Yusra Al-Kailani is a clinical psychologist from Jordan. As resilience programming trainer and a psychotherapist with CVT, she currently helps lead the Survivors of Torture Initiative (SOTI), working with civil society organizations across the Middle East and beyond to develop supportive networks, develop torture and trauma rehabilitation capacity, and promote psychosocial well-being for human rights defenders, including survivor/advocates, documenters and former detainees, and she also works on initiatives to advance Transitional Justice efforts. Previously she worked on the IDREAM project, providing mental health support for human rights defenders and promoting resilience and well-being and engaging in a country needs assessment task force in the MENA region. She has over ten years of experience in the field of mental health and psychosocial support.

Yusra previously worked with the SEED Foundation in Northern Iraq as clinical advisor on psychological and clinical services. In that role, she helped define SEED’s clinical approaches and standards, including with regard to advocacy, psychotherapy, counseling, capacity building of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), and related services for groups, families and individuals who survived atrocities, war crimes and human trafficking. She has also worked as a lead psychologist with Save the Children (Jordan), as a psychosocial counselor with CVT (Jordan), and as a psychosocial counselor with the Jordan River Foundation’s Child Protection Program (Jordan).