by Angel, which uses guided self inquiry to stimulate human development. 

She spent her formative years in the doomsday cult, Children of God. After leaving in 2008 and realizing both her internal and external worlds were built incorrectly she began to go to thera[y and begin a practice of self inquiry. She now teaches others how to source their own strength and wisdom. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles as a yoga teacher and wellness consultant.

DANIELLA MESTYANEK YOUNG is an American author and TEDx speaker who was raised in the religious cult, Children of God. She later served as an intelligence officer for the US Army for six and a half years, making the rank of Captain, and became one of the first women in US Army history to conduct deliberate ground combat operations when she volunteered to serve on a Female Engagement Team, and received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award. Daniella lives with her husband and daughter in Maryland, and holds a Master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Harvard Extension School. Daniella is an organizational
development speaker with the Macmillan Speaker’s Bureau.

In the vein of Educated and The Glass Castle, Daniella Mestyanek Young's Uncultured is more than a memoir about an exceptional upbringing, but about a woman who, no matter the lack of tools given to her, is determined to overcome. Uncultured is "a propulsive memoir delivered in the honest tones of a woman who didn't always think she'd live to tell her story,” (NYT) it’s a book which explores the dangers unleashed when harmful group mentality goes unrecognized, demonstrates the “dangers of blindly following leaders of any stripe” (Kirkus Review) and is emblematic of the many ways women have to contort themselves to survive.

Sara Tasneem is a survivor of forced child marriage who advocates publicly to end child marriage in the United States because of the extreme and innumerable harms that it exposes minors to. Sara works alongside non-profit organizations and other survivor advocates to raise awareness and to lobby and testify for legislation that seeks to end child and forced marriage.

Sara’s story has been featured in a documentary, Knots: A Forced Marriage Story  and has been shared across national and international multi-media outlets, such as the Washington Post, Independent, France 24, UNLV Law Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and others. Sara speaks publicly to educate the public about the harms of child marriage. Sara volunteers as a peer mentor to girls and women who have experienced child marriage and forced marriage. She sits on multiple coalitions including, the California Coalition to End Child Marriage, the National Coalition to End Child Marriage.

Sara has a master’s degree in Public Administration and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Golden Gate University and currently works as a Finance Analyst in a County Government role. 

Fraidy Reiss is a survivor turned activist. She was 19 when she was forced to marry a stranger
who turned out to be violent – and subjected to a virginity examination before the wedding. She
lost all sexual and reproductive rights within her abusive marriage, forced to have unprotected
marital sex and forced to have two children without her consent. When she finally managed to
escape her abusive forced marriage, her family shunned her.

Fraidy rebuilt her life and founded Unchained At Last, the only organization dedicated to ending
forced and child marriage in the United States through direct services and advocacy.

Fraidy’s research and writing on forced and child marriage have been published extensively,
including in the New York Times, Washington Post and Journal of Adolescent Health and by
Oxford Press, making her one of the foremost experts on these abuses in the U.S. She has
been featured in books (including as one of the titular women in Hillary and Chelsea
Clinton’s The Book of Gutsy Women), films (including the award-winning documentary Knots: A
Forced Marriage Story) and countless television, radio and print news stories.

Through Unchained, Fraidy has helped hundreds of survivors escape forced marriages, and she
now leads a growing national movement to end child marriage in every U.S. state and at the
federal level. Legislation she helped to write and promote has been passed into law in multiple
U.S. states.