Rebecca Toporek
Welcome!
I have been a faculty member in the Department of Counseling since 2003 and am personally and professionally committed to a lifelong journey to address white supremacy in myself, my profession and my community. I identify as a white, cisgender, intermittently disabled woman who is a mother and a partner in a long term heterosexual relationship. I use she/her/they/their pronouns. I live in what is now called the San Francisco East Bay, unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone people and work to support rematriation of the land.
Teaching
I am a Professor in the Department of Counseling at San Francisco State University. I love to teach and I am inspired by our students. I have taught introductory and advanced career counseling, social and cultural foundations, life span development, legal and ethical issues, assessment, beginning and advanced internship.
Community
I am involved in a number of San Francisco community organizations and initiatives, most predominantly Employment Services of Project Homeless Connect and invite career counseling students to join me in providing pop-up resume services. There are a number of other community organizations I am committed to supporting on a personal basis including Save West Berkeley Shellmounds (Indians Organizing for Change) and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). I very active in professional associations including the American Counseling Association, Counselors for Social Justice, the Association of Multicultural Counseling and Development (specifically the Native American Concerns Group), and the Society of Counseling Psychology.
Research
My research interests include social justice and multicultural training, attitudes toward race and poverty, the role of systemic interventions in addressing discrimination, and career and college counseling. I am currently working on better understanding how counselors and psychologists navigate harassment and backlash for their anti-oppression work. More importantly, this study will create a toolkit to support people engaging in this work.
I was fortunate to participate in the founding of Counselors for Social Justice of the American Counseling Association and was a co-editor of the 2009 Journal of Counseling and Development: Special Section on ACA Advocacy Competencies, ACA Advocacy Competencies: A social justice framework for counselors, the Handbook for Social Justice in Counseling and Psychology and the Handbook of Multicultural Competencies. Other publications include numerous chapters and articles in the areas of advocacy, multicultural counseling, supervision, training, and cultural equivalence in career assessment. I was founding co-editor of the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology and served as a co-editor for the first decade of the journal. My colleague, Dr. Muninder Ahluwalia, and I recently released a compilation of video interviews Helping counselors and psychologists as advocates and activists and published the workbook, Taking action: Creating social change through strength, solidarity, strategy (Toporek & Ahluwalia, 2020) and sustainability. Our newest book, a Workbook for social action for counselors, psychologists, and helping professionals (Toporek, Ahluwalia, Bines, & Rojas Arauz, 2025), is designed to assist people in the helping professions to influence systems level change to support their clients and communities.
My Training and Experience
I received my doctorate degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Masters degree in Community Counseling from the University of Oregon. I worked at the University of California, Berkeley, in Counseling and Psychological Services as a predoctoral intern and postdoctoral fellow.
Prior to receiving my doctoral degree, I was blessed to work as a counselor and administrator at Mission College for two years and DeAnza College for 6 years. Community college counseling is very close to my heart. The people who challenged me to start a lifetime journey of multicultural awareness came from DeAnza College especially Jacqueline Reza and Shirley Kawazoe. Other wonderful mentors have continued to challenge and support me and for that I am so thankful. Thanks to Janet Helms, Don Pope-Davis, Derald Wing Sue, Patricia Arredondo, Allen Ivey, Thomas Parham, Judy Daniels, Michael D'Andrea, Judy Lewis, Will Liu, and many, many, many others.