Sandra Russ, Ph.D is Distinguished University Professor Emerita and Louis D. Beaumont Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She is a clinical child psychologist whose research program focuses on understanding how pretend play and the use of emotion and imagination is involved in child development. She studies the connection between creativity and pretend play. She has developed and validated a measure of pretend play (The Affect in Play Scale) and has developed play intervention protocols to help children improve their play skills and, in turn, creativity and socio-emotional functioning. She has a large number of peer-reviewed publications focused on her research and has published 7 books (3 sole author and 4 co-edited). Her recent books are “Pretend Play in Childhood: Foundation of Adult Creativity” (APA Books, 2014) and “The Cambridge Handbook of Lifespan Development of Creativity”, co-edited with Jessica Hoffmann and James Kaufman. (2022). She has been President of Division 10 and received the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts from Division 10, American Psychological Association.