2025 President’s Column 60 (1)

It is a deep honor to serve as your President for 2025 and a deep privilege to be able to work with so many of you. The clinical, scientific, educational, social justice, and advocacy talents among our membership are awesome.

This is the first of four Presidential Columns I will share with you this year, one in every issue of the Bulletin. Each will center on one of my four Presidential Initiatives, as highlighted in my July 8, 2024 President-Elect column linked here.

My first Presidential Initiative is furthering the deepening of the understanding and incorporation of identity and culture in the science, practice, and education of psychotherapy and psychotherapy supervision. The remainder of this column will feature what each of our seven Domains (in their alphabetic order) plan to do as aligned with this priority.

Diversity Domain

Domain Representatives: Changming Duan, PhD, and Susan Woodhouse, PhD

Committee Chair: Wonjin Sim, PhD

Coordinator of AMPD program: Rosemary Phelps, PhD

Social Justice Chair: Linda Campbell, PhD

• Continue with the Advocacy & Mentoring Program for Diversity (AMPD) Scholar Program.
• Recruit more committee members and organize additional diversity initiatives.
• Propose a symposium and roundtable at Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) and American Psychological Association conferences.
• Develop more webinars on DEI issues in psychotherapy
• Do a review of Division 29 membership with goals to increase diversity in Division 29 membership
• Collaborate with Social Justice and International Domain in creating a Task Force on building/gathering toolkits. The Diversity Committee can work actively on this.
• Collaborate with the student representative on supporting BIPOC students and educators of BIPOC students as a part of a focus on the salience and incorporation of identity and culture in the science, practice, and education of psychotherapy and psychotherapy supervision

Early Career Psychology (ECP)

Domain Representative: Yujia Lei, PhD 

Committee Chair: Peter Franz, PhD

• Aid psychologists in expanding the inclusiveness of their clinical practice and increasing competency regarding work with minoritized/marginalized groups.
  • Continue webinars on topics such a Suicide Risk Assessment for Ethnic Minorities that have previously been offered and expand to other marginalized groups.
  • Utilize networking to recruit experts in the field like my colleague, Aaron Breslow, whose research focuses on improving access to care in the trans community.
• Yujia’s APA grant application, if funded, would support comprehensive programming to enhance training for bilingual immigrant women of color. This programming would become a major priority for the ECP domain in 2025, encompassing multiple initiatives and individual events.

Education and Training Domain

Domain Representative: Erica Marshall-Lee, PhD

 Committee Chair: Melissa Jones, PhD

• Offer webinars focused on culturally sensitive supervision, research (protocol, participant inclusion, etc.), education (i.e., curricula, diversity of subjects and materials) focused on the ADDRESSING (aka intersectionality wheel) and other models, e.g., the Simpson model, in service provision, case conceptualization, consultation, crisis intervention etc. Internal expertise to provide talks.

International Domain

Domain Representative: Xu Li, PhD

Committee Chairs: Changming Duan, PhD & Dana Tzur-Bitan, PhD

• SAP conference in China: Between November 6 to 9, 2024, a regional SAP conference was held virtually with the title of “Counseling and Psychotherapy in Practice: New Perspectives on Therapist Skills and Development”. A summary of the meeting and its impact will be submitted for publication in the Bulletin.

• In 2025: We plan to explore opportunities to hold similar conferences in China or other regions.

Membership Domain

Domain Representative: Jairo Fuertes, PhD

Committee Chair: Firouz Ardalan, PhD

• Goals to strengthen and cultivate deeper connections within the various Div29 committees. 

• Increase engagement with students and early career professionals is essential to our vision. This emerging generation will play a crucial role in shaping the identity and culture we aspire to establish within Div. 29. 

Professional Practice Domain

Domain Representative: Amy Ellis, PhD

Committee Chair: Marcy Rowland, PhD

In an increasingly diverse and nuanced field, therapists with unique identity-based needs often lack tailored resources to support their journeys in private practice. This project seeks to empower therapists in professional practice by developing practical resources—including tip sheets and videos—that address the specific challenges faced by those whose identities intersect in ways that influence their work.

• Some of the ideas that we have generated thus far include balancing a part-time practice, navigating biases as a e.g., Black or Jewish therapist, and managing caregiving responsibilities alongside client care.
  • We intend to recruit our committee members to take on one, maybe two, of these topic areas and stagger due dates across the year for a steady stream of content. Each resource will offer real-world strategies and insights on practice management, conducting therapy, and dealing with real world challenges from and for these identities. By creating accessible, identity-conscious resources, this project aims to fill a critical gap in support, helping therapists embrace both their personal identities and professional goals.  

• We believe that this will be instrumental in fostering engagement with other domains (Diversity, International, etc.) and creating a tangible member benefit.    

Science Domain

Domain Representative: Patricia Spangler, PhD

Committee Chair: Harold Chui, PhD

• The Science and Scholarship domain can further SAP’s focus on incorporating identity and culture into the science of psychotherapy through our grants in two ways: (a) Make these factors a key consideration in reviewing applications to the annual Gelso and Johnson grants and (b) Request funding for research grant that focuses on the intersection of identity, culture, and psychotherapy research.

In addition to our above Domains, our Publications areas will also have a focus on this first initiative.

• Jesse Owens, Psychotherapy Editor, has committed to two related special sections/features:
  • Spiritual and Religious Competencies (with a focus on training)
  • Culturally and Structurally Responsive Training in Psychotherapy

• Zoe Ross-Nash, Editor of Electronic Communications and Bulletin
  • For the second year, Zoe has invited a monthly call for submissions, recruiting topics on various areas of psychotherapy and intersecting identities. Authors are welcome to submit articles on any topic at any time, however, may use these calls as a form of inspiration to diversify the content in the Bulletin and website. Click here for more information!

January	New beginnings
February	Romantic relationships
March	Women
April	Religion
May	Military
June	LGBT+
July	Independence in psychotherapy
August	Humanitarian work
September	Fee setting and business practices
October	Older adults
November	Gratitude
December	Termination

• Zoe has also started an SAP “Who’s Who”, the features psychotherapists who are members of Division 29 and would like to share their career accomplishments. Zoe encourages all members to be featured! Send an email to editor@societyforpsychotherapy.org to express interest.

• Amy Ellis, Publications Board Chair, is focused on bringing more diversity to the Publications & Communications Board. She is working to involve more students and diversify the committee with members who bring a wide range of personal and professional experiences. Amy also strongly supports Drs. Owens and Ross-Nash’s efforts to publish articles that explore identity and culture. She is working to build a stronger connection between these two publication outlets, aiming to reach both professionals and community members. Amy is committed to increasing diversity in both the content and authorship of publications, ensuring that diverse voices and perspectives are represented. Her goal is to help position SAP’s publications as foundational educational and skill-building resources for understanding and incorporating identity and culture into psychotherapy.

In looking at all the above, I am truly excited about what we will accomplish and grateful for all these Board members’ energy and ideas. I would be remiss to not also express appreciation in advance to the other 2025 SAP Board members, Past-president Tony Rousmaniere, President-elect Joshua Swift, Secretary Astrea Greig, Treasurer Ken Critchfield, and our two Council of Representatives members, Libby Williams and Jeff Younggren.

Stewart Cooper, PhD

SAP President