As a young girl, sitting at my grandmother’s feet, I heard about the friendly, though slithery snakes and the raucous pigs, the welcoming neighing of the horses, and the cool summer nights that she spent in the barn, sleeping in the hay with the animals.  There were also the emergency visits to the doctor, miles away, by horse and carriage, and the frightening shouts of the men on horseback, coming ever closer, threatening to burn the farms that provided a sharecropper’s home and work for my grandmother’s family and other Jewish families, fortunate to have felt a stability in the Ukraine in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  

Soon enough, my great-grandfather, in 1909, left his home and his family in Russia, to build a new life for them in America.  On November 11, 1911, my grandmother, who was then just 13 years old, arrived at Ellis Island, with her mother and 3 younger siblings, homesick for her rural life in the Ukraine, and anxious, but hopeful about the architecture of her future life, as the family would soon reunite on the Lower East Side of New York City.

From my grandmother and my grandfather, my mother and my father, and my large, extended family, I learned about the Jewish ideals of a loving commitment to family and to social justice in our larger society.  

Rabbi Hillel’s maxim:  If you are not for yourself, who are you?  If you are for yourself, only, what are you?  If not now, when? was the foundation of who we were as Jews in 20^th century America.

After hearing about my uncle’s work as a clinical psychologist, I determined, at the age of 5, that I would become a clinical psychologist.  As a college student at Princeton University, having become increasingly aware of the power of the courts and legislation in shaping human behavior, I aspired to combine a study of the law with my beloved science of psychology.

In the first women’s class of 1973, at Princeton, we demonstrated the importance of the social activist’s voice.  As the first woman to be president of a residential college, advocating for student rights and the larger community’s use of our abundant campus resources, and as a summer intern for Congresswoman Bella Abzug, I was part of the women’s movement and student movement that demanded social justice for all who are marginalized and/or who are targets of hatred and violence.

In 1977, I created the Victim-Witness Assistance Unit, State Attorney’s Office, in Tallahassee, Florida, to assist violent crime victims and witnesses, in the Criminal Justice System. In 1978, I co-founded and became the first Board President, Refuge House, a shelter for women and children, victimized by domestic violence. Today, both the Victim-Witness Assistance Unit and Refuge House have significantly expanded their reach, to serve, annually, scores of thousands of women, children and men who have been victimized by violent crimes.  

Throughout my career as clinical psychologist in Chicago and nationally respected forensic psychologist, I have worked with domestic physical violence/sexual violence survivors and was faculty lecturer, for many years, at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology; and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, teaching the courtroom role of the forensic psychologist, especially pertaining to sexually violent crimes against women and children.

In the early 2000’s, I became a national movement leader for prescriptive authority, after having been elected president of Division 55 in 2004.  I was then President of the Illinois Psychological Association in the 2010’s and have led the successful legislative movement for Illinois psychologists’ prescriptive authority ever since.   The Prescriptive Authority Movement’s mission is to provide care for our communities’ most vulnerable and underserved, from a cadre of licensed prescribing psychologists, representative of BIPOC, AAPI, LGBT, and disabled communities.  My goal is to have more than 1,500 licensed prescribing psychologists in Illinois by 2041, thereby increasing access to the highest quality mental health care in Illinois by 100%.  I am writing a book, to be published by APA Press, entitled:  The Revolution in Healthcare:  How Prescribing Psychologists are Changing the Landscape of Mental Health Care in the United States.

Psychologists, because of our extraordinary education, training, and experience, have an impact, every day, on the lives of those who are suffering in our local, national, and international communities.  I wholeheartedly support the critical work done by clinical, applied, academic psychologists and I passionately believe in protecting clinical practice while seeking to expand practice to include: prescriptive authority; integrated behavioral health in primary care and in a variety of healthcare and medical settings; telehealth durability; community mental health; population health; and a plethora of collaborative, working relationships among research scientists and scientist practitioners, working on ways to achieve health equity.  

As your President, I will walk courageously, with you, into our future.  I will listen to you with respect and compassion and govern boldly. My outreach to all of our many communities will be collaborative, intersectional, with an emphasis on scientific evidence, bridge-building, equity, diversity, inclusion, gender and sexual diversity, and working to unravel and solve our world’s toughest challenges.

I said of my father, at his memorial service: “This little boy who became the man with the twinkle in his eye, had quiet dignity and wisdom; the respect of all who had the good fortune to meet him; and the love of all who had the good fortune to know him.”

I hope that you will think the same of me.