| Invest in your professional growth and join a vibrant community of counselors on November 6-8, 2025 at the Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel in Northbrook, Illinois. This Annual Conference offers a unique opportunity to enhance your skills, expand your knowledge, and connect with fellow professionals. Immerse yourself in engaging workshops led by expert speakers, explore cutting-edge research and best practices, and discover innovative tools and techniques to better serve your clients. Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or just starting your career, the ICA Annual Conference provides invaluable resources, networking opportunities, and inspiration to elevate your counseling practice. Don’t miss this chance to recharge, reconnect, and reignite your passion for helping others—register now to secure your spot! |
Friday Keynote Speaker
LaTonya M. Summers, PhD, Licensed mental health counselor in North Carolina and Florida
Title: We Got Next Now: Counselors who Learn, Lead, and Liberate
Description: In her keynote address, Dr. LaTonya Summers uses nearly 30 years of professional counseling experience to inform the audience that we counselors don’t have next, we got now. Counselors will be inspired to use what they learn at the ICA conference to lead and liberate others through their leadership.
Meet the Keynote Speaker: Dr. LaTonya Summers is an award-winning associate professor and department chair of clinical mental health counseling at Jacksonville University. There, she brings nearly 30 years of clinical mental health and addictions counseling experience and conducts research on multicultural issues in counseling and supervision. Her work is featured in scholarly journals and at international and national professional conferences. She is the program director for the Center for Men’s Mental Wellness, a free counseling center where and she her students provide free counseling services for men who live in the “deadliest zip code of Duval County.”
She is the past president of the Florida Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development. She has served as an appointed member of the ACA Black Male Experience Taskforce, and Chair of the ACES Special Supervision Committee. She is the author of a core curriculum textbook, Multicultural Counseling: Responding with Cultural Humility, Empathy, and Advocacy. Her memoir, Black Again was released a few months ago. Summers founded the national annual Black Mental Health Symposium, a conference that equips mental health professionals with culturally specific skills to improve mental wellness in Black communities. Dr. Summers has been featured in O Magazine on the subject of authenticity in the workplace; and she conducted a TEDx Talk entitled Know Pain, Know Gain https://youtu.be/9b6pnlmR0-I.
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Saturday Keynote Speaker
Nathaniel Gilham, EdD, LCPC
Title: Politicized Healing: Reframing the Role of Counselors in Social Justice Work
Description: Dr. Gilham, the former Clinical Director of the pioneering counseling center in the United States dedicated to addressing the trauma of state-sponsored violence, will discuss the role of mental health professionals in dismantling systems of harm. This center emerged from the experiences of survivors, many of whom were tortured into false confessions and subsequently exonerated after decades of wrongful imprisonment. The therapeutic approach developed through this work, termed Politicized Healing, was created collaboratively by survivors, their families, activists, scholars, and mental health professionals. As practiced at the Chicago Torture Justice Center – the sole US program focused on domestic torture victims – Politicized Healing integrates Community Counseling principles, utilizing community education and prevention, advocacy, psychotherapy, and policy change to facilitate healing. This model acknowledges the historical and ongoing trauma inflicted upon oppressed communities by social policies and institutions, recognizing its contribution to poor mental health. Politicized Healing has proven successful in empowering oppressed individuals to shift towards community engagement and healing, thereby challenging the isolation fostered by oppressive systems.
Meet the Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Gilham has been a Licensed Clinical Professional Counseling in Chicago since 1994. He was the first Clinical Director at the Chicago Torture Justice Center, from 2017 – 2024. Dr. Gilham provided individual, family, and group support for survivors of state-sponsored violence, and their families. He was the Co- Director of Family Counseling Institute 1994-2015, a private practice in south suburban Chicago and Merrillville, Indiana. Dr. Gilham served as a counselor educator from 2004 – 2020, and he served as an Associate Professor, and Director of Training for the Mental Health Counseling program at Argosy University. Dr. Gilham holds a doctorate in Counseling Psychology from Argosy University, a Masters of Art’s in Community Counseling from Northeastern Illinois University, and a Bachelor’s of Psychology from Loyola University. Dr. Gilham’s counseling practice has focused on intergenerational trauma, abuse and neglect within families, couples counseling, and counselor supervision. He is a past president of the Illinois Association of Couples and Family Counseling, and he is a member of the Chicago Association of Black Social Workers. Currently he maintains a private practice in Homewood, Illinois however he continues to run groups a Torture Survivors group using a treatment model referred to as Politicized Healing.
Conference Schedule
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| Main Conference on Friday and Saturday, November 7-8, 2025
Pre-Conference on Thursday, November 6, 2025 – separate registration is required |
| Friday – November 7, 2025
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM: Keynote Session
- Duration: 60 minutes
- Continuing Education (CE) Credits: 1
- Location: Northbrook Ballroom
10:15 AM – 11:45 AM: Session 1
- Duration: 90 minutes
- CE Credits: 1.5
- Location: Breakout Rooms
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:15 PM – 2:15 PM: Session 2
- Duration: 60 minutes
- CE Credits: 1
- Location: Breakout Rooms
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM: Session 3
- Duration: 90 minutes
- CE Credits: 1.5
- Location: Breakout Rooms
4:15 PM – 5:15 PM: Grad Student Presentation
- Duration: 60 minutes
- Location: Northbrook Ballroom
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Saturday – November 8, 2025
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM: Keynote Session
- Duration: 60 minutes
- CE Credits: 1
- Location: Northbrook Ballroom
10:15 AM – 11:45 AM: Session 4
- Duration: 90 minutes
- CE Credits: 1.5
- Location: Breakout Rooms
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:15 PM – 2:30 PM: Session 5
- Duration: 90 minutes
- CE Credits: 1.5
- Location: Breakout Rooms
2:45 PM – 3:45 PM: Session 6
- Duration: 60 minutes
- CE Credits: 1
- Location: Breakout Rooms
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Session 7
- Duration: 60 minutes
- CE Credits: 1
- Location: Breakout Rooms
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| Earn up to 11 Continuing Education (CE) credits!
Sessions will be announced by August 8th |
Conference Pricing
  
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