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Dr. Deep Penesetti MD is the Creator of SoulHouse. 

His mission is to help those who don’t make it to his office. 

Dr. Deep is leading the charge for a “Mental Health Vaccine,” that builds public mental health literacy through entertainment. Each SoulHouse experience serves as a booster for the real world situations we face. As the first-ever Chief Innovation & Medical Officer of the The Child Center of NY, he’s helped reach over 60K families in New York City through SoulHouse, debuting the immersive play “Outside In” at the Lincoln Center as the Co-Creator-Director-Writer. 

A Board-certified, practicing Child, Adolescent & Adult Psychiatrist from the Mount Sinai Hospital Triple Board Program, he’s been dubbed the “Modern Play Therapist” for his leadership in public health through entertainment.  

During medical school at New York University, he founded Imagine Health Films (now part of SoulHouse), a team masterful in securing NIH grants funding entertainment production and the evaluation of it’s public health impact, attracting a collective of Oscar-Emmy-Clio-Grammy winning creatives interested in contributing their talents to helping others live better.

Previously, Dr. Deep was a Chair for the American Psychiatric Association’s Division of Diversity & Health Equity and head of the Minority Fellowship Program sponsoring programs for marginalized communities through grant funding from SAMHSA, the United States Substance and Mental Health Services Administration. 

Dr. Deep is a regularly appearing expert on the news. He presents his and his team’s work throughout the year, at leading Academic Institutions, i.e. Grand Rounds at the University of Iowa, and conferences, i.e. American Psychiatric Association, and is published physician-researcher in leading scientific journals including JAMA, Cerebral Cortex, and the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Surina Jindal is the Immersive Producer from the SoulHouse collective, who helped lead it’s launch at Lincoln Center with the debut of “Outside In.”

As the Co-Creator & Executive Producer of “Outside In,” an immersive play on mental wellness, she helped make mental health history bridging talent from Hollywood and Healthcare. Surina is a creative industry veteran, with a career as a Producer, Creator, Director and Performer. She is mulit-lingual media executive able to speak fluently in development, talent and distribution, after having worked with heavyweights ranging from HBO and Comedy Central to Netflix and Audible. Some highlights include: The Giants (2021) a sumo wrestling docuseries, which received four nominations and won the Sports Industry Award in 2022 for Best Original Content Series. Hot Mess Holiday (2021) a feature-length film that premiered on Comedy Central in 2021, which she Starred in and Executive Produced alongside Kal Penn. She Co-Produced Lemon (2017), a comedic short, starring Jennifer Westfeldt, Noah Bean, and Jenn Lyon, premiered at Tribeca, lauded at festivals worldwide and making it’s way up to airing on all United Airlines flights and on Amazon Prime, where it won an award for “Most Watched Shorts On Amazon.” Title Fight: Between Two Worlds was Surina Jindal’s Feature Documentary Directorial debut featuring Russell Peters and Justin Trudeau.

Shireen is a fashion professor at Parsons & Pratt in NYC. She works as an arts, education, and cultural consultant specializing in fashion, design, identity, and visual storytelling. Additionally, she serves as an independent teaching artist, DEI media consultant, and corporate trainer. Guided by her research on the power of fashion to shape the Muslim-American narrative, Shireen offers community workshops and advises various organizations on topics ranging from fashion, art, and design to identity, culture, and representation. Through her platforms, she fosters inclusive spaces for storytellers to leverage the power of narrative, promoting increased connection and understanding through fashion, media, and image.

Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, is an endowed Barbara Wilson Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatrist and Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health at New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine. As Principal Investigator for the Jordan Wellness Collaborative (JWC), she leads a research, education, and clinical program that partners with community members to provide optimal access to evidence-based treatments for racial and ethnic minoritized patients with mental health disorders.

Through her multi-faceted work, she provides addiction treatment in faith settings, studies health outcomes for people with opioid use disorder in the carceral system, and trains addiction specialists to provide culturally-informed treatment.

Dr. Jordan is dedicated to creating spaces and opportunities for more people of color, specifically Black women in academia who are vastly underrepresented. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications, has been featured at international conferences, and is the proud recipient of various clinical and research awards. The fundamental message of equity and inclusion has informed her research, clinical work, and leadership duties at NYU and beyond.

Jay C. Ellis is a featured musical MC and a member of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Freestyle Love Supreme, a renowned improv hip-hop group. With his quick wit and engaging presence, Jay brings the art of freestyle to life, captivating audiences with spontaneous rhymes and rhythms. His work with Freestyle Love Supreme has taken him to stages across the country, making him a beloved performer in the world of live music and theater.

Aneesa Folds is a dynamic featured musical MC from Lin Manuel Miranda’s Freestyle Love Supreme, known for her electrifying performances and ability to turn words into a musical narrative. Aneesa has captivated audiences with her talent for freestyle rap, combining improvisation and storytelling with a rhythmic flow that is as entertaining as it is unpredictable. Her presence on stage is both powerful and inspiring.

Juilliard-trained composer Rubin Kodheli is a celebrated, genre-transcending creative cellist. His compositions teem with contemplative invitation and nuance, providing the opportunity to listen repeatedly, each time ripe with the possibility of hearing something that previously went unnoticed.  The inspirational tapestry of his work is intentionally woven from blended threads of rock, jazz and classical influences, a stylistic trademark that has afforded Kodheli a career rich in its diversity of output. From his compositions appearing in feature films such as Precious (2009), to his original symphonic rock compositions, to his collaborations as a performer with genre defining artists — including Philip Glass, Henry Threadgill, Christian McBride, Dennis Russell Davies, Meredith Monk, Joan Jett, Laurie Anderson, Tom Harrell, Marc Ribot, Anat Cohen, Mike Patton, Iggy Pop, Snoop Dogg, Ryuichi Sakamoto and many more — Kodheli creates an intimate, masterful reimagining of the expressive capacity of his instrument.

Ayaka Matsui, a distinguished pianist from Tokyo, embarked on her classical training at the age of two and has since traversed a rich tapestry of genres, including jazz, rock, funk, pop, metal and world music. Gifted with the rare neurological condition of synesthesia, Matsui experiences music as a vivid interplay of colors, which profoundly shapes her artistic vision. Her sensitivity to emotional nuances in music, coupled with her unique synesthetic perception, enables her to channel audience energy and narrative depth into evocative, cinematic improvisations and compositions. Matsui’s harmonies resonate with an exceptional emotional depth, earning her music a reputation for its therapeutic and soul-stirring qualities. Her unique intuitive approach pushes the boundaries of musical genres and multi-sensory storytelling, inviting audiences into an immersive synesthetic flow and harmony.

Dr. Lena Green is the Executive Director of The HOPE (Healing on Purpose and Evolving) Center. Dr. Green is a distinguished clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and fatherhood practitioner with over two decades of experience in the field, impacting many New Yorkers through her roles as a clinician, professor, and administrator. She is renowned for her expertise in mental health, program development, clinical supervision, and forming strategic alliances.

The HOPE Center is a free-standing, community-based mental health clinic that is affiliated with the historic First Corinthian Baptist Church (FCBC) in Central Harlem. The HOPE Center provides 12 FREE SESSIONS of evidence-based psychotherapy, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) to adult individuals, couples, and families, as well as group psychotherapy, workshops, teen programming, and events.