Committee on Division/APA Relations welcomes Gershoff and Sirkin

Every year, each division is invited to submit one nomination for the two seats that become available on the Committee on Division/APA Relations (CODAPAR), one of APA’s standing committees made up of six APA members who have extensive background in division leadership.  

For the 2023–25 term, CODAPAR welcomes Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD (liaison to Divs. 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39), and Mark Sirkin, PhD (liaison to Divs. 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29). As their term begins, each will be assigned to a group of divisions to represent on the committee. Meet each new member below.

Elizabeth Gershoff, PhD, is the Amy Johnson McLaughlin centennial professor of human development and family sciences and the director of the Population Research Center, both at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on how parental and school discipline affect child and youth development and how parent education and early education programs can improve the lives of at-risk children. She is an internationally recognized expert on the effects of corporal punishment on children. Her research has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute for Mental Health. Gershoff earned a PhD in child development at the University of Texas and completed postdoctoral training in psychology and prevention research at Arizona State University. She was previously an associate professor of social work at the University of Michigan and a research scientist at the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University. She has served as president of APA Division 37 (Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice) and as member-at-large for APA Division 7 (Developmental Psychology).

Mark Sirkin received his PhD in clinical psychology in 1986 from the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Prior to that, he had completed an internship at the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services where he had become the director of research for their Cult Hot-line and Clinic. It was at this time that he developed an abiding interest in family therapy and groups. Over the years, he has done postdoctoral training in family therapy with Salvador Minuchin, Lyman Wynne, and Evan Imber-Black. In 1987, he joined the faculty of the University of Rochester Medical Center in Psychiatry, where he became director of group research and training. With Lyman Wynne and others, he continued to publish on relational disorders and other dysfunctional group and family phenomena.   

In 1990, he moved back to New York City to join the faculty of the Ferkauf Graduate School and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as director of The Robert Beren Center for the Jewish Family. In that same year, he also began his postdoctoral training at the William Alanson White Institute’s Organizational Development and Consulting Program. He began consulting to family businesses soon after. In 1994, he left academia to become a full-time consultant with RHR International. He became director of their Family Business Practice, responsible for training and supervising a group of RHR consultants from around the country. He left RHR in 1998 to join the Strickland Group to head up their executive coaching practice. In 1999, he founded Sirkin Associates (now Sirkin Advisorsopens in new window), a management consulting firm specializing in executive development and organizational change. 

Since then, he has worked in a variety of private consulting firms including Hay Group and Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, consulting to Fortune 500 companies and law firms, respectively. He has since returned to a private consulting practice based in White Plains, N.Y., where he specializes in closely held/family businesses and law firms. He has written two books, The Secret Life of Corporations: Understanding the True Nature of Business (2004) and Regain Your Balance: At Work, with Family, in Life (2016) and published dozens of articles and chapters, both for the popular press and in scientific refereed journals. He was past president of APA Division 13 (Society of Consulting Psychology), and is a fellow of APA. He currently serves as a representative to APA Council and CODAPAR (Committee on Division/APA Relations). In addition, he is an active member of NYSPA and was elected to serve on Council. 

Until 20019, he was also the associate dean, and chair of the counseling department and program director of the mental health counseling program, as well as an associate professor of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Currently, he is associate dean of the School of Health Professions and Nursing at Long Island University.