About
As a licensed psychologist and an Asian-American woman, Dr. Cheryl Forster (she/her) brings a strong and unique set of skills to her work as an intercultural trainer. Her subject matter expertise, love of learning, and warmth come across in her workshops. It was her commitment to the learning process and desire to make a difference that led her to establish Bookmark Connections in 2012.
Cheryl began working at Portland State University’s (PSU) Center for Student Health and Counseling in 2004, where she is the Coordinator of Diversity and Psychology Programs. Her educational background includes a master’s degree from Tufts University in applied developmental psychology, and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Pacific University. Moreover, she has pursued postgraduate studies in intercultural communication from the highly respected Intercultural Communication Institute (ICI). She attended ICI’s Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) for 11 summers, and in 2014, she earned her advanced-level Intercultural Practitioner Certificate. All in all, Cheryl has completed over 800 hours in advanced intercultural education; she puts a lot into her own learning, in order to be able to provide quality workshops for her participants. She has been honored to learn from many of the leaders and often the theorists themselves in the intercultural field. Cheryl also had served as SIIC’s mental health consultant.
Cheryl is a former Association of Counseling Center Training Agencies’ (ACCTA) Diversity Scholar, and served on the ACCTA Board (2017 to 2019). In the spring of 2018, she taught a class at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and through the Cultural Intelligence Center, became a CQ Certified Facilitator. She also completed the Japan Intercultural Institute’s Brain, Mind & Culture Masterclass Certification in 2021. Moreover, Cheryl is a contributing author in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence (2015), and she is currently working on an article about applying a Polyvagal informed approach to intercultural work for mental health professionals.
Other professional interests include stress, trauma, attachment from an interpersonal neurobiology perspective, and supervision and training (and more recently, ambiguous loss). Cheryl has completed advanced training in Polyvagal Theory and EMDR therapy; she uses a trauma-informed approach in all of her work.
All in all, Cheryl’s personal experiences as a Korean transracial and transnational adoptee, growing up in an immigrant family, and being one of the only people of color in her hometown, led her to diversity, social justice, and intercultural work. As a way to improve her sociolinguistic intercultural competence and connect more to her birth culture, Cheryl also takes Korean language lessons whenever she can.
감사합니다.
