Carley Benton, PhD
Biology, Neuroscience
Christine Fitzgerald, MA
Christine Fitzgerald, MA has been a Senior Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Management at Webster University since 1985, and was Head of Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences from 1992–1999 and from 2000–2003. Since May 2021, she has been the Director of Business Psychology for the Haarlem University of Applied Sciences and is a member of their Education Board and Exam Board. In 2018, she joined the Global School for Entrepreneurship as their Senior Learning Coach, Confidential Advisor and a member of their Exam Board. She served on the Management Team at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences and has taught at several Dutch universities, including the New Business School in Amsterdam, where she directed the coaching program and lectured in applied psychology, and Nyenrode University, where she served nine years as Assistant Professor of Marketing. Her corporate experience includes a professional post at Chemical Bank in New York City, where she worked in marketing research, strategic long-term planning, project management, and corporate training. A magna cum laude graduate of Pace University, Fitzgerald received her MA in developmental psychology from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Prince Fellow Award for Distinguished Excellence in Teaching, the Pace University Award for Excellence in Psychology, and the Percy H. Johnson Award for Academic Excellence, and was a three-time nominee for the William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching (2009-2010, 2004-2005 and 1999-2000). She continues to be an independent consultant, coach and public speaker who has provided business education in North America, Europe and Asia.
Stella Gryllia, PhD
Economics, Statistics
Stella Gryllia earned her PhD in Linguistics from Leiden University in 2009. Prior to that, she obtained her MPhil in Linguistics from Leiden University, and her BA in Philology from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece). After receiving her PhD, she moved to Berlin and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam (Germany). During the past four years (2014–2018), she was employed by Leiden University, carrying out research for the project “Understanding Questions”.
During these years, she also taught statistics to BSc and MA students of linguistics and supervised a number of MA and PhD theses. Her research interests include prosody and its interfaces with other modules of the grammar, as well as quantitative methods in linguistics.
Despoina Kairi, MA
Clinical Psychology
Despoina Kairi acquired her Bachelor of Psychology in Athens. During that time, she studied for 6 months in South France, as an exchange student. In 2011, after having worked in a community house with people suffering from psychological disorders and mental retardation, she came to the Netherlands and acquired her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at Leiden University. She was trained in life coaching during her studies, and her main interest is on how therapy contributes to the improvement of people’s life suffering due to psychological/psychosomatic disorders.
Currently, she is participating in a project in Amsterdam regarding intercultural adaptation of expatriates in the Netherlands.
Internet: Innerpiece Psychologie Praktijk
Marcel de Lijster, MBA
Strategic Management, Organizational Behavior
Marcel de Lijster is the business owner of "Down 2 Earth Dutch," With his company, he helps organizations to build programs for skills management and lifelong learning that support the continued employability of employees.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, de Lijster worked in the financial industry as a banker. He has 27 years of working experience in the financial industry, for 23 of which he held leadership and management positions. He worked at one of the largest banks in Holland. He can be branded as a real people manager. He is also an "acknowledged" coach and helps people with their personal and career development. He has experience and knowledge of strategic management, organizational behavior, leadership, change management, risk management, and financial control.
He holds an MBA with an emphasis on Management from Webster Leiden Campus. He has been a member of the Webster faculty since 2004 and teaches courses in Organizational Behavior, Management, Managerial Leadership, Decision Making, and Strategic Management.
Erika O’Donnel, MA
Health Psychology, Clinical Psychology
Kim O'Meara, MA
Psychology, Gender and Sexuality
Paul Rakowski, MA, MS
Head of Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Trauma Informed Therapy, Addiction/Recovery
Paul Rakowski, MA, MSc, is credentialed in the United States as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC), National Certified Counselor (NCC), Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS), and Master Addiction Counselor (MAC). He is an NIP-registered Clinical Psychologist in the Netherlands. He has over 13 years of experience as a trauma informed therapist and specializes in trauma, addiction/recovery, couples’ therapy and clinical supervision. Motivational Interviewing and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) provide a strong foundation for his work with clients. In addition to his clinical practice, Rakowski has served as an adjunct faculty member in the Counseling Psychology and Counselor Education program at the University of Colorado-Denver and at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He has also taught courses in biology, health/wellness and animal behavior as well as First-Year Experience courses for incoming University students. Rakowski is a strong advocate for social justice within public health and currently volunteers at De Regenboog Groep in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Sheetal Shah, PhD
Counseling
Sheetal (Agarwal) Shah has been a consulting psychologist and counselor-in-practice since 1999. She specializes in the field of counseling for chronic illnesses, namely epilepsy and HIV/AIDS. She was responsible for designing, setting up, and managing a help line for telephonic counseling in India (the first of its kind in Asia for Population Services International, Washington), specializing in issues related to HIV/AIDS and sexuality. She has also been affiliated with various academic institutions for training and supervising counselors at the post graduate level. Having completed her MA (Psy.) in U.K. (University of Sussex) and MPhil and PhD in India (S.N.D.T. University), she is well sensitized towards the cultural issues that influence the clientcounselor dynamics.
She is currently head of the Department of Behavioral & Social Sciences at Webster and is working on a research project for Webster Leiden Campus called the BIJLMER PROJECT. The project's main objective is to address the psychosocial needs of trafficked women and men in the Netherlands.
Gerard van der Ree, PhD
International Relations Theory
Bethany Hipple Walters, PhD
Qualitative Research Methods and Research Design
Katie Lee Weille, PhD
Organizational Behavior
Malinda Werth, MA
Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders