Yoshado Lang

Q: What is your current role?

A: I am a Supervising Psychologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. I attended the CSPP program at the Los Angeles campus from 2000 to 2005 and I was in the multicultural community psychology track. I had some awesome professors there—Judith Holloway, Dr. Rosenbaum, Dr. Erica Holmes—just awesome phenomenal people who cared about the community, who did the work, who brought that theory and made it applicable to us so it’s powerful. I had a great experience there.

Q: What inspired you to choose Alliant?

A: A number of things. I looked at several institutions of higher learning, but I wanted to meet with people. I didn't want to do research, I didn't want to do theory or anything like that. I wanted to be in the room with the people, interact with them, have a direct impact not just with individuals but with systems as well. So, that multicultural community focus is awesome because not only are you impacting individuals, but you are able to impact communities through systems, through families, and through your networks, so that was phenomenal to me and that was what I really wanted to do.

Q: What did Alliant do that was unique or special that helped you through that program? 

A: The professors at Alliant were phenomenal. They took the time and made it real for us. It wasn't so abstract. They were clinicians as well and they shared their experiences of what it's like to be in therapy with the client, what it's like to work in a church and do community work that then has further ripple effects, what it's like to do program evaluation and community-based organizations and network and how to get all these systems to interact and come together. So that was phenomenal, and they would bring that back to us and even help us implement that.

There were some hands-on application projects that we had done. One of my projects was working with this organization in South Los Angeles. The teacher asked us to link up with the organization to do an evaluation of the program to help them out. It was very hands on and very practical and so that gave me the confidence to say, “Oh, I can do this. It's not all theory and abstract, this is real world application that helps people improve their lives and their communities.”

Q: Students in the clinical psychology program at Alliant usually start their field experience earlier than other schools. Was that the case for you as well?

A: It was. In fact, I did an extra year. They offered me a clerkship during my second year where we focused on assessing for learning disabilities at one of the local community colleges and that was a great experience. That gave me the bug for psych testing and so that was implanted, and I wanted to keep that into my experience as a psychologist and so I did that clerkship. I did a practicum in the community working with a number of organizations. One was a domestic violence shelter, another one was a place focusing on HIV/AIDS within the African American community, and then another one was with this family group program called Shields for Families. I did another internship at Terminal Island, which is a federal prison, and so it gave me a vast amount of experience.

And during my final year, the 4th year internship was done where I currently work now at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and they liked me so much, or liked what I brought to that, and immediately after the internship they said, “Hey, we want you. We could see you working here with us,” and that was just an easy win. I didn't have to do a formal postdoc. I ended up landing one but starting out the gate with all the debt that we accrued from school I came out with a nice salary with benefits, good to go, and my hours counted towards licensure. It was a win-win situation. I did land a postdoc with neural psychology at Harvard UCLA which is another site with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. A two-year postdoc paid with my full salary and benefits. It was awesome, and it was all because of the work and the teachings I learned from CSPP Alliant, so it was very impactful.

Q: Was there anything what surprised you about your experience?

A: What surprised me was there was this imposter syndrome where I wondered if I could do this, if I could be a psychologist, and the professors were very approachable and made it easy and they weren't intimidating. They shared real world experiences with us and that was what made it more comfortable. And I have to say my cohorts too, the students that I came in with we were in it together. We studied together, ate together, everything. We were a unit and without them I don't think I would have made it because we supported each other. Iron sharpens iron. That’s one thing I would say to students that are in there now don't burn any bridges because you never know who you’re going to run into or who's going to be your boss, or your colleague could end up supervising you. It doesn't matter. You never know so you just want to be aware of those things and be mindful of who you impact, how you impact, and how you interact with individuals. But that network is so powerful because we still rely on each other.

Q: Can you tell me about the dissertation process? What was that like for you?

A: I was fortunate to have had a set of data from my undergraduate experience to kind of help me along the way. However, my chair Dr. Kimlin Ashing-Giwa, she was formative in helping me identify who would help push my interests to the next level. My dissertation was a little bit on network analysis and how communities define health for themselves and so she helped pick some other individuals like Dr. Kumea Shorter-Gooden who was a former professor as well and they had the mindset to see about how communities define mental health for themselves and the broader community. You can do it. You can do it. We can do it! You know, it's a phenomenal experience and I learned so much about myself in the process. And they require you to have your own therapy which is important, and it helps with the dissertation process and just having a sense of community outside of school to help with that process and it's doable just step by step you gotta go one thing at a time.

Q: What tips or advice would you give for somebody who's thinking about the field of psychology or going into this program?

A: I would say keep your mind open. Our profession is doing so much now, and it's changed so much. There's so much that you can do outside of therapy, outside of teaching, outside of testing. The other thing I would say from the day-to-day grind is to practice that self-care, start doing it now that way when you're in the field you've developed it, and you can master it and find even more ways to kind of regulate and be at ease with the things that come at you because as psychologists we're trained to do multiple things. We’re teaching, we're consulting, we’re doing therapy, and testing, so we have to be able to compartmentalize and recenter ourselves so that we can be fresh and whole for the people that we serve.

And finally, it gets easier. There’s life after graduate school. There’s plenty of ways to pay back your loans, so I wouldn’t worry about that. I would say invest in yourself, follow your dreams, and do what you want to do. And what it is that you want to do may change. I had an interest in neuropsychology long before I even had the interest in multicultural community psychology, but I found a way to merge those two things together. You can come back full circle so that interest that I had in brain behavior and relationships ultimately came back in the post doc which opened up other doors for me, so you never know. Now I have a multicultural/community college/community psychology focus with some brain and behavior concepts.

I'm working now at the Hawkins Adult Outpatient Program at Martin Luther King, Jr. hospital in South Los Angeles in the Watts area so not only am I helping with training and helping bring other students into the profession I'm also helping the hospital with screenings for dementia and screenings for bariatric surgery, all these different things. It’s a multicultural community because of most of the folks that we're serving are people of color and so we're blending that multicultural neuropsychology. It all comes together. It's great and I couldn't have done that without the training that I received at Alliant.