I serve as associate professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. At Boston Children's Hospital, I direct psychology training in the department of psychiatry and serve as associate director of the LEAH (Leadership Education in Adolescent Health) training program in the Division of Adolescent Medicine.
I feel honored to have earned fellow status in six APA divisions and to have become the first African-American elected to an at-large seat on the APA Board of Directors. I served as president of the Society for the Psychology of Women (Div. 35) and as a member of the Committee for the Advancement of Professional Practice (the Practice Directorate management committee), the Council of Representatives (chairing the Women's Caucus, the Public Interest Caucus, and the Education and Training Caucus), the Ethics Code Task Force and the APA Finance Committee. In addition, I served as the senior member of the Early Career Psychologist Task Force and chaired the APA Presidential Centering on Mentoring Task Force.
For many years, I have had a deep concern about the small number of research psychologists who are people of color. I envisioned a mentoring program for women of color and in 1999 procured grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Kellogg Foundation and Harvard Medical School for the Next Generation Program, an ethnically based mentoring program for early career women of color committed to careers in research on adolescents. Three of the participants have since received K awards for career development from NIH, one obtained a highly competitive R01 award, three have advanced to associate professor status, one is a full professor and two hold positions at major policy research institutions (the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
I take pride in helping to found the APA Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology. In 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015, I served as a faculty member for the Diversity Leadership Development Workshop, an initiative of Div. 31 (State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Association Affairs).
My career has focused primarily on instruction, training and mentoring. My contributions as a mentor earned recognition from Harvard Medical School in 1998 when I received the prestigious A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award — the first woman, the first person of color and the first psychologist to earn the honor. I have received mentoring awards from the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (1999); Div. 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race) in both 2003 and 2014; and Div. 35 (Society for the Psychology of Women) in 2006. Beginning in 2007, the latter award was re-named the Strickland-Daniel Mentoring Award. I also received the 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the 2002 APA award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology; and the 2008 APA Committee on Women in Psychology Distinguished Leader for Women in Psychology Award. I am a 2011 recipient of the Elizabeth Hurlock Trust Award, which honors inspirational professors.
Daniel's candidate statement
Psychology has extraordinary potential to effect positive change every day and in every way across the world. I want to help move the discipline from potential influence to powerful influence. The presence of some 50-plus APA divisions lends credence to the range of psychological knowledge that can evolve from science into policy and practice. We have all the critical elements — cognition, affect and behavior. If members of our discipline think and believe that they can have an influence, they will invest in this mindset and subsequently become more energetic and effective contributors to society.
I want to focus on leadership and collaboration as citizen psychologists within our discipline and across our local, state and national networks. Through leadership and collaborations, we can make our power for positive change more apparent in the public's mind. We need to move beyond a narrow professional focus to engage other disciplines and interest groups.
The first order of business involves identifying psychologists willing to invest in leadership and collaborations to establish the power and importance of our discipline.
Second, we need to actively recruit and sustain through mentoring a pipeline of psychology graduate students and early career psychologists to learn how to take psychology into a range of settings.
The discipline of psychology should have a presence in the room, at the table and often at the head of the table in formulating policy decisions. We cannot simply leave our ideas on the table; we must remain in the room in order to reinforce the knowledge and application of psychological findings and practices. The more people hear, the more they will see the need for the inclusion of psychologists.
I have the plan, the passion and the persistence to make this a reality. Please join with me.