Eleanor Gil-Kashiwabara, PsyD, for her long history of working with marginalized communities impacted by poverty. She has used a culturally informed model of community based participatory research for translating science into practice to empower and benefit communities, especially Latinx and Native American communities in the Pacific Northwest.
Gil-Kashiwabara has actively worked in the Oregon Psychological Association as well as APA. In 2007, she founded the Diversity Committee in OPA where she served in a leadership role for many years. She worked with the OPA Board of Directors to ensure the chair of the Diversity Committee is a voting member of the board. Indeed, the OPA Diversity Committee is so well respected that many other diversity committees across the country look to it as an example of how to establish and run an effective diversity committee in their states. Gil-Kashiwabara was later voted to serve as the first Latina president of OPA.
Gil-Kashiwabara has served in several roles within APA including the federal advocacy coordinator for Oregon and the chair of the Committee of State Leaders, and was recently elected to serve on the APA Council of Representatives for Oregon. She also served as the diversity delegate from Oregon for several years and completed the Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology.
Gil-Kashiwabara has published and presented extensively on a variety of diversity-related topics, including culturally appropriate children’s mental health services, health disparities issues faced by Latina/o and American Indian/Alaskan Natives, social determinants of health, psychological assessment with Spanish-speaking pediatric populations, leadership development and mentoring for women of color, and disability issues. She has also written a book for parents and tweens about navigating the middle school years. She is embarking on an acting career where she has acted in plays that bring to life the struggles facing marginalized individuals.
For her impressive career advocating for diversity and inclusion, and for being a well-respected colleague and trusted mentor, I award this presidential citation to Eleanor Gil-Kashiwabara, PsyD.