Author's Acknowledgments

In any endeavor such as this, completion is never predicated upon the efforts of a single person and this project truly exemplifies a team approach. To that end, I would like to personally thank and acknowledge the efforts of the many people who have been instrumental in producing a highly collaborative work of this kind. Please know that should your name not appear in this list, it is not for lack of gratitude on my part, but more to my own faulty recollection and shortcomings in memory, for which I duly apologize in advance. I’ll begin with Hazel Wheldon and Jenni Pitkänen, who basically vetted me as the author for this task without me even being aware of it and brought me into the MHS family; Danielle Politi for her longtime friendship and support; Gill Sitarenios, Joanna Solomon, and Manolo Romero Escobar, for their expertise in psychometrics and brilliant ideas regarding measurement and statistics; Clinton Agius, Paul Masson, Marina Saad, and the entire marketing department for their work as well as zeal and enthusiasm in the test and in me; Steve and Rodeen Stein, for investing so much of your company in a radical new idea for a product and, even more so, for placing so much faith in me as a person and a professional; and especially, Sara Rzepa and Jane Wong, both of whom, over the course of the six years in which this test was developed, worked tirelessly and endlessly. Through their own sheer brilliance, they were fully able to grasp and lead the operationalization of every one of many complex theoretical ideas into the design and construction of the Ortiz PVAT to produce an end product that exceeded my expectations of what was even possible. You are both simply awesome!

The creation of the Ortiz PVAT was neither a simple, nor a quick process, and the fact that not a single corner was cut anywhere, ever, makes me so very proud to have my name on the product and not the least bit hesitant to extoll its unparalleled features and quality. So to all of you, and to those whom I never met or whose names I failed to remember, I give you my most heartfelt thanks for your effort, hard work, patience, diligence, and incredible attention to detail. I am forever grateful and I promise that I will do whatever it takes to make each and every one of you proud of this remarkable achievement we created together.

Samuel O. Ortiz, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
New York, NY