Andrés Pérez-Rojas received the 2024 Rising Star Award from the National Multicultural Conference and Summit.

Pérez-Rojas, an associate professor in Counseling and Educational Psychology, said he was overjoyed and honored to win the award, adding, “NMCS has been a wonderful professional home for me over the years, and they are a beacon for multicultural psychology for all of us in the field. So this award was very meaningful to me.”

Much of Pérez-Rojas’s work falls under the category of culturally responsive psychotherapy, especially as it pertains to therapists’ cultural comfort, or the degree to which therapists feel at ease addressing social or cultural issues that are salient to their clients. Last year, Pérez-Rojas and his colleagues published a study that highlighted the importance of therapists being sufficiently comfortable when discussing anti-Black racism with clients who identify as Black or African American. 

Currently, Pérez-Rojas is working on research aimed at more clearly documenting the influence of broader contexts or social determinants of health, such as poverty, access to healthcare, racism, etc., on a person’s well-being and their experiences in psychotherapy.