Maria del Carmen Rodriguez, PhD, LPC, NCC

Candidate Statement:

I am a bilingual/bicultural counselor with more than 30 decades of professional experience.  I have spent more years living in the USA than in my homeland. Experiences that I had back in my homeland and challenges faced in the USA instilled in me pride in my Latino culture & heritage and a meaningful connection with disenfranchised and marginalized working class people, Black, brown and indigenous communities. I began by formal professional training in psychology.  Later, working as a graduate level counselor educator crystallized  my professional counselor identity. Counselors are formidable professionals in the key sectors they serve, creatively equipped to address the complex mental health challenges faced by our clients.  Counselors’ skills range from identifying  specific factors that lead to people’s mental health suffering, offering diverse body/mind/spirit skills for clients’ treatment/recovery. and commitment to  ethical integrity, respect for clients’ ethnic-cultural identities and a disposition to collaborate across disciplines. I envision my service as an ACA elected board member as a collaborator with  top ACA  leaders and its leaders at various levels of engagement in serving its 66,000+ members  This is a monumental  task considering ACA’s multi-faceted circumstances: representing such a diverse membership, doing its job with finite fiscal resources, honoring the voices and needs of the many specialties, regions,  cultures and ethnic identities that ACA encompasses, dealing with powerful technologies such as AI/chatbots and advancing its mission of quality advocacy with the persistent challenge that white Supremacy values and practices pose to the organization as a whole and to each one of us as leaders and members. The future for ACA may be defined by its internal & external challenges and opportunities.  I am confident that I will do my best to represent all ACA members and especially those living in marginalized and oppressive circumstances.  Thanks for your consideration.

Candidate Biography:

I am a bilingual/bicultural counselor with more than 30 decades of professional experience.  I retired from academia after teaching at a graduate counseling master program of a NJ public university.  In terms of leadership experience,  I served as the American Counseling Association’s North Atlantic region chair (2023-2024) and president of the NJ Counseling Association president (2021-2022).  During my year as branch president, I collaborated with 37 mental health organizations to improve the updates that LPC applicants receive from the NJ Professional Counseling licensing board.  Another highlight of my NJCA presidency was the successful  coordination of an online state conference with key counseling sectors represented (academia, research, public, private practice and diverse theoretical orientations) along with  new, seasoned professionals and graduate students from diverse ethnic/cultural communities and spiritual traditions.  Members and counselors from in-state and nearby states were in attendance. Participants shared that their professional skills were enhanced as well as their ability to serve diverse clients. I have studied the role of folk-healers in progressive mental health care and culturally inclusive counseling. My counseling centers on fostering critical consciousness allowing those I work with to creatively figure out how to best serve diverse clients and especially those in marginalized circumstances.  I have  presented my research in local, state, national and international counseling conferences. At the present time, I provide consultation to mental health agencies. I also serve pro-bono as a disaster response certified counselor for New Jersey.  I am a board member focusing on adult mental health services at Proceed community agency (Elizabeth, NJ) and the Kean Graduate Advisory Council.  I founded a scholarship to support Latino high school students with academic merit and financial need. My greatest hope is to directly empower counselors and indirectly impact clients to achieve their maximum human potential from a social justice perspective.