Description 
Burn injuries are among the most catastrophic traumas a person can endure, devastating not only physically, but psychologically and socially. Recovery demands far more than wound healing; it requires rebuilding identity, reclaiming relationships, and finding a path forward in a profoundly changed body and life. Yet within that devastation, resilience is possible, and two extraordinary women are living proof.

In this deeply personal and professionally grounded presentation, Cindy Rutter and Jill Sproul share their parallel journeys as childhood burn survivors who went on to dedicate their careers to burn care: Cindy as a burn nurse and psychotherapist, and Jill as a burn nurse and Chief Nursing Officer. Drawing on decades of lived experience and clinical expertise, they illuminate the unique psychological landscape of burn recovery, the complex grief and loss that accompanies disfigurement, the challenges of body image, sexuality, and intimacy, and the critical role of peer support, advocacy, and hope in the healing process.

Participants will also explore the often-overlooked psychological needs of parents, siblings, caregivers, and the burn care professionals themselves, including surgeons, nurses, therapists, and social workers, who carry the emotional weight of this work, particularly amid ongoing staffing shortages and systemic burnout. Through personal narrative, clinical insight, and a strengths-based lens, Cindy and Jill model what it means to transform tragedy into purpose, and to offer that same possibility to every survivor they serve.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss the unique psychological, physical, and social needs of burn survivors.

   Identify national and local resources available to burn survivors and their loved ones.

   Apply evidence-based strategies to support the emotional well-being of burn survivors and their families and reduce burnout among caregivers and burn care professionals.

Cindy Rutter, LMFT, BSN, RN brings more than 45 years of expertise in burn care to her work as a clinician, advocate, and dedicated champion for burn survivors and their families. A burn survivor herself for 66 years, Cindy's personal and professional journeys are deeply intertwined, giving her a uniquely powerful perspective on healing and recovery.

Cindy began her career as a burn unit nurse and went on to serve as Nurse Manager of the UCSD Regional Burn Center. She is currently in private practice as a psychotherapist in San Diego, with a primary focus on burn and trauma recovery. Throughout her career, she has contributed to the field through service on the Education Committee for the American Burn Association, the Executive Board for the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation, and the Advisory Board for the San Diego Burn Institute.

Cindy's passion for aftercare has shaped some of the most meaningful contributions of her career. She co-founded one of the first national adult burn survivor retreats in the United States and continues to serve as a facilitator at adult retreats, youth summits, and children's burn camp support programs. She was instrumental in designing, developing, and implementing SOAR (Survivors Offering Assistance in Recovery), a peer support recovery program for burn survivors and their family members, and she remains on the National Advisory Committee and National Faculty of the SOAR program. She has taught peer support training across both the United States and Canada. Cindy is also a frequent speaker and presenter at the American Burn Association conference and the Phoenix Society World Burn Congress.

Her extraordinary contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including California Nurse of the Year in 2000, the San Diego Chargers Community Quarterback Award in 2002, and the Remarkable Women Award from Redbook Magazine in 2007. In 2011, she received the prestigious Alan Breslau Award for her sustained commitment to the burn community.

Cindy is the proud mother of two grown daughters and the devoted grandmother of two grandchildren.

Jill Sproul, MS, RN brings more than 30 years of dedicated expertise in burn care to her work as a clinician, leader, and passionate advocate for burn survivors. She began her nursing career in 1990 as a new graduate from San Jose State University, joining the Burn Center at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, an institution that would become the cornerstone of her remarkable career.

In 1996, Jill expanded her experience at the University of California San Diego Burn Center, serving as Assistant Nurse Manager before returning to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in 1997 as Burn Center Nurse Manager, a role she held for 20 years. Her leadership continued to grow as she took on the Director of Critical Care, Emergency Department, and Perioperative Services, and ultimately became Chief Nursing Officer for Valley Medical Center in 2017. In 2019, she was elevated to System CNO, overseeing hospitals and clinics across the system until her retirement from Santa Clara County in June 2023.

Alongside her clinical and administrative leadership, Jill's deepest passion has always been outreach and aftercare for burn survivors. She is especially proud of her contributions to the Phoenix Society's SOAR peer support program as a member of the National Advisory Committee. A steadfast believer in the power of peer support, she conducted her graduate research in 2009 at San Jose State University on peer support and its perceived benefits for burn survivors. Her relationship with the Phoenix Society spans three decades, beginning in 1994, and includes service on the Board of Directors from 2012 to 2022. She has also been an active contributor to the American Burn Association, including service on their Board of Directors from 2013 to 2016 and participation on numerous ABA committees.

Since February 2024, Jill has served as Director of Programs for the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors, continuing her lifelong commitment to the burn community in a new and meaningful chapter.

Jill is married and the proud mother of four grown children. Since retiring from Santa Clara County, she has remained deeply engaged in the burn community, a testament to the relationships and mission that have defined her career.

Description
What does it mean to find your voice when your culture demands your silence?

For many Iranian and Iranian American women, this is not a metaphor. It is a lived reality. Intergenerational trauma, patriarchal expectation, religious constraint, and family loyalty create a powerful web of silence that shapes identity, limits autonomy, and profoundly affects the therapeutic relationship. For clinicians working with this population, cultural awareness alone is not enough. Deep understanding is required.

In this rich and clinically grounded session, Dr. Charlyne Gelt and Dr. Vida Nikzad bring together film, poetry, mythology, and case material to illuminate the inner world of Iranian and Iranian American women in therapy. Through the poetry of Forough Farrokhzad, Iran's most courageous female voice, films such as A Separation and Shadya, and the transformative myth of The Handless Maiden, they trace the psychological journey from silence and submission toward voice, agency, and individuation.

Using Jungian, feminist, and multicultural frameworks, the presenters examine how shame, duty, relational dependency, and fear of self-expression shape the goals Iranian women bring to therapy, and how those goals often differ from those of the general population. Clinicians will gain practical, culturally sensitive tools to recognize barriers, interrupt destructive patterns, and support their clients in building resilience and reclaiming their sense of self.

Even a trapped bird, given the right conditions, can learn to fly free.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Identify cultural, patriarchal, and familial barriers that impact therapeutic engagement and treatment outcomes with Iranian and Iranian American women clients.

2. Discuss patterns of toxic abuse common in the general population and distinguish them from culturally specific dynamics within Iranian culture.

3. Apply culturally sensitive, Jungian, and feminist clinical interventions to foster resilience, agency, and transformation with Iranian / Iranian-American women clients.

Charlyne Gelt, PhD, CGP is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified group psychotherapist, and educator based in Encino, California, with over 30 years of experience working with individuals, couples, adolescents, families, and groups. She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and brings a rich integrative approach to her work, drawing on cognitive-behavioral, depth psychological, family systems, and self psychology frameworks.

Dr. Gelt is the author of "Hades' Angels: The Transformative Journeys of Women Who Love Lifers and Death Row Inmates," a groundbreaking exploration of the psychological dynamics of women in committed relationships with incarcerated men. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Psychologist, The California Therapist, and numerous professional publications, and she contributes a monthly Cinema Therapy column to the San Fernando Valley CAMFT newsletter.

Dr. Gelt’s interests span the intersection of cinema, therapy, relationships, and the transformation of consciousness. Her clinical workshops, Women's Empowerment Groups, and Men-Only group series focus on moving individuals from emotional dependency and destructive relational patterns toward emotional independence and mature interdependency.

Her clinical specialties include women's relationship and empowerment issues, grief and loss, family therapy, and children with special needs, particularly those on the autism and Asperger's spectrum. She has facilitated a College Survival Process Group for students on the autism spectrum through UCLA Extension's Pathway Program, and has volunteered for over a decade as a group facilitator for families with a loved one in prison through Friends Outside LA.

Vida Nikzad, PsyD is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based in Los Angeles, California, with a private practice in Santa Monica. Rooted in an Existential, Humanistic, and Gestalt orientation, her work integrates depth psychology, somatic awareness, and evidence-based approaches to support individuals, couples, and families navigating trauma, mood disorders, addiction, and relational healing.

Dr. Nikzad holds a Doctor of Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy from Phillips Graduate Institute. She is a Certified Gestalt Therapist, EMDR Certified Therapist, Certified Hypnotherapist, and EFT-trained couples therapist, with additional training in DBT, CBT, Jungian dreamwork, archetypal analysis, and mediation.

Her clinical career has spanned private practice, hospital, and residential treatment settings, including seven years as a Staff Psychologist at the Betty Ford Center, where she specialized in dual-diagnosis treatment, DBT and CBT-based addiction and relapse prevention, and family codependency therapy. She has also served as a program therapist at Mission Community Hospital, providing crisis intervention, geriatric psychiatric care, and dual-diagnosis group treatment.

A passionate educator and group facilitator, Dr. Nikzad has led ongoing clinical workshop series integrating dreamwork, Iranian and American fairy tales, myth, poetry, and film as pathways to archetypal and narrative trauma processing. She is fluent in both English and Farsi, and brings a rich multicultural perspective to all of her clinical and educational work.

Description
What if the experiences that made you feel different were your greatest gifts?

Many healers, clinicians, and creatives carry a lifelong sense of being "other." Shaped by early rejection, trauma, or simply the feeling of never quite belonging, the outsider experience can feel like a wound. Yet throughout history, it is often the outsiders who become the visionaries, storytellers, cultural bridge-builders, and most intuitive healers.

In this thought-provoking and clinically rich lecture, Patrice Roy invites participants to explore the outsider identity not as a wound to hide, but as a source of wisdom, originality, and profound human connection. Drawing from psychology, creativity research, and trauma theory, she traces the pathways through which early rejection and "not fitting in" become the very forces that fuel imagination, empathy, and deeper clinical insight.

Through compelling research and real-world examples, participants will explore how shame transforms when given creative expression, and how outsider narratives reorganize meaning, regulate emotion, and reconnect individuals to vitality and belonging. The lecture examines pathways for healing and reintegration including psychotherapy, somatic work, community-building, and finding a creative tribe that mirrors one's inner landscape.

This session is designed to foster both professional growth and personal healing, offering clinicians practical tools they can integrate directly into practice.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Describe three psychological mechanisms through which outsider experiences and early rejection shape identity 

2. Identify research-supported healing modalities, including expressive arts, somatic therapies, and psychedelic-assisted interventions, that transform shame-based outsider identities into adaptive strengths.

3. Apply creative strategies in clinical practice to help clients transform outsider experiences into resilience and insight.

Patrice Roy, PMH-NP, BC, CNS is a board-certified Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner with over 25 years of experience spanning clinical practice, academic teaching, and the emerging frontier of psychedelic-assisted therapy. She brings to her work a rare combination of rigorous clinical training and a deeply human perspective forged at the edges of convention.

Before stepping into clinical practice, Patrice was hauling lobster traps off the coast of Maine, playing banjo and ukulele, and creating encaustic art. These weren't detours from her professional path; they were the foundation of it. Every unconventional experience taught her something essential about resilience, meaning, and the wisdom that comes from standing outside looking in.

That perspective has shaped her clinical career at every turn. At Maine's largest tertiary care hospital, she helped build the Substance Abuse Consultation Service and co-founded the Dana Foundation Addictions Training Project, training healthcare professionals across New England to see patients with addiction through a more compassionate lens. She later joined Mayo Clinic in Arizona before turning her full attention to ketamine and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Now in private practice in Scottsdale, Patrice offers ketamine-assisted treatment to clients with treatment-resistant depression, chronic PTSD, and anxiety, integrating preparation, real-time support, and structured post-session integration into immersive retreat formats. For over two decades, she has also taught at the University of Southern Maine, Boston College, the University of Vermont, and Drexel University, consistently bringing the same message: the best clinicians aren't the ones who follow the rules perfectly. They're the ones who understand when the rules themselves need to evolve.

Description
Recent advances in neuroscience, somatic therapy, and mindfulness practice have transformed the way we understand trauma, painful thought patterns, and destructive emotions. A powerful new approach is emerging, one that views symptoms of suffering not as problems to be eliminated, but as the body's own wisdom pathways, creating communication between the unconscious and the aware self in service of healing and transformation.

In this dynamic and experiential lecture, pioneering psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher Dr. Ronald Alexander brings together cutting-edge techniques from Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, and Core Creativity Practices. Drawing from neuroscience and somatic therapy, he explores how resources such as spontaneity, curiosity, trust, creativity, and joy can unlock the healing of painful experiences stored in the brain's neural pathways and the body's somatic memory.

This session blends theory with direct experience. Through somatic deep breathing, yogic kriyas, music, and creative imagery, participants will have the opportunity to access the unconscious, attune to natural mind and body healing rhythms, and develop practical tools for nervous system regulation and trauma healing.

Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of their own creative process and practical strategies to cultivate self-compassion, resilience, and lasting wellness, for themselves and for those they serve.

Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Apply mindfulness and core creativity techniques in clinical practice.

2. Discuss how mindfulness meditation and core creativity practices promote insight and support healthy brain development.

3. Demonstrate somatic breathing and mindfulness techniques that access the unconscious and its natural healing resources.

Ronald A. Alexander, PhD, MFT, SEP is a psychotherapist, leadership coach, and international trainer in Mindfulness Meditation, Core Creativity, Gestalt Therapy, Ericksonian Mind-Body Therapies, and Somatic Experiencing. He is the Executive Director of the OpenMind® Training Program, offering personal and professional training in mindfulness-based mind-body therapies, transformational leadership, and meditation for over forty years.

A lay Zen Buddhist practitioner, Dr. Alexander specializes in utilizing mindfulness meditation to help individuals access the mind states that open the portal to their core creativity. He is the author of two books: "Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self" and "Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change."

Since 1972, he has conducted workshops and professional clinical trainings supporting personal, clinical, and corporate excellence across the United States, Europe, Canada, Russia, Asia, and Australia.