Victoria E. Kress, Ph.D., LPCC-S, NCC, CCMHC (she/her) has been a counselor for 3 decades and a counselor educator for over 2 decades. She is the director of the clinical mental health and addictions counseling programs at Youngstown State University. This winter she will be running to serve as the president of the American Counseling Association along with: Michelle Bradham-Cousar; Carlos Hipolito Delgado; and Anna Flores Locke. She served as a governor appointed member of the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, and Marriage and Family Therapist Board and chaired the Counselor Professional Standards Committee. She has been the recipient of over 50 professional and community service awards, most of which for her advocacy, leadership, scholarship, community service, and mentorship initiatives. She has also received awards for her work with people who have intellectual disabilities, for empowering girls in her community, for her sexual assault prevention efforts, and for her child abuse advocacy work. She has published over 130 refereed articles and book chapters, and she has co-authored 7 books on counseling youth and adults. She has been recognized as one of the top producers/publishers in counseling journals over the past two decades. She served as an editor of the Journal of Mental Health Counseling, and as an editorial board member for many counseling journals. She is a past president of Chi Sigma Iota International, the Association for Humanistic Counseling, the Ohio Counseling Association, and the North Central Association for Counselor Education and Supervision; she is a past ACA Midwest Region Chair; she is a current member of the American Counseling Association’s governing council; and she has chaired or served on 100+ counseling committees. Over the past decade she has volunteered and worked in Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda, and Tanzania, promoting mental health awareness and training, and the professionalization of counseling in East Africa.