From Cultural Competence to Cultural Curiosity: Overcoming Obstacles to Engagement

 Earn 1.5 CE Contact Hours

In today’s increasingly diverse clinical settings, mental health professionals are called to develop skills that allow them to work effectively with clients across cultural backgrounds. While cultural competence is often emphasized, this framework can sometimes lead to overgeneralizations, assumptions, and even pathologizing client behavior.

This 90-minute online workshop invites clinicians to move beyond competence toward cultural curiosity. Through lecture, experiential exercises, and case studies, participants will reflect on unhelpful assumptions, examine how their own differences show up in the therapy room, and strengthen their ability to remain open and curious about what truly matters to clients.

By shifting from cultural competence to cultural curiosity, therapists can engage more authentically, foster deeper trust, and create space for more collaborative and effective healing.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of the impact that dominant and unchallenged assumptions regarding race, class, gender, and other dimensions of identity have on the therapist-client relationship
• Will be able to demonstrate the ability to consider the influence of both the therapist’s and client’s social location (i.e. dimensions of identity) on case assessment, treatment and therapeutic relationship
• Will consider the benefits and challenges of socially locating themselves and engaging in more open conversations with their clients

Meet Walter Vega:

Walter Vega, LCSW has been a therapist, trainer, and consultant for 20 years. He completed his post-master’s training in the practice of family and couples therapy in 2009 at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, where he stayed to serve as a member of Ackerman’s faculty and senior administrative leadership. Walter has extensive clinical experience in the areas of father-child dynamics, BIPOC families undergoing life transitions, and racial and gender identity issues. He draws upon anti-racist, relational, narrative, and trauma-informed models. Walter has taught clinical practice and social justice courses at Columbia School of Social Work, NYU Silver School of Social Work, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He has been a family therapy consultant and trainer for various organizations in New York City, including Administration for Children’s Services, Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, Good Shepherd Services, and Mt. Sinai Hospital.

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