Leanne Nettles, LMFT
President, LA-CAMFT

We are Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams

As I sit here writing this, we are just before the new year, and I’m pondering all that has been in the past, present, and future of LA-CAMFT. By the time you read this, it will be February, Black History Month. And one thing sits deeply within me: I am the first President of African descent in LA-CAMFT history.

As many of you know from my workshops over the past 2 years on therapy with Mixed-race clients, my heritage is Black & White Mixed-race. While I am acutely aware of my White-Mixedness, and the privilege that entails, I navigate the day-to-day world as unambiguously brown. Hearing people call me the first Black president of LA-CAMFT fills me with honor and pride. And it truly harkens to Sydney Labat & Russell Ledet’s historic quote: “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

I imagine my father’s mother whom I never met, and her foremothers back through their time of Jim Crow, back through enslavement in America, and whether they’d even be able to dream of having a granddaughter who was free, nonetheless has independent rights, a professional career, and even leads a chapter of a professional mental health organization. Could they even fathom the possibility?

Representation is important. I remember supervising an Associate MFT as he had his final discharge session with a teenage client who identified as Latino. My supervisee was a bit flustered that during his discharge session, he asked the client to share about the thing which stood out to him most during their time together in therapy.

My supervisee expected to hear the client share about some amazing intervention or some grand moment of insight. Instead, the client stated that the thing which stood out to him most is that his therapist was Latino. How impactful it was for this teen to see himself culturally and ethnically in his therapist! So, too, is representation important in leadership. One thing which is very important to me in LA-CAMFT is that we are representing and serving all of our Los Angeles Therapists well.

The American Psychological Association (APA) recently released a formal statement apologizing to people of color for the APA’s complicity in “promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism, and the harms that have been inflicted on communities of color as a result” in the field of psychology.

CAMFT has similarly released public statements disavowing racial injustice in the field, and posted resources including the “Black Minds Matter” trainings and resources for connecting with Black and brown therapists.

While LA-CAMFT has always been committed to helping professional development, networking, and support for Los Angeles area therapists, leadership has become keenly aware from feedback in the community that we have historically been lacking in support and representation for Therapists of Color (TOC), especially Black Therapists in Los Angeles. Thus, LA-CAMFT has been more intentionally pressing into taking inventory and increasing cultural diversity, equity, and active antiracism in the field.

Feedback from our first two Anti-Racism Roundtable events in August 2020 and April 2021, helped us create an action plan to address 5 core areas to address this historic inequity in the field: (1) Education and Training, (2) Support Groups, (3) Mentorship, (4) Outreach and Accessibility into the field, and (5) Policy Change.

From those 5 core areas, over the past year LA-CAMFT has expanded our Diversity Committee, participated in 2 state-wide CAMFT DEI consultations with Mariama Boney, LMSW, increased ethnic and cultural diversity on the Board of Directors from 20% POC in 2020 to 60% POC in 2022, revamped the membership application to be more inclusive, promoted increased inclusive topics, language, and diversity of presenters in networking events, increased avenues of receiving feedback through community surveys, continued the free monthly TOC Support Group, developed a free monthly Black Therapist Support Group, developed a free White Therapists Anti-racist Group, developed a TOC Grant Award. We’ve also been working hard on developing our TOC Mentorship program, the first of its kind amongst CAMFT chapters, which rolled out January 1, 2022, currently and is looking for interested mentors and mentees.

And be sure to check out our upcoming CEU event February 18, 2022, Black Families and Body Image: The Need for a Holistic Understanding When Treating Individuals with Charlece Bishop, LMFT.

As mentioned in my January 2022 President’s Message, I am passionate about this being lasting change and not performative action, so I welcome all constructive feedback that can help us in serving our community better. And if you would like to get involved in any of these initiatives or others toward which you are passionate, please reach out to me at president@lacamft.org or our Diversity Committee at diversitycommittee@lacamft.org.

It takes a community to care to make this all happen!

I am honored to be the first Black President of LA-CAMFT, and hopeful for the increasing diversity in leadership. I pray I make my ancestors proud.

I hope I represent you all well, especially my fellow Black therapists. And I commit to continuing to pave a way for the future leaders rich with cultural diversity in this critical field!

With gratitude, 

Leanne Nettles

Leanne Nettles, LMFT is a School-based Clinical Program Manager in a community-mental health agency and an Adjunct Professor at Pacific Oaks College. She specializes in child and adolescent therapy, while practicing and supervising from a systemic and structural therapy approach. Leanne works to advocate for cultural diversity and equity within the field, and is passionate about training quality mental health professionals to serve low income, historically disenfranchised communities using a team-based, collaborative approach.