Mark Pope

Mark Pope, Ed.D., NCC, CCC, MCC, NCCC has written extensively on careers, specifically on the career development of ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities in the US and around the world. He describes himself as being raised as "a poor, gay, Cherokee boy with spina bifida in rural southeast Missouri." From those important beginnings, he has risen to the highest positions in professional counseling in the US, including president of the American Counseling Association, National Career Development Association, Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling, and Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity as well as editor of The Career Development Quarterly (the preeminent professional journal in career counseling and development) and senior associate editor of both the Journal of Counseling & Development (the flagship journal of the American Counseling Association) and Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (the primary journal of APA Division 44). He is also a committed internationalist and has written on the historical development of career counseling is the US, China, and Malaysia, and keynoted conferences in Australia, Canada, China, and the US.

Prior to moving into academia, he led his own career counseling and consulting firm in San Francisco for 15 years. Coming from such a rich culturally-diverse background himself, it was only natural that there - in the culturally-rich San Francisco Bay Area - he would develop and hone his ideas on the important role that culture plays in the lives of individuals and especially in their careers.

Dr. Pope is Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Thomas Jefferson Fellow of Counseling and Family Therapy at the University of Missouri - Saint Louis. His specialties include career counseling, addictions counseling, psychological testing, and multicultural counseling, especially LGBT, Native American, and Asian. He has been a consultant to individuals as well as business, industry, government, and education for over 35 years. He is a recipient of the Eminent Career Award, the highest and most prestigious career counseling award given in the US, and The Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest award given to faculty of the University of Missouri System.

He has written extensively on various aspects of counseling, including the career development of ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities; violence in the schools; teaching career counseling; psychological testing; international issues in counseling, and the history of and public policy issues in career counseling. His works have appeared as books, as conference presentations, and in such journals as the Journal of Counseling & Development, The Career Development Quarterly, The Counseling Psychologist, The Family Journal, and the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development.