Published: August 7, 2025
Introduction
The Professional Counseling Leadership Coalition (PCLC) brings together organizations that serve the profession of counseling and counselors for the purpose of collectively leveraging the resources, expertise, and professional networks of the organizations to:
- advance scholarship and research in counseling;
- strengthen education and industry connections for the general purpose of workforce expansion and the specific purpose of launching counselors who are prepared to connect with the full complexity of the contextual and cultural experiences of clients in as many communities as possible.
The Coalition holds a shared vision of counselor preparedness and qualification to serve, and be accessible to, clients in communities across the globe and connecting within those communities to elevate mental health and well-being for stronger families, a healthier workforce, and a more engaged populace.
PCLC Drivers of Transformation:
Engagement and group initiatives will be built around three drivers that serve to powerfully advance access to counselor education and counseling:
- Research, Grants, and Scholarship
The profession’s responsibility to generate research and scholarship to inform best practices for education and counseling is paramount, with or without federal funding. However, in the absence of the ties that bind federally funded research to policy articulation, there exists a need to strategically connect research outcomes and scholarship to legislative policy articulation. The Policy, Advocacy, and Research in Counseling (PARC) Center works closely with the Coalition to connect research initiatives to legislative engagement.
- Workforce Expansion and Student Retention
Retaining students in counselor education programs and supporting their successful transition into the counseling workforce is another critical area of focus for the Coalition that is intended to ensure that connections between industry and education remain healthy.
- Advocacy, Engaging the Community, and Fostering Connection
At the foundation of the work is the awareness of the profession’s responsibility to ensure that the most vulnerable in society have access to care. Engaging the community and fostering connections across the Coalition partners to advocate for equitable access to care and counselor education is a vitally important area of its work.
All the initiatives developed or pursued by the PCLC will fall into one of these three areas.
PCLC Objectives
The Coalition maintains, and strives to achieve, three key objectives:
- to enable the counseling profession to generate primary research to inform mental health care and the education of counselors in the United States;
- to develop workforce expansion initiatives to meet the evolving needs of the public that the counseling profession serves; and,
- to engage in collaborative advocacy efforts to advance expanded access to counseling, counselors, and counselor education.
History and Partners
The Executive Directors and Chief Executive Officers of the American Counseling Association (ACA), American Association of State Counseling Boards (AASCB), American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA), Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), Chi Sigma Iota (CSI), the Counseling Compact Commission (CCC), and the National Board for Certified Counselors, Inc. (NBCC) and its Affiliates (the Center for Credentialing & Education, Inc. and the NBCC Foundation Inc.) have maintained a years-long history of meeting monthly to discuss pertinent matters impacting the education and training of counseling and factors emerging in the intersections between credentialing, regulation, and education.
This group of organizations has been informally referred to as the Professional Counseling Leadership Coalition (PCLC). With the execution of numerous Executive Orders by the new administration in January 2025, and increased ambiguity around the continuation of federal funding for research and programming, it became clear that efforts to strengthen the alignment between education and industry would be critical for the sustainability of the profession and the resourcing of workforce expansion efforts and research for the counseling profession. Consequently, NBCC invited the executive leaders from each organization and the elected Chairs/Presidents, Vice Chairs/Vice Presidents, and Treasurers to attend a convening of the Coalition in Atlanta, Georgia. The intention of this meeting was to collaboratively begin the process of determining how to sustain the vital research, scholarship, education, workforce expansion efforts, and the professional development necessary to ensure that: counseling reaches the broadest array of possible clients in communities across the globe; and, counselors are supported in their critical work to meet the mental health care needs of their clients. This convening was based on a belief that in the middle of the turbulence of federal funding and programming, there existed an opportunity for the profession to build a system that protects the public and moves professionals efficiently through education and into service, while holding central the importance of propelling a strong, engaged counseling workforce that offers equitable access to mental health services and resources.
In addition to the original members of the PCLC, the Chief Executive Officer of NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals, also joined the Coalition’s initial meeting, along with scholars, researchers, and other leaders from the counseling profession who hold key knowledge about federal funding, research, and workforce expansion initiatives. The Coalition also expanded to include the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification (CRCC).
Coalition Member Organizations
American Counseling Association (ACA)
American Association of State Counseling Boards (AASCB)
American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA)
Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES)
Center for Credentialing & Education (CCE)
Chi Sigma Iota (CSI)
Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification (CRCC)
Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)
Counseling Compact Commission (CCC)
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)
NBCC Foundation (NBCCF)
The Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC)
Coalition Initiatives
Research to Inform Policy
Initiatives to Support Scholars
Intersection of Expanding Access and Public Protections
Regulation and Licensure
Advancing Access to Counselor Education
Paid Internships