About our authors Victoria E. Kress, Ph.D./LPCC-S (OH), NCC, CCMHC, is a distinguished professor, counseling clinic director, and the director of the clinical mental health and addictions counseling programs at Youngstown State University. She has extensive experience advocating for the counseling profession and those served, and she previously worked as the Director of Advocacy for the National Board of Certified Counselors. She has nearly 3 decades of clinical experience working with youth and adults in various settings, which include community mental health centers, hospitals, residential treatment facilities, private practices, and college counseling centers. She has published over 140 refereed articles and book chapters, and she has co-authored 6 books on counseling youth and adults. She has been identified as a top producer/published author in counseling journals. She previously served as an editor of the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) Practice Briefs and the Journal of Mental Health Counseling, and as an editorial board member for the Journal of Counseling and Development and a number of other counseling journals.Kress has lectured throughout the United States and internationally on various topics related to counselor practice. She served 2 terms as a governor-appointed member of the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, and Marriage and Family Therapist Board, and served as the chair of the board’s Ethics Committee. She also served as the ethics liaison for Ohio’s state regulatory board, and she serves as a consultant/expert witness for counselor ethics cases. She has been the recipient of over 50 professional and community service awards, most of which were for her advocacy, leadership, scholarship, community service, and mentorship initiatives. She has also received awards for her work with people who have intellectual disabilities, for empowering girls in her community, for her sexual assault prevention efforts, and for her child abuse advocacy work. CACREP honored her with the Martin Ritchie Award for Excellence in Advocacy. She also received many ACA awards, including the ACA Fellow Award, an award for being a Humanitarian and Caring Person, the Distinguished Mentor Award, the Counselor Educator Advocacy Award, and the Government Relations Award. She has been the recipient of the following Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) awards: the Counseling Vision and Innovation Award, the Outstanding Mentor Award, the Robert Stripling Award for Excellence in Standards, and the Leadership Award. She has also received several university awards (such as the Giant Award, Distinguished Scholar, Distinguished Public Servant, Distinguished Teaching Award) as well as various Ohio Counseling Association awards including their Counselor of the Year Award, the Research and Writing Award, the Legislative Advocacy Award, and their Leadership Award.She has served in over 100 professional service roles, chairing and serving on various committees and task forces for ACA as well as its divisions (e.g., AHC, ACES, ACC, AARC), AMHCA, CSI, NBCC, and OCA, just to name a few. She is a past president of the Association for Humanistic Counseling, Chi Sigma Iota International, the Ohio Counseling Association, and the North Central Association for Counselor Education and Supervision; she is a past ACA region chair; and she is a member of ACA’s Governing Council. She has also worked and volunteered in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, and Rwanda promoting mental health awareness and training, along with the professionalization of counseling.Matthew John Paylo, Ph.D./LPCC-S (OH), LPC (GA), is the director of counseling programs and professor at Concordia University Irvine. He has over 15 years of experience in counselor education and 20 years of clinical experience in various settings, including community mental health centers, prisons, hospitals, adolescent residential treatment facilities, and college counseling centers. He is passionate about implementing evidence-based interventions within therapeutic relationships that highlight empathy, unconditional positive regard, and genuineness. He has presented and published extensively in the areas of diagnosing and treating mental and emotional disorders. He co-authored 2 books on assessing, diagnosing, and treating mental and emotional disorders. In addition, he has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on trauma, evidence-based treatments, offender treatments, adolescent counseling, social justice counseling, and the implementation of the DSM.He has also received several teaching and research awards, including the Distinguished Professor of Teaching at Youngstown State University and the Research and Writing Award from the Ohio Counseling Association (OCA). In addition, Matthew completed 2 terms as a governor-appointed member of the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, and Marriage and Family Therapist Board, serving as board chair and ethics board chair.
