Alison Pope-Rhodius, PhD

Dr. Alison Pope-Rhodius is the Program Director for our Applied Sport and Performance Psychology Department. Alison is well known in her field and previously served as the Chair of the Sport Psychology Program at JFK University and the Program Director of the ASPP Program at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA. She completed her Master’s in Sport Science and Ph.D. in Sport Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Alison migrated to the U.S. in the year 2000 and continued to work in the field of mental performance. Her career highlights include traveling the world working with elite archers and coaches, including Colombia, Italy, India, Turkey and Thailand, and working with the U.S. team and U.K. number one archer at the Olympics in Athens in 2004. She has also recently worked with Hollywood actors and an elite cricketer in India. She is renowned in her discipline and has been an active member of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) for many years, was made a Fellow of AASP in 2018 and successfully re-certified as a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC, administered by AASP) in December 2019.

Alison has her own small private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with athletes and coaches from all sports and performing artists; she specializes in understanding elite individual performance needs.

In 2018, Alison co-edited a book all about how to be successful before, during and after applied sport psychology training experiences, which was published by Routledge, titled Excelling in Sport Psychology: Planning, Preparing and Executing Applied Work. She is also the host of the first podcast in sport psychology called ‘Wee Chats with Brilliant People’: www.WeeChats.com @WeeChats.

In her spare time, Alison likes to camp, hike, take photos, play tennis, watch tennis, grow succulents, eat curry, watch films and look at giraffes and lions.
 

Education

Liverpool John Moores University, PhD, Sport Psychology

Liverpool John Moores University, MS, Sport Science