Dr. Judy Kuriansky is a noted international clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University Teachers College. At the United Nations, she is the main NGO Representative of the International Association of Applied Psychology and World Council for Psychotherapy for the past 20 years, serves on many NGO Committees, and moderates, co-produces and serves as a speaker for innumerable events co-sponsored by Member States and the World Health Organization on varied subjects. As a member of the UN NGO Committee on Migration, she participated in years-long negotiations regarding the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, meeting with many government delegates and then invited to the final negotiations in Morocco in December 2018. She has spoken about migration at many conferences, including for the UN Commission on the Status of Women NGO/NY Forum on issues about women and men, transgenerational trauma, and intersection with climate change, and also briefed the UN Group of Friends on Migration about psychological issues. As President of the Psychology Coalition of NGOs accredited by the UN Economic and Social Council, she partnered with the Ambassador of Palau on a successful campaign on the intergovernmental level to secure the inclusion of mental health and wellbeing in the UN Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and similarly advocated successfully regarding the Universal Health Coverage Political Declaration, the Sendai Framework, and the Global Compact for Migration. She chaired the Global Council on Health of the “SDGS in Action initiative of the United Arab Emirates, featuring the “Health in Your Hands platform for health innovations she co-founded. She co-developed a Girls Empowerment Camp in Africa, and has led trainings of community leaders and volunteers in psychosocial support worldwide after disasters, for example, in Haiti, Japan, China, St Maarten, Iran, and the US, as well as for Syrian refugees and during the Ebola epidemic. A member of the Board of Trustees of the United African Congress, she has co-produced innumerable events including a series on COVID-19 in Africa during the pandemic. Also a board member of the Library of American Broadcasting, she is a pioneer of radio call-in advice talk, a long-time television feature reporter, and magazine and newspaper columnist, for the Singapore Straits Times, the South China Morning Post, the New York Daily News.com and many others, currently for Black Star News. She has published innumerable articles in professional journals and her many books address healthy relationships and children’s adjustment, and co-edited books on disaster recovery, sexuality education, Ebola, ecopsychology and environmental protection. Her many awards include for Lifetime Achievement from the Society for Media Psychology and Technology of the American Psychological Association of which she is a lifetime member and fellow, as well as the Grand Commander of the Order of the Rokel of the Republic of Sierra Leone and the Humanitarian Award for Lifetime Achievement in Global Peace and Tolerance. Expert in practice, research and advocacy, she also serves as policy advisor to the Ambassador of Sierra Leone to the United States. Pradeep Kakkattil is responsible for building and implementing an innovation culture designed to generate new and innovative solutions for the broader health and HIV response globally at UNAIDS. He is also the co-founder of the Health Innovation Exchange (HIEx), a multilayered platform that connects governments, policy makers, innovators and investors to leverage innovations and technology towards scaling up access to health. HIEx has helped raise over $200m in investments for scaling up health innovations and bridges innovators in the global South and North and ministries of health to facilitate adoption of health technologies to fast-track progress towards SDGs. He has worked in several countries in various capacities and has contributed to health, social empowerment and development and led the UNAIDS engagement and successful adoption by the UN General Assembly of the High-Level Political Declaration on AIDS in 2016. He also helped conceptualize and negotiated the launch of the Solar for health initiative of the International Solar Alliance that brings over 86 member states and has committed to energy security for health sector as a priority.
