KEYNOTES

Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD
CEO of the American Psychological Association

Before joining APA in March 2017, Dr. Evans spent 12 years as commissioner of Philadelphia's $1.5 billion Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. In that post, he emphasized a data-driven, population health approach, which improved outcomes for diverse people with complex needs. This increased the system’s efficiency, saving more than $110 million over the course his tenure that was reinvested to improve and expand services. The system in Philadelphia has become a national and international model, particularly for governments desiring to improve health equity. 

Prior to Philadelphia, Dr. Evans was deputy commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, where he led major strategic initiatives that included increasing the use of evidence-based practices, addressing health care disparities, implementing a recovery-oriented policy framework, conducting research, and improving community engagement. 

Over the years he has received widespread recognition, including the American Medical Association’s top government service award in healthcare, the Lisa Mojer-Torres Award from Faces and Voices of Recovery, and the Visionary Leadership Award from the National Council of Behavioral Health, as well as being named as an “Advocate for Action” by the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. A major emphasis of his career has been equity and social justice and he has received multiple awards named for Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for this work. 

Dr. Evans has held faculty appointments at the Yale University School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the Drexel School of Public Health. 

Dr. Evans holds a doctorate in clinical/community psychology from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in experimental psychology from Florida Atlantic University, where he was inducted into the university’s Alumni Hall of Fame. 

Dwayne Bray

Dwayne Bray is a journalist and vice president of ESPN. For the past two years, he has been a senior writer for The Undefeated, ESPN’s content initiative focusing on the intersections of sports, race and culture. Bray creates in-depth, long-form stories for multiple platforms. Bray joined ESPN in 2006 and ran the network’s enterprise-and-investigative unit for 12 years, overseeing feature pieces for Outside the Lines, SportsCenter, E:60 and ESPN.com. Before ESPN, he was a reporter or editor at the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Times, the Dayton Daily News and the Medina (Ohio) Gazette. 

Under Bray’s direction, ESPN’s investigative unit won more than 50 national and international honors, including two Peabody Awards and two Outstanding Sports Journalism Emmys. The team investigated stories ranging from complaints of sexual assault against college athletes to human trafficking at international competitions such as the World Cup. One Emmy was awarded for “The Dictator’s Team,” an investigation that examined the relationship between the Syrian national soccer team and the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. The unit produced groundbreaking coverage on the brain-injury issue in football at all levels, including the NFL. 

A native of East Cleveland, Ohio, Bray earned a bachelor’s degree from Cleveland State University and a master’s degree from Ohio State University.

Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier is a writer of books, reporting pieces, and humorous essays. His work appears in many magazines, including The New Yorker, where he began as a staff writer in 1974. His book, Great Plains, which ran as a three-part series in that magazine, later became a New York Times bestseller. He has received many awards for his work, and is the only writer to win the Thurber Award for American Humor twice— for his collections,  Dating Your Mom (1985), and Lamentations of the Father (2006). In September of 2021 he published his fourth humor collection, Cranial Fracking. Among his other nonfiction books are Family,  On the Rez, and Travels in Siberia. He grew up in Hudson, Ohio, and has lived in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Montana. He now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, the novelist Jacqueline Carey. His children, Cora Frazier and Thomas Carey Frazier, are also writers. He is at work on a long nonfiction book about the Bronx.

Andre Machado, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Machado is the Chairman of the Neurological Institute and the Charles and Christine Carroll Family Endowed Chair in Functional Neurosurgery. Dr. Machado performs deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for patients with Parkinson’s disease, tremor, dystonia and obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as surgical procedures for patients with trigeminal neuralgia, intractable pain syndromes and spasticity.

Dr. Machado is Full Staff in the Department of Neurosurgery with Joint Appointments in the Departments of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering. He is the past Chairman for the Joint Pain Section of the CNS/AANS and Vice-President of the American Society of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery.

Dr. Machado an Associate Chief of Staff at Cleveland Clinic and leads several enterprise-level projects with the Office of the Chief of Staff, including innovations in the model of care and a new program for professional career development.

Dr. Machado received his medical degree from the University of Sao Paulo in 1997. He completed his residency in the same institution in 2003 and obtained his Ph.D. in 2004. He came to the Cleveland Clinic in 2004, completed his fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery in 2006 and has been on the staff of the Cleveland Clinic since then.

Dr. Machado leads several deep brain stimulation and neuromodulation clinical trials as well as laboratory research. His research in deep brain stimulation for thalamic pain syndrome was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator’s Award. His current NIH - funded research is aimed at developing novel treatments to promote rehabilitation after stroke and other acquired brain injuries.

Christina Maslach, PhD

Christina Maslach, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology (Emerita) and a researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California, Berkeley.  She received her A.B. from Harvard, and her Ph.D. from Stanford.  She is best known as the pioneering researcher on job burnout, producing the standard assessment tool (the Maslach Burnout Inventory, MBI), books, and award-winning articles.  The impact of her work is reflected by the official recognition of burnout, as an occupational phenomenon with health consequences, by the World Health Organization in 2019.  In 2020, she received the award for Scientific Reviewing, for her writing on burnout, from the National Academy of Sciences.  Among her other honors are: Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1991 -- "For groundbreaking work on the application of social psychology to contemporary problems"), Professor of the Year (1997), and the 2017 Application of Personality and Social Psychology Award (for her research career on job burnout).