Schedule

Breakfast with the stars

This symposium brings together three presentations that center culturally sustaining and revitalizing frameworks to reimagine youth learning and development. The first introduces Ti-Wu, a holistic Chinese epistemic model that repositions youth learning as a dynamic, reciprocal cultural process. The second explores the Medicine Wheel framework within a Native youth academy, showing its effectiveness in fostering cultural identity, self-esteem, and academic optimism. The third examines digital storytelling as a pathway for Native youth self-determination, grounded in Indigenous storywork values. Together, these presentations highlight relational, decolonial approaches that support youth agency, identity, and flourishing across diverse educational contexts.

Symposia

While disability is considered a central aspect of diversity, disabled individuals remain underrepresented in professional health psychology and face a variety of barriers throughout training (Lund et.al., 2020; Wilbur et.al., 2019). Through the use of literature, lived experience, and experiential activities, the presenters will facilitate a discussion that asks supervisors and supervisors in training to identify challenges related to the supervision of disabled trainees (e.g. a lack of relevant literature/guidelines, legal and ethical concerns, bias, institutional and attitudinal barriers, etc.) and develop strategies and tools to address these issues and utilize in their own supervision practice.

Difficult Dialogue

Pedagogical models in Western psychology have traditionally centered Eurocentric, individualistic frameworks, prioritizing hierarchical knowledge over relational, experiential, and culturally grounded learning. This marginalizes ancestral ways of knowing, such as storytelling and relational learning. As programs train increasingly diverse students, it is critical to reimagine pedagogy beyond surface inclusivity toward transformative, liberatory practices. This 50-minute session features a 30-minute Red Table Talk-style roundtable with counseling psychology doctoral students engaging Liberation Psychology to heal cultural soul wounds through narrative and relational practices. Presenters will facilitate reflection on decolonial pedagogy, addressing barriers and fostering critical consciousness, vulnerability, and collective responsibility in academic spaces.

Film Session

Gender expansive folx face unprecedented hate and violence amid the tyrannical rise of white supremacists holding sociopolitical power. The superimposition of the gender binary is not new; it reflects a tragic resurgence of colonial ideologies that trace back to centuries of imperialist domination. In this session, attendees will gain cross-cultural, historical perspectives of the gender binary and its many cascading effects. Attendees will learn about gender-affirming, trauma-informed care strategies to counteract despicable rhetoric, including skills relevant to youth and families. Join us to challenge dominant power structures and (re)discover the beauty of human gender our ancestors once revered.

Difficult Dialogue

Building on the engaging NMCS 2024 Difficult Dialogue, “Living Transformative Change: Triaging Inequities, Increasing Empathy, and Reducing Group Competition,” which drew over 89 participants, we delve deeper to explore triaging inequities within the current sociopolitical rifts in society. In the 2024 session, we confronted the harsh realities faced by individuals living in visibly marginalized bodies, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of their lived experiences, disproportionate inequities, and to triage and prioritize their equity, healing, reparations, and liberation. Triaging inequities has become more critical than ever. This challenging difficult dialogue will lead to tangible action with measurable results.

Difficult Dialogue

Based on the qualitative study conducted on race dialogues before and during the first Trump Presidency, in this symposium, presenters will share (1) the impact of social media and navigating race dialogues with family members (with all 29 participants ); (2) biracial participants (2 Black & White and 4 Asian & White)’s unique experiences; and (3) 9 participants of color’s experiences. As we discuss the similarities and differences between the subgroups, we are hoping to reflect on what we can gain from this dataset and gain wisdom that may help to navigate the second term.

Symposia

This immersive 110-minute session confronts the hidden architecture of white supremacy across education, media, politics, and social systems. Participants will critically examine how oppression survives through euphemism, institutional gaslighting, and performative equity. Through storytelling, guided reflection, and experiential activities, attendees will be called to recognize, name, and disrupt these systems. Rooted in historical research, clinical training, and lived experience, this dialogue challenges internalized narratives and invites deeper accountability. Attendees will leave with decolonial frameworks, tools for self-inquiry, and a post-session resource guide—because dismantling begins not with action, but with recognition.

Difficult Dialogue

This session presents feminist research assessing the potential of restorative and transformative justice to better address harm, provide care, and promote healing. Presenters will review findings from scoping reviews on current restorative and transformative justice approaches to addressing gender-based, family, racial, and institutional violence. Current practices will be evaluated through the lens of abolition feminism and critical race theory, and successes and critiques will be discussed. Further, presenters will report on findings from interviews with survivors of violence on visions of and action towards liberation. Guided by the perspectives of survivors, the presenters will dream of transformative, liberatory futures.

Symposia

This symposium will center a critique of our current competency-based models in psychology and a call to embrace a structural competency framework as a path for healing and liberation. Grounding ourselves in a structural frame is a prerequisite to realizing psychology’s commitments to uprooting anti-Black racism, white supremacy and embracing liberation. The presenters will highlight these important critiques and describe structural competencies; share the results of a Delphi study utilizing voices of anti-oppression and anti-racism experts to develop a structural competency framework; and discuss next steps for structural competency work in terms of clinical practice, training, and research.

Symposia

This symposium explores the nuanced nature of connectedness. The first presentation outlines a scoping review of the psychological literature, highlighting how connectedness has been defined and measured across studies and proposing a revised framework to guide future work. The second presentation applies this lens to educational settings, emphasizing how school connectedness can be shaped by students’ identities, lived experiences, and interactions with trauma-informed practices. Together, these presentations offer complementary perspectives that move beyond monolithic definitions of connectedness, illustrating the complexity of what it means to feel connected in both psychological and educational contexts.

Symposia

Engaging in conversations about limitations of problematización and conscientización, we incorporate sentipensar as an opposition to coloniality of knowledge and being. Sentipensar, a humanizing practice for liberation, allows for ancestral ontologies, reclaiming our stories and humanity through the inseparable connection of mind, body, soul, and land. Sentipensar resists colonial knowledge structures through embodied, relational, and ancestral ways of knowing, posing alternatives outside of Eurocentric and United Statesian epistemologies that obviate contributions from epistemologies of the South. This session centers ancestral epistemologies as stories of resistance, inviting participants to reflect on how to bring sentipensar into their own liberatory practices.

Round Table

Our Asian ancestors have been activists for centuries; organizing, advocating, and nurturing change across generations, yet their stories are often erased or buried beneath stereotypes. This roundtable brings together diverse, emerging Asian leaders to reclaim our ancestors’ stories and healing practices. Through storytelling and community dialogue, we will explore how advocacy takes many forms, from frontline organizing to research, clinical work, and leadership. Participants will reflect on internalized beliefs, navigate cultural complexity, and examine how to engage in values-aligned activism. Collaboratively, we will honor our ancestors and re-author our roles in shaping justice, healing, and cross-racial/ethnic solidarity.

Round Table

Humility is often a core value amongst many collectivistic cultures including Indigenous groups. Furthermore, those with religious/spiritual identifications may also favor ‘meekness’, and women are often taught to engage in self-sacrificing roles, thus sustaining the wellbeing of others over that of ourselves. However, institutions often consider awards, recognition, and prizes as a core component of promotion and tenure and other ‘merit-related’ structures. This difficult dialogue session provides space to discuss how deeply held values which oppose self-promotion may directly clash with Western institutional systems which require recognition, honors, and awards to advance, thus creating and sustaining an inherent catch-22 situation.

Difficult Dialogue

Dr. Shavonne Moore-Lobban’s Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP) Presidential Initiatives led to the development of new values: (1) critical consciousness; (2) prevention; (3) strength-based; (4) advocacy; (5) flexibility and adaptability; (6) collectivism; accountability and repairing harm; (7) liberation; and (8) healing. To parallel this development, one of Dr. Melanie Wilcox’s Presidential Initiatives was to revise the Counseling Psychology Model Training Values Statement Addressing Diversity. A committee was developed with representatives from SCP, Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs, and Association of Counseling Center Training Agencies. In this roundtable we will share the progress on revising the statement and solicit feedback.

Round Table

This symposium will integrate empirical findings from two qualitative studies exploring intergenerational trauma/resilience from strengths-based and liberation psychology lenses. The first study is a large-sample consensual qualitative research-modified (Spangler et al., 2012) exploration of how licensed mental health professionals (psychologists, social workers, professional counselors, and marriage and family therapists) conceptualize and treat intergenerational trauma. The second study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith & Nizza, 2021) to explore how descendants of colonialism, enslavement, and genocide describe intergenerational (counter-)memories (Foucault, 1977) to resist colonial and deficit-based understandings of LGBTQ+ BIPOC identities. Research, clinical, and liberation implications of both study findings will be discussed.

Symposia

South Asian Americans (SAA) are one of the fastest growing ethnic/racial groups in the U.S., yet there exists a dearth of understanding in clinical, research, and educational spaces relating to SAA psychology. Scaffolded in a fundamental learning of SAA narrative, this symposium presents a contemporary scoping analysis, a new identity framework (Asian Indian American focused), and quantitative methodological study to provide insights into the past, present, and future directives of SAA psychology. Each independent, yet collectively informed, study provides audience members with an opportunity to understand the complexity, history, and need behind advancing SAA narratives.

Symposia

This interactive 110-minute roundtable explores the psychological and socio-cultural roots of student-led protest and revolution across historical and modern contexts. Grounded in liberation psychology and critical theory, it analyzes movements from 1968 uprisings to March for Our Lives, while examining emotional tolls, media framing, and digital dissent. Participants engage in case studies, empathy-driven activities, and co-create protest tools, centering youth as agents of change. The session fosters reflection on institutional failure, misinformation, trauma, and transnational solidarity, offering attendees a toolkit with advocacy templates, media literacy resources, and prompts to deepen civic identity and emotional insight into collective resistance.

Difficult Dialogue

Within the field of psychology, professional disagreements often occur in the contexts of research, clinical work, and supervision. While these disagreements provide professionals with the opportunity for growth, unresolved differences can have negative implications for clinical and research practices. As the current political climate continues to create ideological divides, navigating disagreements in a professional and effective manner is crucial for practitioners and researchers in the field of psychology. This roundtable invites participants to discuss challenges in professional disagreements, and collaboratively identify ways in which these disagreements can be effectively navigated to promote professional growth, ethical clinical practice, and impactful research.

Round Table

This symposium highlights culturally grounded group work across the lifespan for Indigenous communities, from elementary-aged youth to adults. Presenters will share adaptations of evidence-based practices that center relational values, Indigenous story work and traditional teachings. Presenters include Indigenous psychologists offering mindfulness groups for adults, and culturally adapted DBT STEPS-A for Indigenous youth in school-based settings. Each approach reflects how traditional teachings, culturally adapted group-based strategies, and relational healing inform well-being across developmental stages. Participants will leave with examples of group-based tools and practices that honor cultural integrity and advance healing across the lifespan.

Symposia

This difficult dialogue session aims to share experiences and develop strategies to challenge the silencing of cross-racial solidarity with Palestine in psychology. We will identify ways that discussions of anti-Palestinian racism are silenced within psychological organizations and contexts, examine the structural tactics used to maintain the Palestine exception, discuss experienced structural and interpersonal barriers to challenging silencing and promoting cross-racial solidarity for Palestine within psychology, and share and compile strategies and tactics for resisting silencing and promoting cross-racial solidarity.

Difficult Dialogue

Racism continues to harm the mental and physical health of People of Color, a reality intensified by recent dehumanizing policies: ICE raids, citizen detentions, rollbacks of civil rights, and attacks on diversity initiatives. In response, some lean into rest, community, and joy, while others organize and resist. The Psychology of Radical Healing framework (French et al., 2020) offers five pathways—critical consciousness, radical hope, cultural authenticity, strength and resistance, and collectivism—while recognizing rest and joy as forms of resistance. This dialogue explores tensions between personal care and collective care, asking how we balance healing, action, and justice.

Difficult Dialogue

Persons living with disabilities represent one of the largest and most diverse social identity groups in the United States; yet, the stories of people with disabilities and those who care for them are overlooked in a range of discourses including mental health and psychology. This film viewing will feature “Unseen: Caregiver Documentary” that centers the stories of parent caregivers. Presenters will facilitate a discussion that 1) increases awareness of mental health and disability, 2) examines the complex narratives of parent caregivers, and 3) explores strategies to address mental health and advocacy among parent caregivers.

Film Session

Teaching Indigenous youth with cultural humility presents as an option for non-indigenous educators and clinicians to develop allyship with indigenous youth. This presentation shares the experience of a first-year doctoral student in counseling psychology who taught a culturally informed communications course to students in grades 7-12 participating in a summer enrichment program. In this roundtable discussion we will consider how we may integrate culturally informed practices into educational and clinical settings to foster allyship.

Symposia

How can we unlearn and unforget to reimagine and bring our wholeselves into all of our spaces? Unlearning involves recognizing and challenging internalized structures processes. Unforgetting calls us to reconnect with ancestral knowledge, histories, and ways of being that have been suppressed. Through reflective dialogue and a guided exercise in writing personal "creation stories," we will examine themes of intergenerational impact, resilience, and the small daily actions that reflect and move us toward a more liberatory future. This space centers storytelling, critical reflection, and collective visioning as tools for imagining—and embodying—more authentic and equitable ways of working and being.

Round Table

The Dinè concept of K’e emphasizes relationship-building and collaboration, foundational values in many BIPOC communities. This presentation explores how BIPOC psychologists and mental health professionals can reclaim self-care through creative arts rooted in cultural and relational frameworks. Recognizing the cultural isolation many BIPOC professionals face, presenters highlight expressive practices—storytelling, movement, collage, and poetry—as healing tools and self-sustaining practices. Drawing from intersectional feminist values and personal experience, presenters show how mentorship and collaboration nurture well-being. Participants will engage in creative, culturally grounded self-care beyond conventional wellness models.

Symposia

This roundtable highlights San Jose State University’s Healthy Development Community Clinic’s (HDCC) and its innovative, community-centered approach to mental health services and clinical training. Led by three SJSU faculty, this session emphasizes culturally responsive, developmentally appropriate, and trauma-informed practices that support healing for diverse children, youth, and families. Presenters will share examples of school-based counseling, peer-led groups, and culturally grounded outreach. The discussion will also explore training strategies that expand students’ understanding of mental health to include community engagement and prevention. Attendees will consider how to integrate culturally sustaining practices into their work to foster more inclusive, equitable care.

Round Table

Our Elders recount the vibrant narratives of a time preceding colonization, a period during which Indigenous peoples flourished in harmony with the land and all its inhabitants for over 140,000 years. Then came waves of competition, conflict, colonization, and capitalism, the 4Cs. Today we face the necessary dismantling and reframing of these constructs across our many social systems. This preconference workshop empowers attendees to choose a system and, through problem-solving steps, envision and actively design solutions. Attendees who challenge systemic injustice and crave the opportunity for hands-on activities offering tangible results to address these injustices will devour this workshop.

Symposia

This roundtable highlights the often-overlooked experiences of international students in predominantly white U.S. higher education institutions and invites attendees to reimagine support beyond traditional clinical models. Drawing on four years of co-leading a culturally attuned International Student Support Group at a predominantly white institution, the presenters share how group counseling became a site of storytelling, identity affirmation, and collective resilience. Attendees will engage with insights on building inclusive, student-informed spaces that center cultural heritage and resist assimilationist pressures. Together, we will reflect on how to create decolonial, restorative practices that honor the voices of international students and challenge institutional erasure.

Round Table

This roundtable discussion will focus on a crucial, and typically overlooked, element of storytelling: setting. Facilitators will encourage a discussion on Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the third spaces (i.e, a place outside of work and home), which are containers of healing, nurturance, resistance, liberation work, etc. The discussion will also include the intentional erasure of third spaces and how the disappearance of third spaces is contributing to the growing sense of loneliness and lack of connection within our communities.

Round Table

This study builds on prior research by exploring the experiences of nine expert BIPOC group therapists through qualitative interviews. Specifically, we were interested in learning about their helpful/unhelpful training experiences, how they assess effectiveness, their role in training others, and how their social identities have influenced their group experiences. Key themes include awareness of power dynamics and racial/ethnic identities in group settings, feelings of isolation, being steered into group work, and the lack of representation in training. The findings highlight gaps in current training practices and suggest the need for more inclusive, identity-conscious approaches in group therapy education and supervision.

Poster Session

Emotional distress in Chinese cultural contexts is often expressed through somatic symptoms or metaphorical language, yet these forms are frequently interpreted in mainstream psychology as signs of denial or suppression. This presentation introduces a scoping review that maps existing literature on culturally embedded modes of emotional expression, such as local affective vocabulary, bodily metaphors, and implicit communication. Following the Arksey and O’Malley framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, this project highlights the cultural meaning behind these expressions and their relational functions. The review aims to inform more culturally responsive research and clinical practice by promoting strength-based understanding and cultural humility.

Poster Session

This poster presentation examines what wellness and healing means for Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (QTBIPOC) from a decolonial perspective. We interviewed 19 QTBIPOC adults to understand their conceptualizations of healing and wellness. Using reflexive thematic analysis and a radical healing framework, we found that authentic self-expression, community and cultural connection, and basic needs being met are crucial for wellness. Additionally, advocacy, listening to needs, access to resources, and affinity spaces are essential for healing from marginalization. These findings underscore the need for systemic change and offer guidance for mental health practitioners supporting QTBIPOC well-being.

Poster Session

Asian Americans (AAs) are often flattened into harmful stereotypes—seen as passive, unaffected by racism, or a monolith. These narratives silence how AAs resist and survive systemic oppression. This study centers intersectionality to examine how age, generation, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity shape how 294 AAs cope with racism. Using the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997) and Resistance and Empowerment Against Racism (REAR; Suyemoto et al., 2022) scales, we conducted exploratory correlations and MANOVAs. Findings reveal key differences across AA subgroups, challenging overgeneralizations and uplifting diverse resistance strategies. We outline implications for cultural responsive care and future research centering AA subgroup experiences.

Poster Session

Heightened attacks against reproductive autonomy have placed the fight for reproductive justice at the forefront of our minds. Given the historical and continued attacks on autonomy, increased mis-and disinformation, and the arduous fight ahead, it is easy to understand why many individuals may feel despair and movements can lose steam. In this poster presentation, we will (a) describe the history of both reproductive justice and radical hope as frameworks rooted in justice; (b) center the role of radical hope in fueling justice, and (c) amplify the need for radical hope in the reproductive justice movement and movement building at large.

Poster Session

Existing research suggests that transgender and gender-diverse People of Color, who hold several minority identities, experience discrimination from intersecting and compounding cis-heteronormativity, transphobia, racism, and colorism. Because many psychological theories indicate that integration of different aspects of identity-instead of separation or conflict—is important for well-being, this qualitative study investigated how TGD People of Color integrate their gender and ethno-racial identities. Interviews were conducted with 10-20 self-identified TGD People of Color and analyzed using grounded theory. Core themes were extracted from the data to represent the experiences of racialized transgender identity development as articulated by the participants.

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Poster Session

Christian purity movements have always disproportionately impacted Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States. The current project examines the impact of purity culture on Black women by bringing their stories into conversation with each other. A qualitative, interview-based exploration of the experiences of a sample of Black women who grew up in purity culture, we use phenomenological analysis to explore two questions: How do Black women experience the impact of purity culture’s framing of sexuality, gender, race, and purity? How do Black women work to heal their relationship to their own bodies and sexuality after purity culture?

Poster Session

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Symposia

Round Table

Round Table

Difficult Dialogue

Round Table

Difficult Dialogue

Difficult Dialogue

Round Table

Film Session

Symposia

Symposia

Round Table

Clinical supervision is essential for ensuring ethical, effective training and practice. Despite guidelines from major psychological associations, supervision remains inconsistently addressed in graduate education, with unclear training requirements and limited standardization. This symposium features two studies that examine supervision training in the U.S. and India. Wiese & Aggarwal (2025) present a mixed-methods study exploring U.S. graduate program practices and post-licensure policies in relation to APA Supervision guidelines. Rastogi et al. (2025) share findings from a qualitative study on supervisor competencies and training needs in India. Together, these studies highlight global gaps and future directions in clinical supervision training.

Symposia

Round Table

Round Table

Symposia

Symposia

Round Table

Town Hall and Closing Ceremony