Dear Colleagues,
I have been thinking a great deal about what it means to serve as President of an international organization while coming from a worldview shaped within the United States, and primarily from positions of privilege within this country. That positional reality shapes what I see easily and what I have to work harder to understand, and it shapes the responsibility I carry in helping steward an organization that exists far beyond any one national context.
These reflections are inseparable from the broader conditions many of us are living within. The country I live in, founded through violence and dispossession, has in recent years seen increasing nationalist rhetoric, policy shifts, and violence that have made daily life less safe for many immigrant communities, LGBTQIA people, women, children, and BIPOC. These acts of state and community violence affect people’s safety, mobility, and participation in professional and public life. Many of you live in countries facing your own forms of instability, arising from different histories and conditions. While these conditions differ, they share a common effect: they influence what is possible, including whether it feels safe or feasible to travel, to gather, and to access the spaces where our shared work happens.
These realities also shape the context in which leadership decisions are made. Leadership can create a draw toward speaking in ways that sound clear and decisive. I have felt that draw myself, even while knowing that most meaningful decisions emerge through constraint, uncertainty, and ongoing revision. As a Board, we regularly find ourselves holding multiple responsibilities at once: sustaining the financial viability of the organization, expanding access to education and training, and considering the realities of members living across more than 40 countries. These responsibilities exist simultaneously and shape one another.
Conference planning is one place where these tensions become especially visible. Our Annual Conference will be held in Portland this year and in Boston in 2027, alongside our regional conferences, including our recent 2025 gathering in Aotearoa New Zealand and our upcoming regional conference in Toronto, Canada in 2026. The Annual Conference has historically been held in the U.S., and that history carries both practical and symbolic weight. It has long served as the central gathering point for the organization, while regional conferences have created additional ways for members to gather, learn, and connect in regions where there are fewer members. The Aotearoa New Zealand conference this past year reflected the continued importance of gathering in regional locations and strengthened our commitment to sustaining regional conferences as part of ISSTD’s future. Continuing to host the Annual Conference in the U.S. also means asking many members to travel into, or participate within, a country where violence and political instability are shaping daily life in ways that neither can nor should be ignored. These realities are part of the context in which conference planning decisions are made and revisited over time.
As a Board, we remain aware that members are navigating very different conditions. Some members living in the U.S. have shared fears about leaving and being able to return, or about moving visibly through professional spaces while belonging to communities that are increasingly targeted. Many members outside the U.S. have expressed hesitation about traveling here or have chosen not to do so under current conditions. These are amongst the factors we consider as we plan, knowing there is no single decision that resolves them for everyone.
This awareness is embedded within a broader process of organizational evolution, and I am grateful to be part of a leadership group that does not turn away from tension. This includes continuing to bring education to places where it may be less accessible, supporting regional conferences, expanding our educational offerings, and recognizing that our decisions will continue to evolve as we grow as a Board, as new members join leadership, and as we are shaped by the perspectives and lived experiences of our community.
ISSTD itself has changed significantly in recent years. In 2019, the organization included just over 1,300 members. Today, we are approaching 1,800. That growth has included meaningful increases in student and emerging professional members, alongside gradual expansion across membership tiers designed to improve accessibility for colleagues across different economic and geographic contexts. Our membership remains majority U.S.-based, but it is also more internationally distributed and more diverse in structure than it has been in the past. This growth has been the result of sustained effort over many years, and of members who have helped extend the organization’s reach in ways both visible and quiet. As the organization continues to evolve, so too must our structures, our gatherings, and our leadership, so that they reflect the full breadth of the community that ISSTD has become.
I find myself returning often to the question of what it means for ISSTD to continue growing into its identity as an international organization, not only in where members live, but in how leadership emerges, how decisions are made, and how accessible the organization becomes to those who have not historically had easy access to spaces like this one. I do not have clear answers to many of these questions. What I do have is a deep respect for this community, and for the ways members continue to shape ISSTD through your presence, your work, and your willingness to remain engaged.
I hope to see many of you in Portland and Toronto this year, and I welcome your continued thoughts and perspectives as we move forward together. My inbox is always open at president@isst-d.org.
Warmly,
Abigail Percifield, PsyD
President, ISSTD