Maureen Walker

Education

Walker received her B.A. and M.Ed. from Mercer University and her Ph.D. from Georgia State University. Prior to her graduate studies in psychology, Walker worked in public education and served as executive director of a women’s center that provided career and leadership development training for women. Her passion for helping women to live in empowering relationships provided the focus of much of her graduate and early career work. In addition, her experience as a facilitator and organizer of civic dialogues is reflected in her commitment to applying the conceptual models of Relational-Cultural Theory to the work of healing social and cultural divides.

Current Work

In addition to her clinical practice and publications, Walker conducts workshops nationally on developing relational intelligence in organizations, empowering relational leadership, practicing culturally competent psychotherapy, and connecting spirituality and social activism. Other teaching and publication projects involve exploring linkages between social-cultural identities and relational development, the impact of disordered power relations on mental health, as well as the interface of faith, social justice, and relational practice.

Selected Publications

Walker is co-editor of two books -- How Connections Heal (Guilford Press, 2004) and The Complexity of Connection (Guilford Press, 2004). She has written several articles and textbook chapters and is the author of several working papers in the Stone Center Works in Progress Series. Her publications include:

• Contributing Author, Diversity and Development: Critical Contexts that Our Lives and Relationships, Brooks-Cole, 2004.
• Contributing Author, Diversity in College Settings, Routlege Press, 1999.
• Contributing Author, The Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women , Beacon Press, 2003.
• Contributor, Managing Across Difference, M. Gentile, (CD-Rom management training product by Harvard Business School Publishing, 1996).
• Racial Identification and Feminism: A Synthesis of Perspectives for a Focused Group Intervention, Cross-Cultural Counseling and Psychotherapy Roundtable Teachers College (Published Proceedings of 1991 Symposium).

Stone Center Works in Progress:

• Race, Self, and Society: Relational challenges in a Culture of Disconnection
• Therapist’s Authenticity
• Shame and Humiliation: From Isolation to Relational Transformation
• Racial Images and Relational Possibilities
• How Therapy Helps When the Culture Hurts
• Power and Effectiveness: Envisioning an Alternative Paradigm