Leyla Welkin
Leyla Welkin is a clinical cross-cultural psychologist who practices psychotherapy, teaches as an intercultural educator, and who has developed programs internationally for 40 years. Her birth in Gaziantep, Türkiye to American parents began a life lived between cultural worlds. She received her Interdisciplinary Master’s and Doctoral Degrees in the United States, where she worked for many years in outpatient clinics and in her own private practice psychotherapy. Her early work focused on women and families struggling with the effects of trauma, sexual, and family abuse. She began teaching in university psychology and counselor training programs in 1995. In 2008 Leyla returned to Türkiye and founded the Pomegranate Connection program. She spent the next six years conducting research and providing training and consultation services around Türkiye, finally working for the United Nations UNFPA developing programs for Syrians fleeing civil war. She is now once again based in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and continues to offer training, consultation, and psychotherapy services locally and internationally. With the recent publication of Sustaining Open Hearts Leyla’s current focus is on consulting and supervising therapists and other helpers who work with survivors of violence, and with individuals and families with a history of migration or cultural complications.
Afsaneh Haddadian, Ph.D.
Afsaneh Haddadian is a youth justice and community impact leader dedicated to advancing equity, belonging, and opportunity for young people and families. With more than a decade of experience across education, behavioral health, and public safety systems, she specializes in building collaborative partnerships and designing trauma-informed, culturally responsive programs. She most recently served as Associate Director at the Center for Children & Youth Justice, where she led major initiatives in community violence intervention and school reengagement, and supported BIPOC-led organizations through technical assistance and capacity building.
Emine Onaran İncirlioğlu
Emine Onaran İncirlioğlu, after receiving her first degree in Architecture at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, completed her graduate work in Anthropology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She collaborated with Paul Stirling for her PhD dissertation fieldwork in the Sakaltutan and Elbaşı villages of Kayseri, upon which she wrote her dissertation titled “Gender Relations in Rural Transformation: Two Central Anatolian Villages;” and taught at various universities in the US, UK, Germany and Turkey, in both social science and design departments. One of the founding members of the Cultural Studies Association of Turkey, İncirlioğlu’s research, teaching and interest areas include cultural studies, ethnographic fieldwork, ethnographic novel, gender studies, Gypsy/Romani studies and themes under the rubric of space-culture-identity. After her retirement, she visited Armenia in 2015 with
a scholarship from the Hrant Dink Foundation and published her semi-ethnographic memories in 2024.
Leyla Soydinç
Leyla Soydinç graduated from the Psychology Department of Yeditepe University. She worked as a psychologist in the social support units and women’s shelter of a municipality and later coordinated the Gender Mainstreaming Program at the Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG). She completed her master studies in Psychological Trauma at Kocaeli University and in Women’s Studies at Istanbul University.
Having first become involved with the Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation during her student years, she has since continued her work there within the scope of feminist psychological support. She is currently a part-time lecturer at Okan University. She practices as an independent psychotherapist and continues her engagement in feminist psychology and psychotherapy through the Feminist Psychotherapies Initiative.
Her clinical and academic work focuses on psychological trauma, violence against women, feminist social and psychological support practices, feminist psychology and feminist psychotherapy.
Nuran Kizilkan
For more than 26 years, I have walked alongside people whose lives have been reshaped by conflict, disaster, and displacement. My journey began with a simple intention: to help. Over time, it grew into a lifelong commitment to supporting refugees, internally displaced people, and communities living through humanitarian crises—especially those most often left unseen: children, women, elderly people, and people living with disabilities.
My work has focused on creating spaces of safety, dignity, and hope through protection programmes, psychosocial support, social cohesion initiatives, and socio-economic development. Each project, each family, and each story has reaffirmed my belief that healing is possible when people are met with compassion and consistent care.
But this path has also taught me something equally important: those who help others also need help. After years of witnessing pain and resilience, and personally experiencing secondary and vicarious trauma, I began dedicating myself to supporting helpers—aid workers, volunteers, and community leaders who carry the emotional weight of crisis response. Today, I see my mission as twofold: to stand with affected communities, and to strengthen the people who stand with them.
I continue this work with humility, hope, and a deep belief in the power of human connection to transform lives.
Piyale Cömert, PhD
I am a retired psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist. I was born and raised on the Aegean coast of Turkey. My graduate education and clinical practice took place in San Francisco, California, and Seattle, Washington. Among other foci, my clinical work included a large number of bicultural, multilingual individuals dealing with issues of identity, belonging, acculturation, and other complex aspects of immigration. Another large group was those with traumatic brain injuries struggling to adapt to a sudden, unfamiliar self. I worked for many years with the elderly, accompanying some through dementia and supporting their families in this passage.
For over twenty years, I was clinical faculty at the University of Washington, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and served on the board of the Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems. After completing my psychoanalytic training at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute (SPSI) and joining the faculty, I was on the board of directors, including two years as the board president. As emeritus faculty at SPSI, I continue to serve on committees, and I am involved in special training projects.
As a board member of the Pomegranate Connection, my main engagement has been with the Helping the Helpers Project that aims at preventing vicarious trauma in front line professionals who work with international refugees.
My passion is to support young people in reaching their goals, nurturing their relationships, and developing self-awareness, self-confidence, tolerance, and compassion for differences.