Maria del Carmen Rodriguez, Ph.D., LPC, NCC, NJ-DRCC has been a counselor educator with more than three decades of work experience. Currently, she serves as the ACA’s NAR region chair elect. She served as NJ Counseling Association president (2021-2022).  She recently retired from academia.  She has always motivated new counselors to facilitate clients’ holistic healing. Her area of research is exploring the role of folk-healers in progressive mental health care and culturally inclusive counseling. She has presented her research in local, state, national and international counseling conferences.  She provides consultation to mental health agencies.  Her counseling orientation centers on critical consciousness allowing those she works with to creatively figure out how to best serve diverse clients and especially those in marginalized/oppressive circumstances.  Her community involvement includes being a certified disaster response crisis counselor, board member for Proceed mental health agency (Union County, NJ) and board member for the Kean Graduate Council Advisory Board.