2024 Early Career Psychologists (ECP) Committee Chair-Elect Candidates

All candidates were asked to provide a brief statement, introducing themselves and answering the following question: 

How would your skills and vision help you contribute to and lead SCP’s efforts to center its new values, uproot anti-Black racism, and promote liberation, in SCP and beyond?

Jenny Holzapfel, PhD

I am a Clinical Assistant Professor at Northern Arizona University where I teach therapy and assessment-based courses. My research focuses primarily on supervision and therapy outcomes. I am a licensed psychologist, providing therapy services to university students and supervising doctoral-level practicum students. I earned my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Arizona State University.

I am committed to SCP’s values and vision in uprooting anti-Black racism and promoting liberation. I believe that growth toward justice and liberation in counseling psychology is most fruitful through collaboration and connection as such allows us to build on each other’s strengths, rest when needed, and celebrate and support each other. As someone who benefits from white privilege, I own my responsibility to educate myself and my students on how systematic oppression has shaped, and continues to shape, counseling psychology, and actively contribute toward dismantling those oppressive structures. To these ends, I have worked with SCP colleagues on various projects, including most recently on webinars and presentations focused on cultural competency in supervision and training, and with the subgroup for a SCP presidential initiative that worked on redefining the values of SCP.

If I were to serve as the ECP Representative on the SCP Executive Board, I would continue to join with others and build connections to sustain us all in this work. In particular, I want to create and support work that addresses the unique challenges faced by ECPs trying to balance family and career responsibilities, and especially how to support women and ECPs of color who are, personally and professionally, disproportionately impacted by these challenges. As a first-generation student and now as a clinical faculty member and supervisor, I also hope my service will serve as a model to my students to encourage them to be active in APA throughout their training and beyond.

Watch Jenny's Candidate Video HERE!

Kiara S. Manosalvas, PhD

I am humbled to run for ECP Chair for the Society of Counseling Psychology. I am a scientist-practitioner-advocate with a passion for supporting BIPOC communities. As a Latina, cisgender woman from working-class roots, I am grateful to have been raised by two women who instilled in me similar values that SCP fosters in its members, specifically collectivism, love, respect, and resiliency. Despite encountering anti-blackness within the Latiné/x community—a reality many Latine/x people experience growing up—I've been fortunate to find a community in counseling psychology that has underscored the importance of social justice and anti-racism work. Community has always reminded me of my purpose.

Some of my most significant professional experiences include my work with Dr. Janet Helms and her research lab, the Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture; serving as Chair for the Graduate Students of Color Association; and serving as a member of the Education Committee for the Alliance for Healthcare Equity, Accountability, and Diversity (AHEAD) at the Manhattan VA during my predoctoral internship. I am currently a full-time lecturer and coordinator of the Bilingual Latiné/x Mental Health concentration in the Counseling and Clinical Psychology department at Teachers College, Columbia University. In my classes and mentorship, I emphasize the pervasiveness of anti-blackness within Latine/x communities – I teach my students that no one is free until we are all free. Critical consciousness and social action cannot be disentangled from clinical training and professional practice.

I wholeheartedly believe that collective action is essential to advance SCP’s mission of dismantling anti-black racism. As ECP chair, I hope to facilitate this collective action toward liberation and social justice. I hope to do this by strengthening our members’ capacity and confidence in championing social justice initiatives, centering joy and love into this work.

Watch Kiara's Candidate Video HERE! 

Lydia HaRim Ahn, PhD

As a cisgender, Asian woman, I am aware of my positionality as someone who experiences both marginalization and privilege. Through cultural humility, I strive to center and amplify Black voices, reflect and understand how I have contributed to oppression, and how I can partake in action, activism, and advocacy to uproot anti-Black racism. I recognize that I am always unlearning the harmful messages that I have been taught due to white supremacy and the ways that I can learn to highlight and promote liberation.

I am grateful to have been trained by multiple mentors, many of whom are Asian American and Black psychologists including Dr. Matt Miller, Dr. Mia Smith-Bynum, Dr. Riana Anderson, Dr. Howard Stevenson, and others. They helped me to become more critically conscious personally and professionally - through my research, teaching practices, clinical work, and advocacy. Through my research, I hope to understand the detrimental effects of racism on health outcomes while also using a strengths-based approach to examine familial protective factors. I am also currently actively involved in Dr. Helen Neville’s presidential initiative as a reading discussion co-chair, choosing books that highlight justice, joy, and healing. Through my active involvement as an Inclusion committee co-chair and member at my school and college, respectively, I strive to advocate for structural change and create events that promote wellness and belonging.

Using the skills that I have gained from my mentors and previous experiences, I hope to continue naming anti-Black racism, holding myself and others accountable, highlight collective care and help to develop a sense of belonging rather than competition, use a strengths-based approach to leadership, and promote liberation and healing for all. If elected, I plan to use meetings to think of creative, innovative methods to center and put into action SCP’s new values.

Watch Lydia's Candidate Video HERE!