Emi Sumida-Brown Oral History Interview

Emi Sumida-Brown describes her upbringing in Hiroshima, Japan, her move to the United States following her high school graduation, and her undergraduate and graduate careers. She delves into the experiences she had which sparked her passion for counseling and group therapy. She discusses her professional career at Oregon State University and all of the advancements she has made in the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at OSU. She is currently the group coordinator for CAPS and she works to plan and advertise new groups within CAPS each term. As a group coordinator, she also works on planning the annual World Mental Health Day event and she attends the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) conferences during the year.

Sumida-Brown also discusses potential plans for her future. She believes that she has established her work in the United States, and would like to take her work to Japan. She wants to share her academic and professional experiences as a counselor in psychological services in Japan because she believes there is a lot of opportunity to improve mental health education. An additional area of interest she would like to explore is sharing her story of growing up in Hiroshima, following the atomic bombing.