International Interdisciplinary Conference on Clinical Supervision (IICCS) 2026

Dr. Karen W. Tao is an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Utah. Dr. Tao's research focuses on reducing disparities in access, service quality, and outcomes across mental health, healthcare, and education for marginalized populations. She examines multicultural orientation and cultural processes in psychotherapy and supervision, employing diverse methodological approaches to identify factors that contribute to client improvement.

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Opening plenary: 9:00 am - 10:30 am on June 11

In today's complex sociopolitical landscape, clinical supervisors face unique challenges in training the next generation of mental health practitioners. This presentation explores how the Multicultural Orientation framework offers strategies for navigating cultural conversations and fostering meaningful connections in supervision relationships. As supervisors work with trainees who bring diverse cultural backgrounds, values, and perspectives, supervision can become a space where conversations about socially charged topics naturally arise. Rather than avoiding these conversations, supervisors can cultivate Cultural Fortitude - the cognitive, affective, physiological, and relational courage required for sustained authentic engagement across differences over time. 

The presentation will focus on the three pillars of the Multicultural Orientation (MCO) framework in supervision:

• Cultural Humility: centering curiosity and openness to learning with and from supervisees and their clinical experiences across cultural contexts

• Cultural Comfort: developing awareness of somatic, cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses during cultural conversations shape supervision dynamics

• Cultural Opportunity: recognizing cultural markers (e.g., identity, values) as opportunities to deepen understanding and enhance the supervisory alliance

MCO enables us to recognize we are all "feeling thinkers" and better understand how our emotions and subjectivities shape clinical judgments, supervisory decisions, and the learning process. This presentation offers practical strategies for developing MCO related skills to build Cultural Fortitude and enrich our supervision environments.

Dr. Hanna Levenson is Professor Emerita at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, USA. She also has a private practice in Oakland, California where she sees individuals and couples for therapy, trainees for supervision, and professionals for consultation.  Dr. Levenson has been specializing in the areas of supervision and brief dynamic psychotherapy for over 40 years.  She is the author of six books and over 85 professional papers. Dr. Levenson also has five professional videos illustrating her approach (produced by APA).  Recently she created and hosted APA’s Psychotherapy Supervision video series of 11 interviews with experts representing different supervisory models, and edited 11 accompanying books. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Contribution to Psychology as a Profession Award given by the California Psychological Association.  Dr. Levenson has provided numerous trainings to various mental health centers and universities nationally and internationally.  She recently gave an invited presentation on her work at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna.

Dr. Milena Esherick is the Associate Director for the Master of Science in Counseling Programs at Kaiser Permanente’s School of Allied Health Sciences (KPSAHS). As a licensed psychologist, she has over twenty years of leadership experience spanning higher education, healthcare, and behavioral health startups. She has previously served as the Director of the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology Program at the Wright Institute where she established the dual MFT/PCC licensure program. Earlier in her career, she directed the Intensive Eating Disorders Treatment Program at El Camino Hospital. Dr. Esherick earned her Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute after her undergraduate degrees in Economics and Women’s Studies from UC Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, maintains a consulting practice working with digital mental health companies, and is a frequent presenter on counselor education, the psychology of behavior change, and most recently, on AI-driven advancements in behavioral healthcare and clinical training.

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Closing plenary: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm on June 12

This plenary explores the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the way supervisors do supervision and the way supervisees use supervision.  We have two goals: (1) to provide an update regarding present endeavors to incorporate AI into supervision practices, and (2) to encourage attendees to take a next step to learn more. As an introduction, we will provide an overview about what is currently happening in the field as agencies and clinical supervisors are beginning to incorporate AI. We will share our own and others empirical studies suggesting that AI can effectively augment clinical supervision.  In addition, we will demonstrate actual AI tools and methods and provide resources for the audience members to try them out.  We hope that showing AI in action (e.g., analyzing supervisees’ therapy sessions, producing data on learners’ strengths and areas for growth, generating supervisory session summaries, and simulating clinical scenarios for skill-building practice) will transform some of the supervisors’ avoidance and skepticism into cautious engagement and optimism.  For the supervisees, we will talk about how to build an adjunct supervisor-bot to get instant feedback on their conceptualization and intervention skills and provide pointers on how to use AI-generated input to make their meetings with their supervisor more productive.  While we are manifesting a supportive tone for AI’s potentials, we will not neglect the critical consideration of ethics and privacy, professional guidelines, economic and geographical needs, and the necessity of supervisors’ and trainees’ feedback in the refinement of such tools.  We end with a look at future directions and emerging trends.  In summary, this workshop provides an overview of AI’s potential role clinical supervision. Attendees will leave with practical tools, resources, and suggestions for responsibly incorporating AI into their supervisory work.