Meet the Conference Committee
Dr. Kim Claudat, PhD
PhD, Assistant Clinical Professor
Dr. Kim Claudat is an Associate Clinical Professor and Director of Adult Services at UC San Diego Health Eating Disorders Center for Treatment and Research. Her clinical and research interests focus on the connection between eating disorders and emotion regulation difficulties, particularly as this relates to commonly co-occurring disorders such as PTSD and Substance Use Disorders.
She has received specialized training in Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD (CPT), DBT Prolonged Exposure for PTSD (DBT-PE), and DBT for Substance Use Disorders (DBT-SUD). She has experience providing evidence-based treatments to children, adolescents, adults, and their families, with a range of presenting psychiatric problems across various treatment settings.
Dr. Anita Federici
PhD, CPsych FAED
Dr. Anita Federici, PhD, C.Psych, FAED, is a clinical psychologist, educator, Founder of The Centre for Psychology and Emotion Regulation and co-founder of The Eating Disorder Training Institute. She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the treatment of eating disorders, DBT, trauma, and multidiagnostic health presentations, with a particular focus on translating evidence-based interventions into accessible, person-centred systems of care. Dr. Federici serves as Adjunct Faculty at York University and as an Expert Clinical Educator with the Ontario Provincial Eating Disorders Training Program, and provides consultation and training to multidisciplinary teams internationally. She is co-author of Treating Eating Disorders with DBT: The MED-DBT Protocol (Guilford Press, 2026).
In 2026, she received the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED) Leadership Award in Clinical, Educational, or Administrative Service, recognizing sustained international contributions to advancing the treatment and well-being of individuals with eating disorders through innovation, education, and systems leadership. She is also a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders.
Shelly Hindle
M.A., PGDipClinPsy., B.A., MNZCCP
Shelly Hindle (she/her) is a Clinical Psychologist in New Zealand with over 24 years’ experience working in both private and public health settings. Through her private consultancy business, she specializes in supporting Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) programme development and implementation, providing training, mentoring and consultation to clinicians, teams, and services in establishing or extending their DBT programmes. Her particular specialty is the application of DBT for longstanding, severe, and co-occurring eating disorder presentations through Mult diagnostic Eating Disorder DBT (MED-DBT). She has contributed to the ongoing development and international dissemination of this model, alongside its pioneers.
Shelly has developed, implemented, and clinically led three comprehensive DBT programmes within Child + Adolescent services and adult specialist eating disorder services. Her experience includes designing an integrative multilevel MED-DBT programme across residential, intensive outpatient and community outpatient care. She has mentored teams internationally in developing both adult and adolescent outpatient and intensive outpatient programmes.
Her strength is in bringing evidence-based treatments into practice across different populations, clinical presentations, service settings, and levels of care. This includes programme design and fit for services, measuring outcomes, training clinicians, a wider team and ancillary staff, and supporting services to embed DBT into everyday practice. She has a vast knowledge of varying treatment modalities for a broad array of psychological problems. Shelly draws on the research evidence for enhancing treatment outcomes and helps programmes to increase fidelity and sustainability. Her programme development work has received a Mental Health Directorate award for innovation.
Her research contributions span qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods studies, and systematic review. She provides DBT and MED-DBT training in Australasia and internationally, and has delivered multi-day trainings, workshops, and poster presentations at international conferences, alongside invited contributions as DBT expert.
Shelly enjoys challenging projects involving innovation and thoughtful adaptation of evidence-based treatments. Her interests include DBT for eating disorders, adolescent and family DBT, DBT-Prolonged Exposure, Stage II DBT for eating disorders, school-based DBT and programmes supporting staff.
Charlotte Thomas
LCSW, LISCW
Charlotte Thomas is a Clinical Social Worker licensed to practice in California, Oregon and Washington with more than fifteen years of experience in the field of psychotherapy. She is a Certified DBT Clinician™ through the Linehan Board of Certification. Charlotte is a graduate of Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University with a Masters in Social Work, and Davidson College with a Bachelors in Psychology and a Concentration in Neuroscience. Charlotte holds expertise in using Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy to treat individuals experiencing forms of anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse, and borderline personality disorder and with specialization in eating disorders.
She is particularly passionate about working with complex, multi-diagnostic clients and those who have already attempted multiple treatment episodes without long-standing improvement. Charlotte is currently serving as Co-Chair of the DBT SIG (Special Interest Group) of the Academy of Eating Disorders. Charlotte uses a unique blend of radical genuineness, warmth, and empathy to help her therapy and consultation clients generate change and build towards a life worth living.
