In the 1980s, Jessica Henderson Daniel, PhD, was relatively early in her career, juggling motherhood and two academic positions. Volunteer work led her to meet a wealthy philanthropist, who subsequently asked her to join the board of the prestigious Boston Children’s Museum. While it was a new experience for Daniel, she accepted.
"I liked them, and they liked me," recalls Daniel, who provided input on child development and racial and ethnic diversity for a range of exhibitions. "It showed me that my knowledge and skills as a psychologist mattered in that context."
From that experience, her Citizen Psychologist idea was born. The initiative encourages psychologists to bring their knowledge of the field to improve people’s lives, whether through public service, volunteerism, board membership or other roles that are not directly associated with the psychologists’ day-to-day careers. The initiative also honors psychologists who embody the ideal of community service, and it sets out a competency- based curriculum for psychologists and psychology students at all career levels.
"I want this idea to come alive for people so they can say, ‘This is another form of psychology; this is another thing that psychologists can do,’" Daniel says.
So far this year, Daniel has recognized 30 Citizen Psychologists, thanks to a search headed by Kathleen S. Brown, PhD, Cynthia de las Fuentes, PhD, and Sharon Bowman, PhD.
The curriculum, meanwhile, is intended to give staying power to the Citizen Psychologist concept, says the initiative’s co-chair Ronald H. Rozensky, PhD, who oversaw its development along with APA Education Directorate Deputy Executive Director Cathi Grus, PhD, the directorate’s senior staff, and a working group of psychology educators with expertise in community-based learning.
The curriculum covers several cross-cutting topics—such as public communication skills, leadership skills and ethics—and spells out specific competencies in those domains for each level of psychology education. "It’s a way to build the Citizen Psychologist initiative into the future of the field," Rozensky explains.
The team plans other ways to ensure the Citizen Psychologist idea stays alive. In addition to disseminating the curriculum as widely as possible, Daniel and her team are encouraging APA divisions and state, provincial and territorial psychological associations to develop their own Citizen Psychologist awards, for example. "We want this to be contagious," she says.
Following are descriptions of the 30 Citizen Psychologist awardees to date.
Kira Banks, PhD
Promoting racial equality
Banks, an associate professor at St. Louis University, has been championing racial equity in St. Louis since starting her academic position there in 2012. Her many pro bono contributions include nurturing an anti-bias, anti-racist culture at a Montessori school that has become a national model. In addition, Banks facilitated counseling and civic dialogue following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown Jr., a young unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
Kim Baranowski, PhD
Aiding asylum seekers
Promoting the rights and psychological health of asylum seekers—many of them survivors of torture—is Baranowski’s ongoing mission. The New York–based practitioner provides asylum seekers with pro bono forensic evaluations that document the psychological correlates of persecution, training other clinicians in these methods and mentoring students to conduct research on how human rights violations affect refugee well-being. She also educates the public and clinical professionals on the needs and resilience of this vulnerable population.
Donell Barnett, PhD
Uplifting a community
Barnett received a Bronze Star for his service as a U.S. Army clinical psychologist in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since his return home, he has worked to transform his economically depressed adopted hometown of Langston, Oklahoma, into a vibrant community that links the area’s historically black university, Langston University, with the greater community. His method? Converting an abandoned, blighted building into a multiuse community center that trains university students as program managers, offers after-school activities like dance and martial arts, and provides a meeting and planning space for development initiatives.
Arline Bronzaft, PhD
Ending noise pollution
As an environmental psychologist, Bronzaft studied the effects of elevated train noise on children’s classroom learning in the 1970s, finding that train noise lowered reading scores among children in classrooms near the tracks. When she later persuaded city officials to put abatements in place, reading levels equalized between children in the previously noisy classrooms and those in quieter ones. Bronzaft went on to chair the Noise Committee of GrowNYC under five New York City mayors, and in 2007, she helped the city update its noise code to reduce decibel levels— a code that’s now a model for other cities.
Michael Campbell, PhD
Providing trauma education
As a faculty member at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, Campbell has provided pro bono clinical services throughout his practice career. From 1998 to 2004, he served on a critical- incident stress-management team, providing support to first responders and others following natural disasters, mass casualties and suicides. He has provided trauma education to Caribbean government, military and church organizations and served on a Caribbean HIV stigma and discrimination advisory group. In addition, Campbell is vice chair of the Caribbean Public Health Agency’s research ethics committee and a member of the Caribbean Network of Research Ethics Committees’ executive committee.
Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas, PhD
Supporting Dreamers
Chavez-Dueñas’s work on behalf of undocumented immigrant youth and DREAMers has had local and national effects. For the past decade, she’s led, mentored and supported various community-based groups of DREAMers in Chicago. This work contributed to the first national Coming Out of the Shadows rally in 2010, an event that now takes place annually across the country. In fact, members of the groups she has worked with are among those who spearheaded the U.S. immigration policy intended to keep DREAMers in the country legally, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Catherine Cook-Cottone, PhD
Making yoga accessible
Cook-Cottone is the founder and president of Yogis in Service, a nonprofit organization that offers free yoga and mindfulness classes to inner-city schools, hospitals, community centers and treatment centers in western New York. Cook-Cottone, a professor at the University at Buffalo, and her research team have also partnered with the Africa Yoga Project to develop and study a trauma-informed yoga curriculum in communities across Africa.
Carol Lynn Courtney, PhD, and Richard D. Olson, PhD
Building capacities
Spouses Courtney and Olson are Minnesota-based industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists who help organizations and individuals build their leadership skills, capacity and confidence, including in international venues. The couple also teams with Minnesota State University, Mankato, faculty to bring I/O graduate students on biannual service learning projects to help the students become global citizens, visiting countries as diverse as South Africa, Ecuador, Turkey, Belize and Ireland.
Sara Dolan, PhD
Responding to disasters
Dolan and her social worker colleague Jim Ellor created a psychological intervention team in McLennan County and Waco, Texas, through their local Medical Reserve Corps. They’ve helped residents of the area recover from a number of disasters and crises, including the 2013 explosion of a fertilizer plant that killed 15 people and destroyed 40 percent of the community’s homes. Dolan also provides psychological first aid training to professionals in the community and to undergraduate and graduate students at Baylor University, where she directs the clinical psychology program.
Debra Eisert, PhD (posthumous)
Advocating for child victims
Eisert had a distinguished career as a pediatric psychologist, retiring as full professor at the University of Oregon in 2016. But a large portion of her time was spent volunteering at Jasper Mountain, a nonprofit that promotes healing for traumatized children and their families. As a board member, secretary and president, she advocated widely for the organization and its mission, educating others on scientific approaches to treating child abuse. Eisert was also strongly involved in civic committees that focused on diversity and inclusion for people of color and those with disabilities.
Margaret (Bonny) Gardner, PhD
Promoting social justice
Gardner has been involved in pro bono activities in her home city of Austin, Texas, throughout her career. For seven years she co-chaired the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin’s public affairs forum, which features programs on health policy and social and economic justice issues that are aired on public-access television and radio. Gardner also served on a mayoral task force addressing needs in the city’s mental health system, on the executive committee of the Texas Suicide Prevention Coalition and on the steering committee of the Austin Gray Panthers, an affiliate of the national network that sponsors popular public programs and advocates at several levels of government.
Michele Gill, PhD
Starting a school
As an associate professor at the University of Central Florida (UCF), Gill wanted to apply her knowledge about educational psychology to improve schools. That dream came to fruition in 2010 when she founded the Galileo School for Gifted Learning, a free charter school in the high-poverty city of Sanford, Florida. Since its inception, Galileo has been one of the top-ranked schools in Seminole County and is designated as a UCF partnership school. The school also serves as a site for the university’s education interns and faculty guest lectures. In 2015, the school received the APA Board of Educational Affairs’ Golden Psi Award, which recognizes schools that apply evidence-based psychological practices to foster student academic engagement and development as well as students’ socialemotional skills.
Alan L. Goldberg, PsyD
Supporting young scientists
For 25 years, Goldberg has served as a volunteer judge for the nonprofit Southern Arizona Research, Science and Engineering Foundation (SARSEF), which runs the largest annual regional science fair in the country for students from kindergarten through high school. After six years serving on the SARSEF board, Goldberg remains a staunch advocate for behavioral sciences as a key component of science education, continuing to ensure that females and underserved children are well represented at the SARSEF fair.
Nicholas Grant, PhD
Fostering LGBTQ rights
Grant champions the rights and well-being of LGBTQ people through a range of volunteer activities. In 2017, he served as a subject matter expert on transgender military service issues for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), whom he served in 2016–17 as an APA William A. Bailey Health and Behavior Fellow. He’s also on the board of directors of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality and has volunteered with LGBTQ community centers in cities where he conducted his graduate and postdoctoral work, including San Francisco, New Orleans and San Diego.
Perry N. Halkitis, PhD
Enhancing LGBTQ health
Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is a fierce, longtime scholar, educator and advocate for the health and well-being of LGBTQ populations. His activities include collaborating with community agencies such as Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Harlem United and the African American Office of Gay Concerns to translate research on HIV, drug use and mental health into programming. He has also trained health-care practitioners on health disparities experienced by LGBTQ populations and partnered with governmental entities to translate this work into policy.
W. Rodney Hammond, PhD
Improving a community
Hammond is well known for his role as director of the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, from which he retired in 2011. Since then, he’s brought his psychological expertise to the boards of several national organizations, including Neighbor to Family, a multistate children’s foster care program that works to keep siblings together, and Prevent Child Abuse America. In 2014, he was elected to the city council of Berkeley Lake, Georgia, where he’s used his psychology skills to upgrade and stabilize the city’s resources by increasing the number of commercial properties, reducing property taxes, improving public safety and more.
Jeanne S. Hoffman, PhD
Sharing knowledge
Hoffman began her career by exploring the effects of prenatal exposure to a neurotoxic pesticide that had contaminated the entire milk supply of Oahu, Hawai’i—work that helped to quantify the health implications of this hidden threat. Her dedication to children’s issues continues in her current position as chief of the pediatric psychology clinic at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. Besides treating military children, Hoffman has volunteered in capacities that serve the wider armed forces community, including on a 2006 APA presidential task force on the effects of military deployment on youth and a 2013 U.S. Army surgeon general’s task force on brain health.
Christopher Liang, PhD
Promoting inclusion
Liang heads the Gender, Race, Inclusion, and Trauma Lab at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but his passion for enhancing the well-being of people of color extends beyond the university. He co-founded a grassroots, parent-driven group in the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, school system to address the needs of marginalized, low-income youth in this otherwise affluent community. His goal is to educate teachers, school administrators, board members and parents on the importance of inclusive policies and practices. Liang has also convened community members from multiple faiths to support Muslim citizens who face the threat of discrimination and violence.
Bruce S. Liese, PhD
Serving his community
Besides his distinguished career in academic medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center Professor Bruce S. Liese, PhD, has been strongly involved in his community of Lawrence, Kansas, in volunteer and elected capacities. His many roles include serving as president of the city council in Lecompton, Kansas, from 2005 to 2006; on a county commission that facilitated economic and environmental growth in the area; and as chair of a county planning commission, where he used his psychological skills "to help bring even the most contentious meeting to an amicable consensus," according to his nominator.
Lisa Merlo-Greene, PhD
Lending her expertise
Merlo-Greene, an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine, has been involved in a diverse range of pro bono activities in her community and beyond. These include consulting with a mayoral task force in Marion County, Florida, aimed at quelling the heroin and opioid drug epidemic and starting Be the Kind, an organization that spreads positive actions by serving refugees, homeless individuals, cancer patients and others in need. Merlo-Greene is also a founding board member of Drawn From Valor, a nonprofit charity that creates studio animations to educate and empower young people with medical or psychological conditions.
Arlene Noriega, PhD
Nurturing LGBTQ well-being
As a private practitioner, Noriega has volunteered her time supporting the LGBTQ community in Atlanta. She’s provided ethics workshops for staff and cultural competence training for providers as a board member at Positive Impact, a community-based clinic that provides mental health services to clients with HIV. She also serves on the board of the Health Initiative, a nonprofit that provides health care to marginalized members of the LGBTQ community. She’s coordinating that initiative’s social networking group, Fourth Tuesday, which aims to curb social isolation and depression among older lesbians in Atlanta and surrounding areas.
Michael J. Salamon, PhD
Addressing child abuse
Salamon, director of ADC Psychological Services in Hewlett, New York, works for social justice within the Jewish community. Salamon is best known for his national work on preventing and treating the sexual abuse of children in synagogues and yeshivas, educating communities on this topic and creating a model of procedures for responding to child abuse accusations within synagogues. For 20 years, he also served on a board dedicated to providing special education services to children attending yeshivas, and for 12 years, he chaired the board of education at the Hebrew Academy of Five Towns & Rockaway in Lawrence, New York.
Emily Selby-Nelson, PsyD
Advocating for rural clients
Selby-Nelson is passionate about addressing the health and mental health needs of rural Americans. The first full-time psychologist hired by Cabin Creek Health Systems, a federally qualified health center in West Virginia, she advocated for and now directs the expansion of integrated behavioral health services, resulting in full-time coverage across all rural health centers in her health-care system. In addition, Selby-Nelson and her team were widely honored for their tireless work to provide long-term relief and recovery services to West Virginians coping in the aftermath of the 2016 flood that devastated the small town of Clendenin.
Rachel Singer, PhD
Aiding refugees
An assistant professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology’s Washington, D.C., campus, Singer is a strong advocate for the mental health needs of immigrants in her city of Rockville, Maryland. Her accomplishments include creating a partnership with a local group to help destigmatize mental health care among African immigrants and helping sponsor a refugee family through her synagogue. Singer also was a force behind making Rockville a sanctuary city, and the city has now adopted a law that enhances the relationship between local police, refugees and immigrants.
Michael A. "Mick" Smyer, PhD
Saving the environment
After Hurricane Katrina hit his former hometown of New Orleans in 2005, Bucknell University geropsychologist Smyer wondered how to combine his interests in serving older adults and protecting the environment. His solution? Graying Green: Climate Action for an Aging World, an international project that uses workshops to empower older adults to take anti-climate-change action. He’s also on the board of the Eagles Mere Conservancy, a land-conservation organization in Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania.
Michael Sullivan, PhD
Delivering meals on wheels
When Sullivan retired from serving as the APA Practice Directorate’s assistant executive director for state advocacy in 2005, he wanted to volunteer in his city of Columbia, South Carolina. A former Peace Corps volunteer, he now delivers food to older adults and others with disabilities through Meals on Wheels, and he serves as a spokesperson for the program when funding is threatened. He has also exercised special-needs dogs at a local animal sanctuary and helped lead his church on social justice issues. His philosophy? "I’ve always liked Marian Wright Edelman’s observation, ‘Service is the rent we pay for living.’"
Rebecca Thomley, PsyD
Promoting volunteerism
Who says business and public service must be at odds? Not Thomley, chief executive officer at Orion Associates, a Minnesota-based management organization with 14 related profit and nonprofit companies. Herself a lifelong volunteer, Thomley has championed volunteerism among employees and in the community, both by making community service a requirement and by creating a nonprofit, Headwaters Relief Organization, to help in the wake of national and international disasters. Headwaters draws volunteers nationally and internationally to respond to disasters including tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and more.
David Van Nuys, PhD
Disseminating psychology
Van Nuys—the nation’s first psychologist podcaster—has been spreading the gospel of psychology for the past 13 years on his popular "Shrink Rap Radio" and "Wise Counsel" podcasts. Through more than 700 in-depth interviews with leaders in psychological science and practice, he’s reached listeners internationally with topics as diverse as neuroscience, psychoanalysis, attachment theory and behavioral economics. His podcasts are used by universities for course instruction and by the Zur Institute as the basis for some 100 online continuing-education units.
Lisa Willner, PhD
Championing public education
Willner, a Louisville, Kentucky, psychologist and executive director of the Kentucky Psycho-logical Association, has long volunteered to make high-quality public education available to all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, residence, learning style, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other social determinant. In 2014, she was elected to the Jefferson County, Kentucky, public school board and has served as its vice chair since 2016. There, she’s advocated for mental health issues, student rights and research-based approaches to improving student discipline.