MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Oswaldo Moreno, Ph.D.

Dear NLPA familia,

As we enter a new year in NLPA’s journey, we find ourselves at a meaningful crossroads. One that invites us to slow down, look inward, and ask with honesty and care: Who are we [NLPA] now? What do we stand for? And where are we being called to go next?

NLPA and the U.S. Latinx communities have weathered hard seasons together. Times that demanded rapid response, survival mode thinking, and immense emotional labor. Now, with a bit more space to breathe, we have the opportunity to be intentional, to dream, to re-imagine, and to re-align with our values, not just as professionals, but as a community.

This moment calls for more than planning events, conferences, or setting timelines. It asks us to re-engage with purpose, to reflect on the heart of our work and the soul of our organization. I envision this year with a facilitated strategic visioning, one that holds space for deep dialogue, collective imagination, and cultural grounding.

This visioning is not about top-down decisions. It’s about co-creating a direction that reflects the voices, needs, and dreams of our membership. To support this, we want to center a few core questions to guide our conversation:

• What does NLPA stand for now? How has our association evolved, and what remains at the core?

• What big ideas and long-term goals are calling to us? What vision do we have for the kind of impact we want to make in this present society?

• What kind of professional home do we want to be? Not just an association or a network but a space that nurtures belonging, growth, and community in this pivotal moment.

• What unmet needs exist in our communities and the field that require our leadership and advocacy? Where is our presence most needed right now?

• And just as importantly, how do we want to operate? Not as a traditional “white-collar” organization built on hierarchy and bureaucracy, but how does a “brown-collar” collective grounded in humildad, colaboracion, justicia, y cultura look like in an association?

This is more than operational strategy. It’s about cultural renewal. It’s about imagining what it means to be a professional organization that fully embodies Latinx values in 2026 and for years to come. It’s about building something that feels deeply familiar and radically transformative all at once.

This year, I invite us to dream expansively and act with clarity. To move from what has been done to vision, from surviving to building, from inherited models to liberatory healing and onward. This is our moment to be bold, grounded, and creative together. Let’s co-create a future for NLPA that is not only rooted in our past, but fully responsive to our present, and powerfully aligned with the future our community deserves.

A soñar juntos,

Dr. Oswaldo Moreno
2026 NLPA President

ABOUT NLPA

The National Latinx Psychological Association (NLPA) is a national organization of mental health professionals, academics, researchers, and students whose objective is to generate and advance psychological knowledge and foster its effective application for the benefit of the Latinx population.

NLPA roots go back as far as the 1970s, but the organization formally reorganized in 2002 and incorporated in Arizona, where its first national conference was held in 2004. Many of its professional, early career, graduate and undergraduate student members work in cities, rural areas, communities, hospitals, clinics, and universities across the USA. Read more.

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