Leadership Team
Jeffrey Kursonis
Founder & CEO
Jeffrey brings decades of experience in network building & innovation in social entrepreneurship through team brainstorming-collective-intelligence (BCI). During seven years in SE Asia he saw the deficit of care firsthand, and later founded LATERAL to answer the need for scalable solutions for the global mental health crisis. And then he realized, once you deploy many teams doing therapy you can turn them into therapist/researchers that collect data and with group collective intelligence approaches, augmented by AI, seek iterative innovations, all in local cultures by local people. Once in place this creates a permanent research platform made up of many teams doing therapy, a true living social science laboratory available also to outside researchers.
Dr. Scott D. Blain
Researcher
Scott is a computational social neuroscientist focused on understanding social cognition and mental health. His research examines how humans understand each other's minds (theory of mind) and how personality shapes social behavior, using a combination of neuroimaging, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling. He brings expertise in research design, data analysis, and the intersection of technology and psychology, with a particular interest in how AI systems can better understand and support human social and emotional needs.
Anand Jeevanandham
AI Engineer
Anand (AJ) alongside Matthew develops the AI and technical infrastructure that powers our research platform, including multimodal data analysis systems, machine learning models for symptom assessment, and collective intelligence algorithms that help improve mental health interventions globally. AJ's previous project called Project Sunshine built a working prototype to screen children for learning disabilities and he also hoped to expand it for mental health, so he joined Lateral bringing his prototype into our lab for AI to find visual and audio clues in human faces and now with our mental health researchers will map them to symptom expressions.
Gina Hafez
Psychology Lead
Gina oversees the clinical and therapeutic aspects of our programs, ensuring evidence-based practices are effectively adapted for diverse cultural contexts while maintaining therapeutic fidelity.
Matthew Lee
AI Engineer
Matthew along with AJ leads our technology strategy, overseeing the development of AI innovations in concert with our mental health researchers, including multimodal symptom assessment, intelligent training systems, and augmenting collective intelligence protocols by using large group conversation analysis, similar to how Taiwan famously used AI to create consensus in nationwide political conversations. Matthew trained as a physicist, has experience building non-profits, and his AI work has focused on safe and responsible deployment. He ensures that AI and digital tools enhance rather than replace human therapeutic relationships.
Growing Team
LATERAL's team includes 10+ dedicated professionals across the United States and Philippines, including lay therapists, program coordinators, researchers, and operations staff. Together, we're building a platform that can serve communities worldwide.