AVAPL Executive Committee

PRESIDENT
Mary Beth Shea, Ph.D.

Dr. Mary Beth Shea is the Local Recovery Coordinator (LRC) at the Orlando VA Medical Center (OVAMC). She also serves as the Program Manager for the Orlando Veterans' Integration to Academic Leadership (VITAL) program and Chair of the facility IRB. Dr. Shea is a VISN-8 CPT Trainer and PE Supervisor, and serves on the facility Psychology Professional Standards Board. In her role as LRC, Dr. Shea is a consultant to all of the mental health programs and staff at the Orlando facility and its 6 affiliated OPCs/CBOCs, serving more than 100,000 Veterans.   Dr. Shea completed her Ph.D. in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of South Carolina in 1990. After completing a Geropsychology internship at the Bay Pines VAMC (1989-1990), she joined the staff at the WJB Dorn VAMC in Columbia, SC as a geriatric/medical psychologist (1990-1998). In 1998, she accepted a position as the MST Coordinator at the Columbia, SC Vet Center, where she remained until 2006. At that time, she moved to the Tampa VAMC, and later transferred to the Orlando facility (at the time, an OPC of Tampa), where she is now an active part of the mental health management team. In her tenure with VA, Dr. Shea has served on numerous and varied committees across hospital functions, including among others, the Women Veterans' Advisory Committee, the Emergency Medical Response Team (now NEMRT), Hospice Consultation Committee, End Stage Renal Disease Committee, Cancer Committee, and Geriatrics Curriculum Committee. She also served as a trustee for the National Organization of VA Psychologists.

President-Elect
Tracey Smith, Ph.D.

Dr. Tracey L. Smith serves as the Associate Director for Improving Clinical Care at the South Central MIRECC in Houston, TX. She is also an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Utah where she specialized in the study of personality disorders. Her research has broadly focused on psychotherapy: development and implementation of treatments; training; psychotherapy processes and outcomes. She began her VA career in 2006 as a Program Manager for a new PTSD Clinical Team at the Wm. S. Middleton VA Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. While in Madison, she served as the Chief of Psychology, a national Cognitive Processing Therapy Trainer, and a VISN PTSD mentor. From 2010 to 2016, she served as the National Psychotherapy Coordinator in Mental Health Services in VA Central Office. In this role, she oversaw policy, planning, and implementation of evidence based psychotherapies within VA. She served a leadership role in a variety of national mental health initiatives such as: the national telemental health initiative to promote delivery of evidence-based psychotherapies for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; the National VA/Community Mental Health Pilots project; the national workgroup to revise the Uniform Mental Health Services Handbook; and the national Mental Health Continuum of  Care workgroup. Dr. Smith has been an AVAPL member since 2007 and is grateful for the mentorship and friendship she has received from AVAPL members.

Past President
Ronald Gironda, Ph.D.

Dr. Gironda began his career as a psychologist as a predoctoral intern almost eighteen years ago at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital (Tampa VA). Following internship and a brief period as a VA merit review grant project manager, he received Associate Investigator and then Career Development award funding through the VA Rehabilitation & Research Development Office. At the same time, he served as a clinician and internship rotation supervisor in the Tampa VA Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Program, an interdisciplinary team that was recognized with the Secretary of the VA's Olin Teague Award (2004) and the American Pain Society's Clinical Center of Excellence Award (2007). He was also given the opportunity to serve on a few national committees including the VA National Pain Management Coordinating Committee. In 2008, he was given the opportunity to serve in his current dual role as Assistant Chief of Mental Health and Behavior Sciences and Chief of the Psychology Section. In these roles, he has attempted to continue to promote the growth of psychology through active advocacy and support for training, research, and the implementation of evidence-based practice.

Secretary
Genevieve Davis, Ph.D.

Dr. Genevieve Davis is a Staff Psychologist for the Western Telemental Health Network (WTN - VISN 20) and an Assistant Professor at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) Department of Psychiatry. In her role as a psychologist for WTN, she uses technology to provide psychotherapeutic support to rural veterans in 3 VISNS and over 30 sites. Her clinical specialties are couples/family, PTSD, insomnia, and gender identity. Dr. Davis completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Memphis. After completing internship at the Oklahoma City VA, she stayed on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship there in Combat Stress/PTSD. She then joined the staff at the Knoxville Veterans Outpatient Clinic in TN, associated with the Mountain Home VA system, and stayed on for 4.5 years. In her tenure with the Knoxville clinic, Dr. Davis remained connected with the main hospital 2 hours away through serving on various hospital committees, including suicide prevention sub-committee, BHIP start-up team, Mountain Home VA training committee, and she was the POC for the OEF41 initiative. She has also supported a number of AVAPL ventures - she is the co-founder of the current AVAPL mentorship program, she helped initially create the early career psychologist sub-committee, she served on the VAPL conference planning committee, and she was the managing editor of the newsletter for 3 years. She has also served as an advocate for mental health care throughout her career, presenting at police CIT trainings, speaking at military bases, and training her colleagues in different fields (on areas such as PTSD and transgender healthcare).

Treasurer
Samuel Wan, Ph.D.

Samuel Wan, PhD, is Director of Training for the Postdoctoral Fellowship Training Program at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System, Staff Psychologist and Clinical Supervisor with the Substance Use and PTSD (SUPT) Clinic and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his doctoral internship with the Boston Consortium in Clinical Psychology and postdoctoral fellowship in Substance Use Disorders at the SFVHCS. He received his PhD in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, and BA in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. As team member of the SUPT clinic, Dr. Wan performs a range of clinical, administrative, and educational activities focused on the assessment, management, and treatment of co-occurring substance use disorders and PTSD in the veteran population. Dr. Wan's clinical interests include substance use disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, multicultural psychology, particularly Asian American psychology, and gender issues. In 2015, Dr. Wan completed serving as Chair of the Conference Planning Committee for the 17th and 18th Annual VA Psychology Leadership Conferences. He is a member of the VA Psychology Training Council's Multicultural and Diversity Committee, and is a member (and former chair) of the SFVHCS Psychology Diversity Committee, and is former Member-At-Large for Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity). In 2014, Dr. Wan was awarded a Presidential Citation by APA President, Dr. Nadine Kaslow, and in 2012, he was selected to receive the James Besyner Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to VA Psychology by the AVAPL. In 2008-09, Dr. Wan was an Early Career Leadership Fellow with the Asian American Psychological Association, a leadership development program that he subsequently co-chaired for several years.