APA's Council of Representatives has elected Lisa R. Grossman, JD, PhD, and Douglas C. Haldeman, PhD, as members-at-large of the Board of Directors. They will serve from January 2006 until December 2008.

APA's Board of Directors serves as the executive committee of the Council of Representatives and includes 11 voting members and two nonvoting members.

The Board of Directors supervises the work of APA's CEO and exercises general supervision over association affairs. Between the annual meetings of the Council of Representatives, the board can act on association affairs in accordance with its bylaws and council policies. The board convenes six times a year. Meet the two newest members.

Lisa R. Grossman

Grossman, a Chicago-based practitioner who holds a PhD and JD from Northwestern University, specializes in individual psychotherapy, forensic evaluations and psychological assessment.

Her past governance experience includes posts as president of the Illinois Psychological Association, past chair of APA's Board of Professional Psychology, past chair of APA's Committee on Professional Practice and Standards, and member of the APA State Leadership Conference Organizing Committee. She also is currently president of APA's Div. 31 (State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Association Affairs) and is a member of APA's Policy and Planning Board. She has served as the Illinois representative to APA's Council of Representatives for the past six years.

Grossman says this extensive governance experience has helped her grasp the range of issues facing psychology education, science, public interest and practice.

"I especially want to use my experience to represent state, provincial and territorial association issues, as well as practice, women's and diversity/multiculturalism issues, but I'm committed to advocacy for all areas of APA," she says.

While she's still working up her board agenda, major priorities for Grossman include:

• Increasing APA membership.

• Making APA relevant to all constituent groups.

• Bolstering APA's international presence through, for example, closer ties with other international groups.

• Fostering new career paths for psychologists and improving mobility for practicing psychologists.

Grossman also plans to draw on her law degree to help address legal and regulatory issues affecting licensing, institutional review boards and other such areas.

Douglas C. Haldeman

Haldeman, a Seattle-based counseling psychologist in private practice, is also a clinical instructor at the University of Washington and president of the Association of Practicing Psychologists. He represents APA's Div. 44 (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues) on APA's council and also serves on APA President Ronald F. Levant's Task Forces on Enhancing Diversity and Development of Incentives to Increase Ethnic-Minority Representation on Council. He has served numerous other APA groups, including as a Div. 44 representative to a joint task force with Div. 19 (Society for Military Psychology) addressing sexual orientation and military service.

Haldeman seeks particularly to build bridges between psychology and disparate groups outside the profession, but also between groups within it--such as science and practice--"so that our voice as a profession can be as strong as it can be," he says.

"I've learned from my experience as a gay psychologist working with military psychologists that people who seem to be coming from very different places can sit down and work together," says Haldeman. "If we could do that, so can anyone." Like Grossman, Haldeman is still crafting his board agenda, but he says that, generally, he'll back fiscal health for APA and support for early-career psychologists and minority interests.

"I have a tremendous investment in continuing to promote diversity in all its forms at APA," says Haldeman. "I think it's the right thing to do for psychology but also to meet the needs of a multicultural society."

In bringing multiculturalism to the fore, Haldeman will tap his personal experience coming out and navigating professional psychology as a gay man.

"Having come out of social trauma, I am able to put myself in the experience of others who've been marginalized, and these are people for whom psychology has a lot to offer."