Virtual Presentations
President’s Club Presents
The President's Club began offering virtual presentations with the debut of the Speaker Series in June 2020. These events remain popular, and the program continues to evolve, offering you a variety of subjects presented by leaders in their fields at Ohio State. If you have topic or speaker ideas for future events, please send them to presidentsclub@osu.edu.
November 2024
Creating Lives Worth Living
Our presentation featured Dr. Craig Bryan, Trott Gebhardt Philips Endowed Professor and director, Suicide Prevention Program, and AnnaBelle O. Bryan, director, Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative for Veterans (STRIVE) and clinical research manager, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. They discussed the STRIVE program, which provides free psychological treatment for current service members, veterans, first responders, their families, as well as all adults suffering with both post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
STRIVE is the only research institute in the United States that explicitly focuses on developing, refining and treating in the area of suicide, trauma and gun-related violence risk reduction.
Speaker Bios
Dr. Craig J. Bryan, PsyD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist in cognitive behavioral psychology. He is the Trott Gebhardt Philips Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, and is the Division Director for Recovery and Resilience. Dr. Bryan received his PsyD in clinical psychology in 2006 from Baylor University and completed his clinical psychology residency at the Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, TX. Dr. Bryan deployed to Balad, Iraq, in 2009, where he served as the Director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic at the Air Force Theater Hospital. He separated from active duty service shortly after his deployment, and started researching PTSD, suicidal behaviors and suicide prevention strategies, and psychological health and resiliency. He has held faculty appointments at the University of Texas Health San Antonio, the University of Utah, and The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and has managed numerous federally-funded projects in excess of $50 million focused on testing treatments for reducing suicidal behaviors, developing innovative methods to identify and detect high-risk individuals, and facilitating recovery after trauma. Dr. Bryan has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles and his research has been funded by a wide range of agencies including the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the Boeing Company, the Bob Woodruff Foundation, and the Navy SEAL Foundation, and has been featured in media outlets including Scientific American, CNN, Fox News, NPR, USA Today, the LA Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Dr. Bryan has published hundreds of scientific articles and multiple books including Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Suicide Prevention and Rethinking Suicide.
Dr. Bryan has served as the lead risk management consultant for the $25 million STRONG STAR Research Consortium and the $45 million Consortium to Alleviate PTSD, which investigates treatments for combat-related PTSD among military personnel. Dr. Bryan has served on the Board of Directors of the American Association for Suicidology, the Scientific Advisory Board for the Navy SEAL Foundation, the Educational Advisory Board of the National Center for PTSD, and as a member of the Department of Defense Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC). For his contributions to mental health and suicide prevention, Dr. Bryan has received numerous awards and recognitions including the Arthur W. Melton Award for Early Career Achievement, the Peter J.N. Linnerooth National Service Award, and the Charles S. Gersoni Military Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association; and the Edwin S. Shneidman Award for outstanding contributions to research in suicide from the American Association of Suicidology. He is an internationally recognized expert on suicide prevention, trauma, and resilience.
AnnaBelle Bryan is the Director of STRIVE and clinical research manager at The Ohio State University. AnnaBelle served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force for 20 years as a public health technician and executive officer at several military installations worldwide, to include a deployment to Iraq in 2009, where she was responsible for disease monitoring and health surveillance for over 25,000 military personnel and civilian contractors.
Since her retirement from active-duty service in 2012, AnnaBelle has been conducting research focused on military and veteran suicide prevention, PTSD (combat & MST), moral injury, and performance in these populations. She is the PI and Co-Investigator on several Department of Defense-funded studies aimed at identifying indicators of emerging suicide risk and for enacting firearm safety procedures to prevent suicide. A certified peer specialist and trainer, AnnaBelle provides service members and veterans struggling with mental health conditions to find and obtain empirically supported treatment. AnnaBelle holds a degree in public health from the American Military University, and a master’s degree in Exercise & Sports Psychology from The University of Utah.
Learn more about Dr. Craig Bryan, AnnaBelle Bryan and STRIVE:
- Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative for Veterans (STRIVE)
- Rethinking Suicide (webinar by Dr. Craig Bryan)
- Rethinking Suicide: Why Prevention Fails, and How We Can Do Better (book by Dr. Craig Bryan)
- Crisis response planning rapidly reduces suicidal ideation among U.S. military veterans receiving massed cognitive processing therapy for PTSD (article)
- Effect of crisis response planning vs. contracts for safety on suicide risk in U.S. Army Soldiers: A randomized clinical trial (article)
- Brief Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Effects on Post-Treatment Suicide Attempts in a Military Sample: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial With 2-Year Follow-Up (article)
- Make a gift to support The Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative For Veteran’s Fund
Past Speakers
We are proud of our speakers and offer past presentations for viewing.
Dr. Wayne Schlingman
Director, Arne Slettebak Ohio State Planetarium
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Asst. Professor
Molly Ranz Calhoun, Bill Shkurti and Andrew B. Pierce, II
Molly Ranz Calhoun (BS ’86)
President and Chief Executive Officer of The Ohio State University Alumni Association, Inc.
Bill Shkurti (BS ’68, MA ’74)
Adjunct Professor in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs
Andrew B. Pierce, II
Co-founder of The WORTH Foundation
Tamar Chute
University Archivist and Head of Archives (Professor)
Dr. Mary Kay Pohlschneider
Senior Lecturer in the of Department of Food Science and Technology at the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
Lucy I. Zimmerman
Associate Curator in the Wexner Center for the Arts' Exhibitions Department
Darrell M. Gray, II, MD, MPH, FACG
Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition in the College of Medicine
Ellen Mosley-Thompson and Lonnie G. Thompson
Distinguished University Professors and Senior Research Scientists in the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center
Dr. Jessica Winter
Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Kenneth R. Yeager
Professor in the College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry
Dr. Stephen Gavazzi
Professor of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Education and Human Ecology