As I write my first column as your new president, I want to do something a little different than the standard introduction. Rather than offering fresh remarks, I’d like to share, in adapted form, the closing plenary address I delivered at the SIOP 2026 Annual Conference.
Not everyone in our community was able to attend, and even among those who did, many had already left by the time the closing plenary began. But I felt that the themes I raised there were too important to leave behind in New Orleans. And more practically, this is my “I’m your new president” message, an opportunity to introduce myself to you and lay out what I hope will define my year of service.
With that said, here is the heart of what I shared.
This Moment Is Challenging
We are in a challenging moment, a moment where we need communities like SIOP. Whatever your political affiliation, I hope you agree that this is a moment of enormous change and challenge for everyone, one where everyone needs the support of others with shared values and purpose.
Through the lens of SIOP, four threats are especially salient to me. First, the threats to both science and science funding are enormous. Trust in science sits near all-time lows. In January, Pew Research reported that in 2025, 22% of US adults had little or no confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public. For FY 2027, it appears that the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation may be eliminated, closing one of the primary funding engines for I-O psychology research in the United States, and perhaps worldwide. SBE provides 63% of all funding for academic research in the social sciences!
Second, the federal administration has also levied direct challenges to diversity in organizations. Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, I hope you recognize the disruption this causes within our community: derailed research careers and job loss for practitioners working in the DEI domain. For members who have benefited from DEI initiatives, programs that helped pull them out of difficult and unfair situations, they now see the ladder pulled up behind them.
Third, separate from politics, we face the challenge of AI. Many I-O psychologists have been asked how we should respond to the disruptions AI is bringing to the organizations we work in, for, and around. Whether you’re in academia or practice, public sector or private, AI is changing work and how we understand work. This is often glibly labeled the future of work, but the reality is that work today has already changed. And we are not quite ready for it.
Fourth, this challenge is not limited to the consumers of our research or the beneficiaries of our practice. It affects the field itself. It threatens the careers of new graduates. We must grapple with what the future of I-O psychology looks like in this new world.
SIOP is already acting on all these fronts through federal advocacy, grant programs, and coalition work. That effort is ongoing and not slowing down. But rather than rehash it, I will focus here on what’s coming next.
Who We Are and Why We’re Here
I wrote before that community is important in difficult moments like these. That means it’s also important to stop and ask ourselves about that community: who are we, and why are we here?
To me, the core of the I-O psychology community and ethos has always been science-practice. My grand-advisor, Milt Hakel, promotes the term praxis as, “the synthesis of theory and practice without presuming the primacy of either,” or “scientific practice and practical science”. To me, this means with praxis we create something better than either could achieve alone. When we take scientific evidence, bring it into the real world, and make a difference in organizations, one that we know is real and valid and authentic, and then carry those lessons back into the research space, we create a cycle of genuine societal improvement. To me, that is the heart and purpose of I-O psychology.
Where the mission of business schools is typically very pointedly to accumulate more publications in “A” journals or crank out high-tuition MBA students, and the goal of human resources is generally to facilitate the efficient and legal movement of people in, through, and out of organizations, the unique value of I-O psychology is this exchange of science and real-world practice. Without the science, we’re no different from applied HR, and without the practice, we’re no different from those academic OB programs locking their faculty in the ivory tower cranking out AMJs. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing AMJs (!), but when writing them becomes the purpose of a career, something has gone horribly wrong. It’s the blend of science and practice that makes I-O special. It’s the blend that makes us uniquely valuable to organizations and beyond. When we ignore that blend, when we fall into silos defined by others, we lose the very essence of who we are.
The connection between science and practice that we represent is enormously important right now, in a moment of low faith in science throughout the nation, perhaps the world. When we abandon science in practice because it’s challenging and inconvenient, or when we ignore practice in science and only conduct research because it furthers careers, we create a tragedy of the commons. We hurt the world through inaction and neglect, letting systems larger than ourselves determine whom we help and whom we harm, and letting the incentives set for us lead us by the nose. But if you truly believe in I-O psychology, in praxis, and I trust that everyone reading this does, then this uncomfortable truth should not dissuade you. It should embolden you. If we are the ones who hold the keys to authentic, evidence-based change, to make organizations better, to empower employees to realize their potential, to enable individual and organizational flourishing, then we have a moral obligation to pursue praxis in our work. And that’s a responsibility, and opportunity, that falls on us alone.
Strategic Changes and Priorities
Faced with this landscape, over the past several years, the Executive Board has been developing a new set of strategic priorities. More will be shared about this in the coming months, but I want to give you the broad strokes today so you can see where we are focusing our efforts at the Board level.
The first priority is research and practice, because this is the very heart of our field. We must champion praxis, and push that praxis into the broader world of work, beyond I-O psychology’s traditional sphere of influence, both to ensure that our field has a meaningful future and to enable people to thrive at work.
Second, we must better support the I-O psychology educational pipeline. Our values will not continue if I-O psychology programs do not continue. And we need a way to demonstrate that I-O psychology has unique value through this education. You may have heard about the I-O psychology certification that SIOP is supporting, which is one initiative that stemmed directly from this priority and its ancestor priorities.
Third is member value. We recognize that when you pay your membership dues, you are creating a psychological contract with the organization that you will receive value personally and professionally as a result of your membership. That your membership is about more than financially supporting a nonprofit’s website and conference. That is a meaningfully different mindset than the one SIOP has historically taken.
Fourth, we must establish I-O psychology as the trusted public voice informing how work and organizations are designed, led, and experienced. Our praxis means nothing if no one knows who we are. This has been and continues to be the direct motivation for our public facing initiatives and federal advocacy efforts. It’s that effort that led to the federal recognition of I-O psychology as a STEM discipline, where it belongs.
Fifth and finally is vitality, which refers to the long-term health of SIOP through operational excellence and strategic investment of resources. At the end of the day, SIOP is a non-profit business with a complex portfolio of revenue streams and expenses. For every initiative we want to start, we need to ensure we have the resources to make it happen, to do it well, and not just for now but for the life of the effort.
A related big change this year is that we took advantage of President Tannenbaum’s teams and broader organizational expertise to restructure SIOP’s leadership and committee structure, building on President Behrend’s vision to make SIOP more responsive, more agile in all these areas. Put another way: we took our own organizational development medicine, even when it was difficult. And it was quite difficult at times. But because of that effort, we now stand poised to make real progress in these priorities.
Empowering Communities
When I began volunteering for SIOP over a decade ago, I thought of SIOP as a single circle of people, all organized around I-O psychology. When I was Program Chair for our Seattle conference, I began to see the incredible diversity of interests within this community first hand. And then, as the Instruction and Education Officer, I realized that to make good decisions for the whole organization, I really needed to understand the diversity of our members’ needs, wants, and struggles more deeply. So as a Board member, I proposed and ran an audience segmentation study to identify the subcommunities within our membership.
What we found was remarkable: dozens of distinct identities among members. Historically, we have tried to serve these various identities and subcommunities within SIOP through top-down initiatives. Someone on the Board would realize or perhaps have a connection to an underserved group, sometimes even through a chance encounter with a member at the Annual Conference, and that would trigger an initiative to serve that group. That approach worked reasonably well, and I’m proud of many things SIOP has accomplished over the past decades. But what became obvious to me is that there is no way for SIOP to serve everyone individually in that top-down fashion. It tends to favor those who have access to decision-makers, whether due to privilege or chance connections.
SIOP is not united in our interests and individual identities. We’re instead united by our values. A love of science for helping people in organizations. A desire for praxis. And that’s an incredible strength, one that is unique among all the groups surrounding organizational management. So instead of seeing that as a way we are divided, it is a way we can create unique value for both I-O psychology and for organizations.
Figuring out the nuts and bolts of how to harness this strength became a major priority for me and will continue to be my priority and I hope defining work during my Presidency: finding ways to empower subcommunities with unifying interests or identities and provide them with the resources they need to make the change they see as valuable. To contribute as a cohesive group, supported by SIOP and for the betterment of I-O psychology.
You’ve already seen the beginning of these efforts. The Research Community Forums held before the conference are a direct consequence of this shift in thinking at the Executive Board level. They are a recognition that subgroups of researchers need communities to connect with in order to build toward broader goals, and that the existing structure and especially the size of the annual conference was making that difficult.
Similarly, in the coming year, we are experimenting with a new concept called Special Interest Groups, or SIGs. Their goal is to provide year-round resources that enable a group champion to attract, organize, and manage their own subcommunity within SIOP toward collective action. SIOP will provide the structure and the tools, and SIG members will provide the will. We’ll be starting with a few pilot SIGs in the coming year, and after we work out the bugs, then we’ll be opening up so that any sufficiently large coalition of members with a unique shared interest or priority that they want to focus on will be able to propose and run a SIG. And then we expect those SIGs to do great things.
Call to Action
So I implore you: Respond to my call.
Champion your community. Recognize the identities you hold within I-O psychology, and be an advocate for them—because the only way we know what you and the groups you belong to need is when you tell us. When you get surveys from SIOP, respond loud and proud. Write far more responding to those qualitative questions than you think anyone would care to know. I promise they are being read.
Then, take it a step further and join a committee. SIOP lives only because of its volunteers. Because of you. So when you receive that email asking you to sign up on the volunteer system, please respond. We need your time, your effort, and your enthusiasm.
And even if you’re not ready to join a committee, raise your hand in whatever way you can. Go to local high schools and community events and spread the good word of I-O psychology. Attend city council meetings and government hearings and make sure the voice of I-O is heard. Start a local group so that every I-O in your area has a place to find each other.
Or start small. Speak loud and proud about I-O on LinkedIn! Connect with other I-Os and find shared purpose. Work out what you can do together and go do it!
This is how we respond in this moment. This is how you respond in this moment. Find your people within SIOP, come together in shared purpose, and go do good for us all!
