Light in the Valley

Bio

Wendy Lichtenthal is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in helping individuals cope with illness, grief, and loss. She is the Founding Director of the Center for the Advancement of Bereavement Care at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Professor, Pending Rank, in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She has worked as a grief specialist for over 20 years. She additionally specializes in working with individuals with serious illness and their family and caregivers, with a specific focus on cancer. She has expertise in meaning-centered, cognitive-behavioral, and acceptance-based therapy approaches.

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Wendy completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at The University of Chicago, her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, her psychology internship at Weill Cornell Medicine, and her postdoctoral research fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York City, where she went on to become the Founding Director of the Bereavement Clinic in the MSK Counseling Center and an Associate Attending Psychologist. She now serves as Consultant Faculty at MSK. She was a recipient of the 2012 International Psycho-Oncology Society Kawano New Investigator Award, the 2019 Association for Death Education and Counseling Research Recognition Award, and the 2023 American Psychosocial Oncology Society Outstanding Clinical Care Award. She is a Fellow in Thanatology (FT) and was elected a Fellow of the American Psychosocial Oncology Society (FAPOS) in 2024. Her work has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institute Child Health and Human Development, American Cancer Society, T.J. Martell Foundation, Cycle for Survival, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Health Foundation of South Florida and Community Academic Collaborative, and the Copeland Foundation. Her research focuses on grief and bereavement, cancer survivorship, intervention development and evaluation, and finding meaning in the face of adversity. She is an inventor of the Meaning-Centered Grief Therapy and EMPOWER intervention manuals used in her research.