Paul Gilbert, PhD, FBPsS, OBE is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and is a Visiting Professor at The University of Queensland, Australia.  After obtaining his PhD is 1980, Paul was an NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust until his retirement (1989-2016). He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology for over 40 years with a focus on shame and the treatment of shame-based difficulties – for which compassion focused therapy was developed. He was made a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1993 and President of the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy in 2003. He was an invited expert member for the first British Governments’ NICE guidelines for depression, and has written/edited 23 books and over 300 publications. In 2006 he established the Compassionate Mind Foundation, a charity with the mission statement “to promote wellbeing through the scientific understanding and application of compassion”. He was awarded an OBE in March 2011.

Check out Paul on Twitter @ProfPaulGilbert or the Compassionate Mind website.

Dr. Anna Friis is a health psychologist working with private clients at her Ponsonby clinic, and has a deep personal commitment to the practise of mindfulness and self-compassion.  Her own research showed training in self-compassion improved both mental and physical health in diabetes patients. She is now regularly invited to speak and teach on this topic to audiences throughout New Zealand and overseas. She is a certified teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC), a devoted yogini, and once had another life as a corporate go-getter, specialising in crisis management.

Self-compassion is not just self-care and neither is it a sign of weakness or self-indulgence. It is a potent practise that enables us to stay afloat when life is difficult, to flourish and be happy in spite of life’s inevitable challenges.   For those working on the frontlines of health care in New Zealand, it is a state of being that helps us to care for others while at the same time caring for ourselves; an evidence-based buffer against burn-out and empathic distress. Anna will share stories and practises from the frontline; how self-compassion helps us to know what we need, and to maintain equilibrium and warm-hearted connection with ourselves and others, whatever life’s circumstance.

www.annafriis.com

Dr Tony Fernando is a psychiatrist and sleep specialist with a long-standing interest in compassion. He has published academic papers in sleep medicine, mindfulness and medical compassion. He has been awarded multiple teaching awards by medical students and the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences in Auckland. In 2012, he was awarded by President Aquino of the Philippines for his services to sleep medicine and medical education.

In 2015, he received the Chair’s award by the New Zealand Medical Association, the highest recognition given by the association to any doctor in New Zealand for his work on doctor’s wellbeing. In January of 2017, he received temporary ordination as a Buddhist monk in Myanmar. He is in the final stages of his PhD at the University of Auckland, studying compassion in medicine.