Adele Diamond, PhD
in conversation with
Vivien Keil, PhD
THE ESSENTIALS OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Tues, Oct 12; 7pm-8:15pm PT
Free for member school parents and for educators from member and non-member schools. Registration closes two hours before the start of this event or when maximum registration is reached.
Executive functions, the mental capabilities to understand, reason and problem solve, are critical to school success, thriving on the job and living a purpose-driven life. Dr. Adele Diamond, researcher and neuropsychologist, in conversation with clinical psychologist Vivien Keil, discusses how we can nurture these abilities in our students to allow them to flourish at every developmental stage. Dr. Diamond looks at the roles of storytelling, dance, music, physical activity, and mindfulness in improving executive functions and academic & mental health outcomes. She also discusses her research into effective treatments for preventing, ameliorating, or curing executive-function disorders.
About Our Speakers
Adele Diamond is the Canada Research Chair Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. Her specialty is the rigorous study of executive functions (EFs) in children. She has been doing that for 40 years. EFs include creative problem-solving, self-regulation, selective attention, and working memory. She studies how EFs are affected by biological factors (such as genes and neurochemistry) and by environmental ones (e.g., impaired by stress or improved by interventions).
Her discoveries have thrice changed international medical guidelines for the treatment of diseases and have had a significant impact on educational practice worldwide, improving millions of children’s lives. Prof. Diamond offers a markedly different perspective from mainstream education in hypothesizing that focusing exclusively on training cognitive skills is less efficient, and ultimately less successful, than also addressing emotional, social, spiritual, and physical needs. And, she challenges traditional medical practice in hypothesizing that treating physical health, without also addressing social and emotional health is less efficient or effective.
Prof. Diamond is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, was named one of the “2000 Outstanding Women of the 20th Century,” was recently listed as one of the 15 most influential neuroscientists alive today, and her impact was recently ranked among the top 0.01% of all scientists across all fields. Her other awards include an Award for Lifetime Contributions to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society. She has given over 600 invited addresses, including at the White House, in over 40 countries across 6 continents.
Adele Diamond was educated at Swarthmore College (where she received her BA, Phi Beta Kappa, in Sociology-Anthropology and Psychology), Harvard University (where she received her PhD in Developmental Psychology), and Yale Medical School (where she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience).
Dr. Keil is a pediatric neuropsychologist and consultant at Children’s Health Council (CHC) in Palo Alto. She specializes in the developmental evaluation of young children and neuropsychological evaluation of children and adolescents. Her goal as a clinician is to understand the whole child as she strives to balance the clinical perspective with a strengths-based approach. She is passionate about working collaboratively with parents to help them understand their child’s strengths and weaknesses so that they feel empowered to advocate for their child’s unique learning and mental health needs.
Dr. Keil has nearly 20 years of experience working with children and families. She completed her predoctoral clinical internship at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) and her postdoctoral fellowship at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Following licensure, she worked at The Neurobehavioral Clinical and Counseling Center in Orange County with a focus on conducting comprehensive psychoeducational and neuropsychological evaluations on children and adolescents with both mental health and medical diagnoses. In addition, she was a supervising psychologist in the Department of Outpatient Psychiatry at Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, where she focused on providing evaluations and psychotherapy to diverse and underserved populations.
Dr. Keil earned her Bachelor’s of Science degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University, graduating Magna Cum Laude. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, San Diego.
