By A. Jordan Wright, PhD, ABAP, ABPP

I want to start by wishing everyone in the Society of Clinical Psychology (SCP) the happiest of new years and a hope that you had at least some restorative time over any break you may have gotten over the holidays. It is my distinct privilege to begin my term as President of SCP, and I hope to collaborate with many of you over this year to do some good work.

About Me

For those who don’t know me, let me take a moment to tell you a bit about myself. I am a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University (NYU), where I also serve as Director of the PhD program in combined Clinical/Counseling Psychology, as well as Director of the training clinic, the Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing. Prior to my work at NYU, I served on faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University (where I earned my MA in Psychology in Education and my PhD in Clinical Psychology) and as the statewide department chair of Psychology at Empire State University, SUNY. I have worked in hospital settings, community mental health clinics, foster care, and not-for-profit organizations, as well as having my own private practice and currently serving as Chief Clinical Officer at Parallel Learning, a healthtech/edtech startup.

Beyond these roles, my passions have centered on a few primary areas within clinical psychology: social justice, psychological testing and assessment, and, above all else, training the next generation of psychologists to rise to the needs of greater society. I have authored multiple books on psychological assessment (including the Handbook of Psychological Assessment and, most recently, Essentials of Culture in Psychological Assessment) and served as President of SCP’s Assessment Section (Section IX). Additionally, I have served on and chaired APA’s Continuing Education Committee, led a task force to define education and training guidelines for psychological assessment, and served on a task force to redesign doctoral level competencies in health service psychology. Many of my most recent collaborations have been authoring articles related to better training the next generation of psychologists, from evidence-based clinical psychological assessment (EBCPA) to liberation models for redesigning curriculum.

My 2024 at SCP

I have been privileged to serve as the President Elect of SCP for this past year, and I am extremely grateful to the executive board, and especially Dr. Donna LaPaglia, who has served as SCP’s President this past year with grace and dignity. Under her and others’ leadership, I have seen SCP flourish. Two initiatives in particular stand out as having shaped my view of what SCP truly can be and do.

First, in February 2024, we had our inaugural, biannual SCP Conference in Atlanta. The conference was invigorating and hopeful about the future of clinical psychology. I got to sit on a panel on mentorship as well as present about models of integrating clients’ culture and context with psychological science to improve our skills in case formulation, in addition to learning about and engaging with cutting-edge scholarship related to our field. More than anything, I cherished the opportunity to interact with colleagues from all different stages of their careers, witnessing firsthand how engagement between all these brilliant professionals is setting up the future of clinical psychology to thrive.

Second, this year also saw the launch of a new SCP initiative, the LEAD (Leadership Education Advancement & Development) Program, a program aimed at cultivating the next generation of leaders in clinical psychology. Through structured didactics and personalized mentoring, early career professionals have been introduced to the many opportunities for leadership within SCP, as well as upskilling themselves to capitalize on their strengths, training, and positions to deepen their leadership skills. I have been fortunate enough to serve as one of these mentors, and the experience has been both rewarding and renewing for me.

A Look Forward

My goals this year are to push forward initiatives aimed at strengthening the field of clinical psychology and, in particular, preparing the next generation of clinical psychologists to do the best work possible to contribute to society. I have a few initiatives already in the works and hope that many of you will join me in them, as learners, collaborators, teachers, and contributors. Here a few:

1. SCP is collaborating with Divisions 16 (School Psychology) and 17 (Counseling Psychology) on a webinar series looking at critical psychology models. For too long, psychology (and clinical psychology specifically) has been over-reliant on scholarship by dominant, privileged groups
(e.g., cisgender, heterosexual, abled, White men) using dominant, privileged models (e.g., positivist, quantitative models). Excellent scholarship by underrepresented groups and using underrepresented methodologies exists and can strengthen the work we do,
but we need to learn how to acknowledge, honor, and integrate this work into the models we are more comfortable with. This series is meant to help us do just that.

2. SCP is collaborating with the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA) on a webinar series on understanding
and integrating culture in psychological assessment. The series will focus on both how culture and systems of oppression/privilege should be considered within the content of psychological assessments, as well as how these factors can affect the process of psychological testing and assessment in ways that can alter, enhance, or obscure the data that emerge from them.

3. Planning for the 2025 APA Convention and the February 2026 SCP Conference is underway with the same general aims and goals, to improve the work we do in clinical psychology and prepare the next generation of clinical psychologists to rise to meet society’s future needs. I am especially working to champion broadening and deepening
our understanding of what good psychological science is, as well as engagement in discussion about what (if any) shifts in training would improve clinical psychology excellence. As with every other initiative, I hope that many of our SCP scholars and professionals will join me in these ongoing discussions!

And Finally…

I’d like to end on a note of gratitude for all the wonderful colleagues I have been lucky enough to be able to collaborate with through SCP. In addition to many of the initiatives described above, these collaborations have resulted in important scholarly work meant to push our field forward in positive directions, and for that I am extremely grateful. If my experience has taught me anything, it’s that stepping up and volunteering to contribute and collaborate can have profoundly positive effects, both personally and professionally. To that end, I want to explicitly invite all of our SCP members to join us in one or more of the many ways you can get involved. There are many sections, committees, initiatives, and projects going on at any moment with SCP’s vibrant community. If you are interested in leadership or contributing in any way to clinical psychology’s future, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Very much looking forward to a productive year at SCP!