Steven P. Verney, Ph.D., is an Alaska Native (Tsimshian) Associate Professor in the department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He is currently a co-Investigator on the newly NIMHD-funded Health Disparities Center of Excellence to UNM, the Transdisciplinary Research, Equity and Engagement (TREE) Center for Advancing Behavioral Health, a Senior Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM and a past fellow in the American Indian Alaska Native Program at the University of Colorado. He strives to increase diversity awareness and training and has developed the department’s Diversity Organization (DO!), a student organization to increase diversity awareness and training within the department, and the Cultural Counseling Center, which provides clinical supervision and consulting services to students working with diverse populations. Dr. Verney’s overarching philosophy is that culture counts. Culture is infused in all of our beings influencing how we think, feel, and behave. His research has evolved into a mental health disparities focus, especially in the American Indian/Alaska Native populations.  He is interested in the role of culture in cognition and assessment including education (i.e., quality of education), language (bilingualism), and acculturation/cultural adaptation processes.