SCP President-Elect Candidate Statements

Bedford Palmer II, Ph.D.


What is your vision as SCP Vice-President for Professional Practice?
It is an honor to be nominated for the position of Vice President for Professional Practice. I am an Associate Professor and Chair of the Counseling Department at Saint Mary’s College of California. I have served our discipline at the local, state, and national levels; including as Chair of the ABPsi National Student Circle; as the California Psychological Association State Diversity Delegate; and as President of the Alameda County Psychological Association. I have also built a successful private practice, written a number of op-eds, produced and cohosted the 2018 SCP Best in Practice award winning Naming It podcast, and wrote a children’s book titled “Daddy Why Am I Brown?”. I also engage with social media to promote ethical professional practice (i.e., moderating the Black Mental Health Professional group on Facebook and founding the Licensed Mental Health Professionals club on Clubhouse app), and provide consultation and support for students and ECPs.

As your VP of Practice, I will work with the SCP membership to expand the division’s liberatory framework to effectively engage with ongoing national dialogues on antiracism and social justice in ethical professional practice. My goals are to develop committees that will work with me to: a) update existing and develop new in-person and web-based CE trainings focused on antiracist liberatory practice; b) develop a directory of counseling psychologists that encompasses the many ways that we professionally practice (i.e., psychotherapy, consulting, speaking, and creative media engagement); and c) developing strategic partnerships with key stakeholders in the world of professional practice.

How would you address this vision and support the division’s efforts to address anti-Black racism within our structures and practices? 
I continue to believe that through integrating a strength-based critical lens, couched in a commitment to social justice, and supported by a scientist-practitioner foundation; counseling psychologists are in the best position to move the profession of psychology to where it needs to be. My vision of SCP practice and practitioners is focused on taking ownership of the practical pillars of counseling psychology through a liberatory antiracist lens. With this in mind, I believe that as we engage in professional practice, we have the opportunity to engage as healers in terms of oppression-based trauma and engage as accomplices in the ongoing liberation of BIPOC communities.

It is imperative that SCP make appropriate efforts to provide the necessary tools and resources to enact the liberatory antiracist frameworks and strength-based models that differentiate our discipline from our more medically focused ken. As your VP of Practice, I will work to provide opportunities for professional development that focuses on how to ethically engage in socially just entrepreneurship as a counseling psychologist. I envision developing CE programs focused on socially just business practices that would start with web resources, webinars, and online consultation groups; and would expand into to program tracks during the APA convention, the Counseling Psychology Conference, and the National Multicultural Conference & Summit. I will push to redirect SCP funding priorities and develop strategic relationships to provide financial support for students and ECPs who commit to engaging with our liberatory professional practice program in order to support antiracist structural change.

Thomandra Shavaun Sam, Ph.D.

What is your vision as SCP Vice-President for Professional Practice?
It is with great enthusiasm I ask you to consider me for the next Vice President of Professional Practice. I currently serve as Director of the Forensic Treatment Mall at Eastern Louisiana Mental Health System where I have created systems for an inpatient forensic hospital to increase the provision of psychological services (group therapy, individual therapy, outreach). My practice background includes having worked or trained at a variety of settings: college counseling centers, community mental health, domestic violence and homeless shelters, pastoral services center and a marriage and family therapy clinic.

Building on the impressive work of Dr. Ferdinand, I will strengthen the offering of high-quality, practice focused CE webinars beyond maintaining licensure. In the spirit of SCP, I want to ensure the webinars are engaging, informative and transforming practitioner skills set resulting in higher quality of care for our clients. Additionally, I want to review current SCP traditions and services with intentional focus on practice (i.e., current award descriptions are highly focused on research and publication) and to increase practitioner member engagement. I also want to review additional areas for recognition of practice to be woven into the fabric of our division. Lastly, I want to partner with the various SIGs and STGs to provide a liaison to a practice think tank that informs SCP on ideas related to supporting practitioners, aids in responding to global /national issues in mental health and provides practitioners ways to create sustainable and transformative practices.

How would you address this vision and support the division’s efforts to address anti-Black racism within our structures and practices? 

My vision for SCP practice and practitioners is to be reminded of the origins of our profession as a way to ground our work and understand our original values while also celebrating and embracing progress and inclusion of additional areas that our ancestral psychologists may not have envisioned. I want to increase active engagement in SCP for practitioners and create a symbiotic space for a variety of counseling psychologists who serve as educators, researchers, administrators and practitioners; creating a space where practice informs research, instruction and policy and vice versa keeps us all accountable to best serving clients and the greater public.

To address anti-Black racism within practice, it is critical that we are able to engage in self-inventory of our responses and wounds as supervisors, practitioners and people; challenging each other to own our gaps in knowledge and skills while also being brave to consider how we’ve engaged to grow systems that seek to uplift or negate people based on (perceived) race. Challenging policies and procedures at our workplaces or the provision of services that perpetuate such thought or actions that limits Black people requires vigilant attention and challenge; pushing the Division, APA and other similar organizations to identify anti-Black policies or practices that impede the advancement of BIPOC folx and result in a profession that reflects the ever-evolving population we serve which has outpaced psychology with regard to diverse membership; I want to uplift practitioners to answer this call in the Division, their clients and broader society.