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Cultural Broaching in Counseling: Deepening Dialogue, Trust, and Healing Across Differences

Enroll in the Online Self-Study and complete the training on your own schedule.

1.5 CE hours available for behavioral health clinicians completing the Online Self-Study

For many mental and behavioral health professionals, hesitancy or discomfort in bringing critical cultural factors—such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, or social class—into therapeutic dialogue is a common barrier that can inadvertently weaken trust and minimize clients' lived experiences. This avoidance can unintentionally reinforce power imbalances and impede the deep connection necessary for true healing.

To ensure your clients feel fully seen and heard, and to advance more equitable and affirming counseling relationships, it is vital to move beyond generic checklists and embrace intentional, client-centered dialogue that honors each client’s unique identity. This course offers the applied strategies and awareness you need to confidently initiate and sustain validating conversations about culture, transforming a challenging area of practice into a cornerstone of your therapeutic excellence.

Register for the 1.5 CE Online Self-Study for $45

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You will learn from renowned experts, Dr. Taqueena S. Quintana and Dr. David Julius Ford, Jr., whose extensive experience, research, and advocacy focus on culturally responsive practices and serving historically excluded groups. Both are recipients of the prestigious NBCC Minority Fellowship Program and have dedicated their careers to preparing clinicians to address multicultural issues, directly connecting their authority on anti-racist counseling and intersectionality to the core learning objectives of this training.

Drs. Quintana and Ford employ an approach that moves beyond theoretical knowledge, emphasizing practical frameworks and drawing on contemporary research and real case examples to guide your practice. Rather than providing a rigid script, this course focuses on developing the self-awareness, language, and confidence required to determine how, when, and why to broach cultural topics in a way that is authentic, intentional, and client-centered.

This comprehensive training will equip you with an understanding of the role of cultural broaching and its impact on therapeutic trust and client outcomes. We will explore common barriers that counselors face when initiating cultural conversations, including discomfort and avoidance. Participants will learn how to formulate and integrate cultural broaching techniques into various settings, including individual, couple, and family counseling sessions, ensuring that cultural dynamics are addressed to strengthen therapeutic alliances.

Taqueena S. Quintana Headshot

Instructor

Taqueena S. Quintana, Ed.D, LCPC, LPC, LPCC, NCC, ACS, BC-TMH

Dr. Taqueena Quintana is a licensed clinical professional counselor, nationally certified counselor (NCC), approved clinical supervisor (ACS), board-certified telemental health counselor (BC-TMH), registered yoga teacher (RYT-200), counselor educator, author, and consultant. She has over 15 years’ experience in education and counseling within various settings including K-12 institutions, colleges/universities, private practice, military installations, hospitals, and community mental health agencies.

Dr. Quintana is dedicated to supporting and preparing the next generation of professional counselors to serve historically excluded groups and communities. She has presented nationally and internationally at various counseling conferences and has published peer-reviewed articles that focus on culturally responsive practices in counseling. Her research interests include counseling military-connected youth, immigrant mental health, clinical supervision, school-based mental health, supporting students with disabilities, anti-racist counseling, and telemental health.

Dr. Quintana was awarded for her work in advocating for underserved, underrepresented, and marginalized communities by the National Board of Certified Counselors Minority Fellowship Program. Through NBCC, she currently volunteers as a mentor for emerging professional counselors who serve similar populations.

She holds a BA in History with a Minor in Puerto Rican, Africana, and Latin American Studies from CUNY Hunter College, an M.S.Ed. in Teaching Students with Disabilities and an M.S.Ed. in School Counseling, both from CUNY Brooklyn College, and an EdD in Counselor Education & Supervision from Argosy University- Northern Virginia.

David Ford Headshot

Instructor

David Ford, Jr., Ph.D., LCMHC, LPC, NCC, ACS

David Julius Ford, Jr., holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, both from Wake Forest University. In May 2014, he earned his Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision at Old Dominion University. Dr. Ford is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC) in North Carolina and a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Virginia and New Jersey. He is a Board-Certified Counselor (NCC) and Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS). Dr. Ford taught for four years at James Madison University and is now a Tenured Associate Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Professional Counseling at Monmouth University, where he is in his seventh-year teaching. He is Past-President of the New Jersey Counseling Association. He is Past Co-Chair of the Branch Development Committee of the American Counseling Association, a member of the Black Male Experience Task Force of the American Counseling Association, Past Board Trustee for Counselor Education and Research for the National Career Development Association, a division of the American Counseling Association. He is the North Atlantic Region Representative to the ACA Governing Council and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Counselor Education and Supervision and the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development. Dr. Ford sits on the Board of Trustees of the Brookdale Community College Foundation and on the Inspiring Life Board of Directors. He was recently appointed to be Co-Chair of the ACA DEIJ Task Force.

Dr. Ford’s professional interests are Black Greek life; multicultural issues; college students; Black men in higher education; career counseling; addictions counseling; supervision; group work; qualitative research; queer and trans BIPOC; Intersectionality; and persons living with HIV/AIDS. He has experience as an instructor for undergraduate human services courses and has taught graduate courses in counseling skills, multicultural counseling, career counseling, testing and assessment, clinical mental health counseling, addictions counseling, practicum supervision, lifespan development, and group counseling. He has also taught a doctoral-level dissertation course and a doctoral-level course in grant-writing and program evaluation and advanced theories. He is one of 24 inaugural doctoral fellows of the NBCC Minority Fellowship Program. He is the 2020 recipient of the AMCD Samuel H. Johnson Distinguished Service Award and the 2020 ACES Outstanding Counselor Education and Supervision Article Award. Dr. Ford is a classically trained pianist and is a proud, active, and financial member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. As an undergraduate, he had the privilege of taking a class taught by the late Dr. Maya Angelou. Dr. Ford currently lives in Ocean, New Jersey.

Key Takeaways:

  • Deeper Therapeutic Trust: Formulate specific strategies for integrating intentional cultural broaching techniques, which are critical for strengthening the therapeutic alliance and improving client outcomes.
  • Confident Cultural Dialogue: Gain the self-awareness and language needed to confidently initiate and sustain validating conversations about cultural factors, reducing counselor hesitancy and avoidance.
  • Enhanced Client-Centered Care: Understand the fundamental role of cultural broaching in honoring clients’ lived experiences and identity, ensuring they feel fully seen and heard in the counseling relationship.

Why this course?

  • Exceptional Authority and Experience: Your instructors, Dr. Quintana and Dr. Ford, are award-winning counselor educators and advocates with deep expertise in anti-racist counseling and serving marginalized populations, ensuring you receive the highest quality, most relevant training.
  • Focus on Applied Strategy, Not Checklists: This course emphasizes practical, applied strategies over generic, theoretical knowledge, providing you with actionable frameworks that can be immediately integrated into your individual, couple, and family counseling sessions.
  • Improve Outcomes and Ethics: Skillful cultural broaching fosters trust, improves client outcomes, and ensures you are delivering the highest quality, ethically sound, and culturally affirming care, aligning with the mission and commitment to Excellence and Integrity of the Telehealth Certification Institute.

Learning Objectives:

  • Explain the role of cultural broaching in counseling and its impact on therapeutic trust, client outcomes, and counselor-client dynamics.
  • Identify common barriers counselors face when initiating cultural conversations in therapy.
  • Formulate strategies for integrating cultural broaching techniques into individual, couple, and family counseling sessions.

Skillful cultural broaching is essential for fostering trust and advancing more equitable and affirming counseling relationships, and this training will provide the precise knowledge and skills to make that transformation possible. Join us to move past discomfort, deepen your self-awareness, and leave with the confidence to master this critical dimension of clinical practice.

Enroll in the Online Self-Study

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Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to attend:

Directions for completing a course can be found by clicking here.

This program was recorded on February 6, 2026.

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