lead through

insight

Ethics in the Age of Looking Away 

Hector Adames, PhD

Professor and Program Chair, Department of Counseling Psychology, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology 

Nayeli Chavez, PhD 

Professor, Department of Counseling Psychology, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology 

Human rights are under threat within the United States and across the globe. Yet the structures that sustain these violations often go underexamined, particularly in today's social and political environment. As psychologists, our ethical values call on us not to be bystanders. In this keynote, Drs. Hector Adames and Nayeli Chavez make the case for active, daily recommitment to human rights as the foundation of ethical psychological practice.

The Ethics of Multicultural Therapy

Melba Vasquez, PhD

Psychologist/Executive Director, Vasquez Associates Mental Health Services

Multicultural therapy is vitally important in the development and provision of effective, ethical practice. Fundamental knowledge and skills are required for efficacious practice, and key elements of this theory must be integrated with other theories to increase work effectively with with multicultural populations. In this keynote, Dr. Melba Vasquez explores how a commitment to multicultural therapy is inextricably interwoven with an ethical commitment to social justice.

The Transformative Power of Intersectionality: Why the U.S. Needs More Critical Psychology NOW! 

Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA 

Founder and CEO, Intersectionality Training Institute®, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, George Washington University

Critical psychology — which examines power, social inequity, and justice — has flourished internationally, but most U.S. psychology students graduate with little or no exposure to critical frameworks like intersectionality. In this keynote, Dr. Lisa Bowleg explores what U.S. mainstream psychology misses when it ignores critical frameworks such as intersectionality, describe the transformative power of intersectionality for the discipline, and spotlight what’s at stake if U.S. mainstream psychology fails to get more critical.

Backtalking to Reclaim Intersectionality in Theory and Practice 

Kimberlé Crenshaw, JD 

Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Columbia Law School 

In this keynote address, pioneering legal scholar and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw invites psychology to embrace the radical tradition of "backtalking." In her recent memoir, Backtalker, Crenshaw explores how the instinctive act of speaking truth to power—of questioning what society accepts as "neutral" or "fair"—is essential for practitioners today. 

Keeping Humans Safe in the AI Era: Why Psychological Science Belongs at the Center of Model Evaluation

Alison Cerezo, PhD 

Chief Science Officer, mpathic

As LLM-powered products move into mental health, youth support, healthcare, education, and other high-stakes domains, traditional AI evaluation methods are no longer sufficient. These systems do more than generate correct or incorrect answers, they shape human experiences, respond to distress, influence decisions, and interact with people in moments of vulnerability. In this keynote, Dr. Alison Cerezo explores how psychologists can shape safer AI systems and why their expertise is essential for keeping humans safe in the AI era. 

The Largest Behavioral Experiment in Human History 

Kieran Snyder, PhD 

VP of Product and GTM, AI, Microsoft 

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For decades, psychologists have relied on surveys, interviews, and laboratory studies to understand how people think and solve problems. Today, billions of people voluntarily externalize their thinking to AI systems, creating an unprecedented new source of behavioral data.  In this keynote, Kieran Snyder explores what human-AI interaction reveals about cognition, expertise, and work.