Sponsored by Center for Global Programs and Studies, WFU School of Law, WFU Campus Life, Latin American and Latino Studies, Department of French Studies, Rethinking Community, and the Dean of Students
Ishmael Beah, born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the New York Times best-selling author of A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel both published by Farrar Straus & Giroux.
His Memoir has been published in over 40 languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. TIME Magazine named the book as one of the “Top 10 Nonfiction books of 2007,” ranking at number 3. His novel written with the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable is a powerful book about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times. Already available in several foreign languages, the New York Times finds in his writing an “allegorical richness” and a “remarkable humanity to his [Beah’s] characters”.
His work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, TIME magazine, International Herald Tribune, Globe & Mail, Rutgers University Press, Vespertine Press, LIT, The Guardian, Parabola magazines and numerous academic journals.
He is based in Los Angeles, California, with his wife and children.
Justin A. Chen, MD, MPH, is a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School specializing in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders in young adults, particularly those with treatment-resistant depression and/or cross-cultural challenges. His academic interests include cross-cultural psychiatry, stigma, racial/ethnic disparities in mental health service utilization, and medical education. He has been funded as Principal Investigator of several studies focused on developing novel mechanisms for improving engagement of depressed Chinese immigrants into mental health care at South Cove Community Health Center.
As Executive Director and Co-Founder of the MGH Center for Cross-Cultural Student Emotional Wellness (www.mghstudentwellness.org), a not-for-profit volunteer consortium of clinicians, educators, and researchers based in Boston, he delivers talks and trainings for families, clinicians, and high school and university educators and administrators throughout the United States on promoting the emotional health and psychological resilience of diverse student populations. He is also dedicated to teaching and mentorship, serving as Associate Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Associate Director of the Principal Clinical Experience in Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, and as a Training Mentor and Co-Director of the longitudinal Sociocultural Psychiatry curriculum for MGH/McLean psychiatry residents.
Dr. Chen received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University and a Master of Public Health degree in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard-T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed psychiatry residency training at MGH/McLean in 2013, followed by a Dupont-Warren Research Fellowship at the MGH Depression Clinical & Research Program.
