2025 Leadership Candidates 

I am incredibly excited by the possibility of serving as a SPA Representative-At-Large and am committed to fulfilling all the duties of this role. SPA is my favorite professional organization, and I would be truly honored to give back. Serving an organization so close to my heart and helping it continue to impact others, as it has me, would be incredibly rewarding. I believe many of my prior experiences have equipped me with the necessary knowledge to be successful. 

I am a Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University. I earned my doctorate in psychology from the George Washington University, did my internship training at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, and completed my postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. My clinical and research interests center on therapeutic interventions that support recovery for individuals living with serious mental illness. I ground my work in a psychodynamic perspective and have specialized training in comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis (CBTp). Additionally, I provide therapy and psychological assessments within the psychiatric inpatient treatment setting. I am broadly interested in increasing access to person-centered and recovery-oriented care. 

I have always had a passion for psychological assessment. Early in my career, I served as the Instructional Assistant for multiple assessment courses in my graduate program and selected psychological assessment as my doctoral degree concentration. My passion for assessment has not waned, and I currently work to embody the values of SPA. Before I joined Stanford, the Department of Psychiatry was minimally engaged in personality assessment. During my first year on faculty, I successfully advocated for the department to purchase and utilize multiple assessments. Additionally, I created new training opportunities for the PGSP-Stanford Consortium PsyD students to gain experience with psychological assessment. I co-teach the RPAS course in the PsyD program and supervises students doing psychological assessments on the Stanford Psychiatric Inpatient Units. Moreover, I work to portray the importance of psychological assessment to others and have increased the number of assessment referrals from interdisciplinary team members. 

I hope my passion for assessment can meaningfully contribute to SPA. I believe my greatest strength is building connections wherever I go and working to make all feel included. I have served on multiple committees that promote LGBTQIA+ inclusion and would be excited to continue this work in SPA. I am also passionate about teaching and mentorship and would be excited to further develop mentorship opportunities within SPA. Additional skills I would utilize to serve SPA include openness and integrity, strategic thinking, and thoughtful problem-solving. As a DBT clinician, I aim to make decisions from 'Wise Mind' and 'hold the dialectic" to remain thoughtful, balanced, and deliberate. I also seek to be a lifelong learner and am dedicated to keeping my assessment skills sharp and knowledge up to date. I am eager to use my skillset to serve an organization I care deeply about. Thank you for considering my candidacy! 

Questions from the SPAGS community:

What unique value do student members offer to the SPA community? 

Student members offer unique and invaluable contributions to the SPA community in several impactful ways, with three particularly notable aspects standing out to me.

First, students bring fresh perspectives and innovative ideas. As the upcoming generation of assessment psychologists, they are the future of our field. Their creativity and passion are invaluable assets for shaping and advancing the organization.

Second, the increasing diversity within graduate school cohorts offers the SPA community a chance to benefit from a broader range of experiences and viewpoints. Diverse student members provide essential insights that can enrich our understanding and drive forward the future of personality assessment.

Third, student members infuse the organization with vibrant energy and enthusiasm, invigorating discussions and activities with their dynamic presence. This liveliness helps to keep the SPA community engaged and forward-thinking.

As they are the future of our field, it is in the interest of SPA to invest deeply in supporting student members, and I would be very excited to support this effort. 

Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice are core tenets of SPA’s ethos. Please provide an example of how you incorporate these ideals into your work, in particular when thinking about advocating for students. 

Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice are integral to SPA’s core values, and I am committed to embodying these ideals, particularly in advocating for students.

As a queer individual, I am deeply aware of the importance of creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and supported. In my work, I actively promote Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice by working to ensure that all clients, colleagues, and students feel welcomed and respected within the field of personality assessment.

In my teaching and supervision roles, I prioritize Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice principles by fostering an environment where students can fully express their identities and perspectives. I encourage students to leverage their unique experiences to enrich their work and contribute to a more inclusive and equitable practice. By creating a supportive atmosphere that values diverse viewpoints, I encourage students to integrate their personal insights into their professional roles, ultimately enhancing the quality and depth of their contributions to the field.

On a more personal note, having been diagnosed with a learning disorder, I have a profound understanding of the challenges that can affect academic experiences. This insight drives me to adapt my teaching and supervision methods to accommodate diverse learning needs. I proactively seek to understand each student’s learning style and adjust my approach to support their strengths and address their needs. Whether it’s modifying class engagement strategies, tailoring assignments, or rethinking assessment tasks, I strive to ensure that every student receives the support necessary to thrive academically and professionally.

Identify three issues important to students studying psychology, and in particular the current members of SPAGS. Select one of these issues and elaborate on how SPA could improve in addressing it.

Three key issues for students studying psychology, particularly current members of SPAGS, include increasing diversity and inclusion, managing funding and financial strain, and navigating career opportunities.

Focusing specifically on career opportunities, SPA can implement several strategies to better support students. Many students experience uncertainty regarding their career paths, and SPA can play a crucial role in providing direction and clarity.

First, SPA could help demystify the process of submitting posters or presentations for the annual conference. For early-career students, this process can be daunting and stressful. By offering mentorship and resources to guide students through submission, SPA can increase participation and reduce the associated anxiety. This may encourage greater student participation at annual conferences, in turn increasing networking opportunities.

Second, SPA conferences could include specialized workshops and seminars dedicated to career planning. These sessions could address various psychology specializations, provide insights into the job market, and offer practical job search strategies. Such workshops would help students better understand their options and prepare for their future careers.

Third, SPA can enhance its mentorship programs connecting students with seasoned professionals who can provide personalized career guidance and insights. These connections can help students explore different career paths, understand industry expectations, and build valuable professional networks. To facilitate such connections, SPA could integrate specific networking events into its conferences. 

Finally, SPA could create a platform for students to connect with professionals and access opportunities for research and hands-on experiences throughout the year. This could help students gain practical skills and advance their knowledge in personality assessment.

By implementing these initiatives, SPA can significantly enhance its support for students' career development, helping them navigate their professional journeys with greater confidence and clarity.

The Society for Personality Assessment has been my professional home since I joined the Society more than 20 years ago. As a central and indispensable resource for the promotion of psychological assessment, it has been critical in my professional development. However, I am very aware that an organization such as SPA is only as strong as its membership and the collective effort of its leadership to set goals and operationalize strategies to meet those goals. My participation in the Society as a conference attendee and presenter has been consistent over the past two decades. However, my engagement has increased in recent years, as I have assisted as an ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Personality Assessment and have served as a conference proposal reviewer for the past two years. As an organization that I strongly value I would be honored to contribute to its ongoing success and broaden the impact that it can enact through the Representative-at-Large position. 

I am enthusiastic about the mission of SPA to advance evidence-based practice in assessment and share the value of social justice that it maintains. However, I am also eager to collaborate with the membership to identify goals that would allow us to increase our perceived relevance to the larger community of psychology. As the indispensable international resource for excellence in psychological assessment, increasing the accessibility of the collective expertise of the organization is not only important to the success of the Society, but also to ensure increased access to exceptional assessment services to all clients. I am highly collaborative and service oriented, and would support the President and Board with identified needs on an ongoing basis. My ability to provide leadership and make sufficient contributions to an organization outside of my university can be noted in my appointment as the Continuing Education Coordinator and my election as an Executive Committee member of the National Counsel for Schools and Programs in Professional Psychology. I would be excited to bring the skills learned through this committee work to the community I love at the Society for Personality Assessment.

Questions from the SPAGS community:

What unique value do student members offer to the SPA community?

I joined SPA as a graduate student and presented original research findings on many occasions at the annual convention. The opportunities to learn, network, and develop professional skills were pivotal in my development as a professional in the field of psychology. The collegial and open atmosphere provided for students supported my continued engagement and is a significant strength of the organization. Therefore, I view the community created through SPAGS as critical to the growth of the organization. Student leadership allows for greater articulation of student needs and ensure that the Society can provide an indispensable resource for students to prepare to serve the needs of a diverse client base as they transition into professionals in the field. 

Further, while communicating the conventions of assessment is an important function of the Society, too much of psychology is perpetuated by “tradition” rather than a sincere desire to innovate. Change very is often the product of reactivity rather than proactivity. The student perspective will be integral to the continued development of our field, particularly as technology allows for significant development within psychological assessment. The perspective of a diverse student membership will be critical to ensure the continued relevance of the Society over time and in a changing academic and societal landscape.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice are core tenets of SPA’s ethos. Please provide an example of how you incorporate these ideals into your work, in particular when thinking about advocating for students.

A diverse workforce is critical to all aspects of society and representation in academia is critical to the ongoing sustainment of our field. Diverse representation is needed not only to ensure a growing workforce to meet current need for services, but to ensure all seeking care can obtain culturally sensitive care. Therefore, it is critical not only that we increase representation of students with diverse identities in graduate training, but, that we can ensure environments in higher education that are just and welcoming. As an educator and the Director of Clinical Training for my graduate program, I have been focused on attending to the diverse needs of students, particularly those with target statuses that have negatively impacted their ability to succeed. My open-door policy allows students an opportunity to address concerns regarding systemic challenges to success in their graduate training. Some specific concerns that have been identified that we are currently developing policy which is increasingly supportive of our students include the areas of accessibility and parental leave. 

As social justice is not a problem unique to my program, I recently engaged in a data collection effort to obtain perspectives of students in graduate training in psychology across the United States. An initial examination of data has been very helpful to me, in identifying areas that present as barriers to the success of students. This has allowed me to increase dialogue with the students in my program, and work towards solutions. We are currently analyzing the data so that results can be widely disseminated and administration in graduate programs can be better informed regarding the challenges that students are facing, and in particular the unique difficulties that students that have target statuses face. Such knowledge will be critical to improving social justice within our training systems.

Identify three issues important to students studying psychology, and in particular the current members of SPAGS. Select one of these issues and elaborate on how SPA could improve in addressing it.

Although hesitant to identify the issues of greatest concerns to students of psychology (as I am not currently a student and would prefer to collaborate with students who can directly identify their priorities) my research and experience working with students would indicate that concerns around Social Justice, Internship Match, and Student-debt are often identified as issues for which solutions are sought. Given that social justice is a fundamental value for SPA, and SPAGS has established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, I recognize the unique importance for the Society to continue its efforts to engage in this area, and specifically assess and address the concerns of SPAGS membership. 

I recognize the impact that inequity can have on a student’s ability to be successful within academics and clinical work as well as inequities have historically been perpetuated in the area of psychological assessment.  Outreach to students, to include diversity scholarships, is an important way to encourage community for a diverse student membership. Additionally, programming focused on issues of social justice should be central. Students are instructed to engage in diversity sensitive assessment, however, the process for doing so is not well articulated in the literature to date. Historically the field of psychology, and specifically test development, has been biased due to a lack of diverse cultural viewpoints and a homogeneous authorship pool. Similarly, justice has not been found for many target groups that should have equal benefit of assessment (educational assessments, forensic assessment). Therefore, it is important that SPA is a leader in developing, supporting, and disseminating empirically based practices that support culturally sensitive practice. Dr. Williams’ Featured Lecture at the 2024 Convention (Bridging the GAP) is an example of the type of programming that SPA can create to ensure an ongoing social justice focus.

A. Jordan Wright, PhD, ABAP, ABPP

Clinical Associate Professor

Director, Combined Clinical/Counseling Psychology PhD Program

Founding Director, NYU Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing

New York University

Thank you so much for your consideration to join the Board of SPA in order to advocate for stronger, more just assessment practice in the field. I am a Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the combined Clinical/Counseling Psychology PhD program in the Department of Applied Psychology at NYU. I received my PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University, as well as a Master’s in Psychology in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. I am a diplomate of the American Board of Assessment Psychology (ABAP) and the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), and the American Academy for Assessment Psychology (AAAP). I currently serve as an ex officio member of the SPA Board as a strategic liaison between SPA and the American Psychological Association, where I am currently the President Elect of the Society of Clinical Psychology.

My scholarship centers on three main areas— psychological assessment, social justice/LGBTQIA+ issues in psychology, and education and training in psychology—as well as the overlap between these areas. I have authored multiple widely-used books on psychological assessment, including Conducting Psychological Assessment: A Guide for Practitioners(2nd ed.; Wiley, 2020); Essentials of Psychological Tele-Assessment (with Susie Raiford; Wiley, 2021); Essentials of Psychological Assessment Supervision (Wiley, 2019); and, with Gary Groth-Marnat, the sixth edition of the Handbook of Psychological Assessment (Wiley, 2016), the most widely used text in graduate training on assessment. My latest book, Essentials of Culture in Psychological Assessment, will be out later this year. And I am currently working on the revision of the Handbook of Psychological Assessment.

This year, I have been awarded the Distinguished Contribution to Assessment Psychology Award by the APA Society of Clinical Psychology (2024) and the Jean Spruill Achievement Award by the Association of Psychology Training Clinics (2024). Recently, I led a team in authoring a paper on Evidence-Based Clinical Psychological Assessment (EBCPA) in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, and I have an article in press currently on improving psychological assessment practice broadly using queer theory principles (I gave a webinar on the same topic for APA in September). 

I am extremely passionate about training the next generation of psychologists (and in particular psychological assessment professionals), having chaired APA’s Board of Educational Affairs, led a task force and first authored APA’s Guidelines for Education and Training in Psychological Assessment in Health Service Psychology, and widely offering to guest lecture for colleagues’ classes. With a colleague, I developed the Wright-Constantine Structured Cultural Interview (WCSCI), a freely available instrument to assess the cultural values and lived experiences of clients in order to better contextualize and interpret standardized test findings. It is attention to culture and context (structural competency in assessment) that drives a great deal of my scholarly work (including an article in the Journal of Personality Assessmenton Deliberate Context-Driven Conceptualization in Psychological Assessment) and training.

Questions from the SPAGS community:

What unique value do student members offer to the SPA community?

Working with SPAGS members throughout my years at SPA has been one of the greatest highlights of my participation in the organization. Because of my passions for training/mentoring and for social justice and structural competency in the assessment process, students at SPA are often the easiest and most comfortable interactions. Our particular SPA students are acutely aware and mindful of the power and privilege that is inherent in the assessment process/relationship, in a way that many in my generation certainly weren’t taught (and many don’t consider deliberately enough). Ensuring the ongoing viability—but also excellence—of the future of our field is squarely situated on training and mentoring students to do great assessment work. I convened a task force several years ago through the American Psychological Association’s Board of Educational Affairs to redesign doctoral-level competencies expected of students by the time they graduate from their programs. After years of working with this task force (which included students and professionals from different health service psychology disciplines, practice settings, and career stages), we are finalizing the model and publishing it very soon. This national work is crucial to ensuring that students get the education and training they need to be successful as future licensed psychologists.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice are core tenets of SPA’s ethos. Please provide an example of how you incorporate these ideals into your work, in particular when thinking about advocating for students.

I endeavor to incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and social justice into my work in many different ways. As Director of the Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing, NYU’s community mental health training clinic, I was tasked to design the program however I saw fit, and we now deliver services (both therapy and assessment) at extremely low cost (and some pro bono) to New Yorkers who cannot otherwise afford such care. On the training side of the clinic, I teach and supervise graduate students in neuroaffirming, social justice-oriented, and trauma informed psychological assessment practice, much like I write about (e.g., the Essentials of Culture in Psychological Assessment). A recent passion project of mine has been thinking through how to incorporate queer theory (its values, assertions, and techniques) into the psychological assessment process in order to better honor natural variations in human diversity (including identity and personality), rather than pathologizing difference. Ultimately, as a professor, EDI and social justice values must permeate throughout the work I do with my students (both at NYU and beyond).

Identify three issues important to students studying psychology, and in particular the current members of SPAGS. Select one of these issues and elaborate on how SPA could improve in addressing it.

Here are three major issues facing psychology students that I think need addressing. First, there is ever rising cost to higher education, and too many students are going into significant debt to pursue graduate degrees. Second, there is a growing divide and mismatch between the critical consciousness of graduate students (which tends to be quite high and sophisticated) and that of faculty (which tends to be lower), and so training in psychological assessment (as well as all other areas of psychology) is not as culturally-responsive as it needs to be to meet the broader needs of society. Finally, there is a quality gap in many training programs—some programs teach extremely sophisticated assessment curricula, whereas others meet APA’s accreditation requirements with the bare minimum (often teaching very few tests and nothing about how to integrate data, reconcile data discrepancies, or conceptualize cases). Internships (in the literature and in real life) often complain of subpar assessment training of their interns, and we see problematic assessment practices and reports in the real world all the time. 

While I think SPA could be making concrete efforts toward all three of these issues, I will focus on the last one. SPA can work toward developing model curricula in psychological testing and assessment (that emphasizes the process of assessment above the individual tests and measures). Additionally, it can develop resources for instructors to use in order to implement better curricula, such as standalone videos on different topics, training exercises and experiential learning materials, standardized cases for practice, and similar teaching tools. Ultimately, SPA can set a standard for what assessment education and training should look like in APA-approved programs, as well as upskilling and up-resourcing faculty to be able to implement the higher standard.

I am excited to be considered as a Representative-at-Large on SPA’s Board of Directors. SPA has been my intellectual home since I was a grad student in clinical psychology at Michigan State University. Since then, I completed my clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the San Francisco VAHCS and held faculty positions at Marian University and Palo Alto University, at the latter of which I am currently an associate professor. My research and clinical interests are at the intersection of personality and trauma, with an overarching goal of finding ways to use multimethod personality assessment as a therapeutic intervention for trauma survivors. 

I am running for a second term as Representative-at-Large because I think I have something to contribute to help make SPA a more engaged and inclusive organization, which I see as being possible in several ways. First, I think SPA can have a broader reach into different groups of people in terms of demographics (e.g., race, sexual and gender identity, geography) and profession (e.g., researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and others, both within and outside of psychology/counseling), both of which will enlarge the Society and enrich its membership. Second, I would like to contribute to ongoing efforts to make SPA more organizationally modern and nimble, developing structural capacities similar to those in other scientific/scholarly organizations. I have some experience with this issues having been involved for some time in the operations of SPA. For example, in my capacity as a current Representative-at-Large, I chair the Student Matters Committee and am also a member of the Finance and Program Committees. I also previously served on the Leadership Development Committee, and am a longtime member of the JPA editorial board (and will be guest-editing a special issue of the Journal in the coming year). In addition to these roles in SPA, I have also held leadership/volunteer positions in other scientific societies, including International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and Division 39 of the American Psychological Association.

Questions from the SPAGS community:

What unique value do student members offer to the SPA community?

Students are the future of SPA. This is not only true from a membership perspective (i.e., today’s student members will be tomorrow’s full members and leaders), but also in terms of ideas. Regarding the latter, students bring in new ideas and methodologies that will challenge and extend those of the previous generation (who did the same for the generation before them), thereby continuing to rejuvenate the practice of personality assessment.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice are core tenets of SPA’s ethos. Please provide an example of how you incorporate these ideals into your work, in particular when thinking about advocating for students.

I have done some empirical work in areas relevant to DISJ (e.g., in construct validity of ethnocultural empathy, structural invariance of personality measures across demographic groups). However, more meaningful (to me, at least) are ongoing efforts to use my position and privilege to recruit and elevate students from diverse backgrounds as researchers and future leaders of SPA. I do this whenever possible, passing on opportunities to publish, edit, and take leadership roles to students who would not know about or otherwise be able to take advantage of these opportunities. You will not see my name attached to these efforts – and that’s the point. My role in these efforts should be invisible, minimizing me and highlighting those who might otherwise be overlooked. 

Identify three issues important to students studying psychology, and in particular the current members of SPAGS. Select one of these issues and elaborate on how SPA could improve in addressing it.

Three issues important to students studying psychology / current members of SPAGS include diversity/social justice, interacting with artificial intelligence, and open science. 

Of these three issues, I have probably thought the most about the first. Namely, in my teaching about personality, personality pathology, and personality assessment, I continue to notice a gap in the literature on theoretical perspectives emphasizing culture (e.g., ethnic, racial, sexual) as an aspect of personality. By this, I do not mean observations that culture is important or that there are cultural differences, but rather explanatory theories that generate hypotheses that will drive future personality research that is more deeply culturally informed. The researchers who are students now have the best preparation to take this on. One way in which SPA will address this in the future will be through an upcoming special issue of JPA focused on diversity, social justice, and related issues (guest-edited by Dr. Ksera Dyette).