AED Board of Advisors

The AED Board of Directors is please to announce the development of the AED Board of Advisors. Founded in September 2006, the Advisory Board is composed of key individuals from within and outside the field of eating disorders who are interested in bringing their knowledge, influence and experience to bear on the mission of the AED and the eating disorder field by advising AED leadership and guiding important AED initiatives. (For more information on the Advisory Board, review the official AED Advisory Board Policy).

We welcome the following members of the AED Advisory Board:

Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist and writer, and visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Professor Orbach has been thinking about and working with eating problems for over 30 years. Her first book, “Fat is a Feminist Issue,” was published in 1978; her newest book, “Bodies,” will be published in 2008.

In addition, Professor Orbach has written much about women's psychology and the construction of femininity, gender, psychoanalysis and social policy, globalism and body image, and emotional literacy in business, education and government. She co-founded The Women's Therapy Centre in London in 1976, and the Women's Therapy Centre Institute in New York in 1981.

The keynote speaker at the UK Government's 1999 Body Image Summit, Professor Orbach has also presented at Body Image Summits in Vienna and Berlin. She is convener of the body activist group, www.any-body.org, and lectures extensively in Europe, North American, Australia and New Zealand.  Professor Orbach has served as consultant to the World Bank and has been working with DOVE (Unilever) for the last five years to change media images to more accurately reflect who we are.

Marvy Rieder
A native of Blaricum, The Netherlands, Marvy Rieder grew up among horses, playing in the fields of the countryside with her younger sister. After visiting a local jewelry store with her mother less than three years ago, she casually enrolled in the Elle/Guess Timeless Beauty Contest, which she won.

As “The Guess Girl," Rieder spent more than a year traveling and working in cities such as New York, Milan, Paris, Barcelona and Los Angeles, walking the runway for designers such as Armani, and modelling for magazines such as the Brazilian Vogue, Russian Officiel, and Elle Magazine. Currently, Rieder write a column for Brilliant, a Dutch fashion magazine, about her life as a model.

"When I began as a model, everybody tried to remold me: I had to lose weight, I was too ‘outspoken’, and they even tried to re-shape my teeth,” she says. “The most important lesson I learned from those comments is to believe in yourself and love yourself in all of your own beauty.”

Rieder is developing the marVie Foundation, a platform to stimulate self-worth and self-awareness among aspiring models and others involved in the fashion industry, to create a healthy working environment within the fashion industry, and to strengthen awareness among models and the fashion industry that they are, in fact, role models for the public. Rieder also aims to become a spokesperson for another major brand to enable her to bring this vision to her work and to raise awareness from within the industry.

Susan Ringwood
Susan Ringwood is the chief executive officer for Beat, a not-for-profit organization devoted to beating eating disorders in the United Kingdom. After initially training as a teacher, Susan has spent 28 years working in the not-for-profit sector in regional, national and international roles. She has worked with a range of charities in the UK, including Age Concern, Community Service Volunteers, Scope and the Prince’s Trust, before joining EDA as chief executive officer in September 2002. Susan was a member of the UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence guideline development group for the treatment of eating disorders, and is a lay member of the NICE consideration panel for Mental Health. As an AED Member, and part of the AED Patient and Carer’s Task Force, Susan contributed to the drafting and development of the AED World Wide Charter for Action on Eating Disorders, and she remains actively involved in the global implementation of the Charter.

Dr. Cynthia Bulik 
Dr. Cynthia Bulik is a past president of the AED and the William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she is also professor of nutrition in the School of Public Health and the Director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program (www.unceatingdisorders.org).

Bulik has written more than 280 scientific papers and chapters on eating disorders and is author of the books Eating Disorders: Detection and Treatment (Dunmore) and Runaway Eating: The 8 Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food and Weight Obsessions (Rodale), the CD EMPOWER Solution for Healthy Weight Control (www.empower-plan.com), and a soon to be released family-based Internet program Food, Fun, and Fitness. She is a recipient of the Eating Disorders Coalition Research Award, the Hulka Innovators Award, the Academy for Eating Disorders Leadership Award for Research, and the Carolina Women’s Center Women’s Advocacy Award. She is the vice president of the Eating Disorders Coalition and is currently an associate editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders. She holds the first endowed professorship in eating disorders in the United States.

Aimee Liu
Aimee Liu is a best selling author of four novels and the highly acclaimed memoir Solitaire. She has co-authored seven nonfiction books and written numerous articles on medical and psychological topics. Aimee’s most recent book, Gaining: The Truth About Life after Eating Disorders will be released in February, 2007. This emotionally powerful and poignant sequel to Solitaire digs deep into the root causes, cures, and consequences of anorexia and bulimia nervosa.

Liu served as 2002 President of the literary organization PEN USA and currently teaches creative writing in Goddard College’s Port Townsend, Wash., MFA Writing Program and through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. For more information about Liu, visit her Web site at www.aimeeliu.net.

Updated: January 9, 2008