Katherine Kennedy M.D. is the Chair of the APA Council on Advocacy and Government Relations. She is a Board-certified Adult Psychiatrist in private practice in New Haven, Connecticut with a practice focus on psychodynamic psychotherapy. Dr. Kennedy serves on the clinical faculty of the Yale School of Medicine where she leads the Legislative Advocacy Program, co-leads the Advocacy Track within the Social Justice Health Equity Curriculum, serves as the faculty mentor for the Yale Resident-Fellow Advocacy Council, supervises psychiatry residents in psychotherapy, and is a member of the Department of Psychiatry’s Committee on Clinical Faculty. Dr. Kennedy also serves on the Committee on Psychotherapy for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) and is Co-chair of the Joint Conference Committee for the Board of Trustees of the Austen Riggs Center, a nonprofit psychiatric hospital. Dr. Kennedy was co-editor for "A Psychiatrist's Guide to Advocacy" which was published by APA Publishing in April 2020. She has presented at national conferences and published on advocacy, psychotherapy and supervision. In 2017, Dr. Kennedy was awarded the Yale Department of Psychiatry’s “Outstanding Clinical Faculty Award.”

Mary C. Vance, MD, MSc a board-certified psychiatrist employed by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc., in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Vance completed residency training at the MGH McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program; she has additional health services research fellowship training through the National Clinician Scholars Program (the former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program). Dr. Vance completed a Public Psychiatry Fellowship with the American Psychiatric Association as well as the American Psychoanalytic Association's Fellowship Program. She has served in multiple capacities within the American Psychiatric Association, including as a current member and past Vice-Chair of the Committee on Well-Being and Burnout, current member of the Committee on Psychiatric Dimensions of Disasters, past member of the Council on Advocacy and Government Relations, and past fellowship representative to the Board of Trustees. Dr. Vance's clinical, research, and advocacy efforts focus broadly on improving mental health care services and delivery for trauma- and stressor-related disorders, particularly in the military/veteran and health care professional populations.

Ilse Wiechers, MD, MPP, MHS is a geriatric psychiatrist with additional expertise in health policy and health services research. She is the National Director for Psychopharmacology & Somatic Treatments in the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention in VA Central Office, where she works to advance quality and access to psychopharmacology and somatic treatments (such as ECT, rTMS, and ketamine) for Veterans. She is also faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California San Francisco and Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Wiechers specializes in providing clinical care for Veterans with late-life mood, anxiety and trauma-related disorders. She teaches extensively to interprofessional healthcare audiences at all levels of training and experience. She is a collaborator on several grants focused on improving the quality of psychotropic prescribing and serves as an operational partner for several VA-funded studies. She is also deeply engaged in advocacy and policy work through her service to professional organizations (American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and American Psychiatric Association).