Sailume Walo-Roberts

Sailume Walo-Roberts is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt. She is a counselor educator, licensed professional counselor, and community-based scholar. She earned her PhD in Counselor Education from Montclair State University, her MA in Counseling from New Jersey City University, and her BA in English from the University of Rochester. Her work is rooted in the belief that culture is not an “add-on” to counseling, but the context through which identity, human suffering, resilience, healing, and meaning-making are understood.

Dr. Walo-Roberts’ scholarship, teaching, clinical practice, and advocacy center historically marginalized and under-resourced communities. Her research interests include trauma, refugee and immigrant mental health, gender-based violence, racialization and identity development, collective memory, communal storytelling, intergenerational healing, and multicultural and decolonizing approaches to counseling. Her teaching is experiential, relational, and justice-oriented, with emphasis on ethical witnessing, collective care, and culturally responsive clinical formation. She has published and presented nationally and internationally on trauma, social justice, counselor education, race and ethnicity, gender, refugee experiences, and decolonizing approaches to mental health. She also serves as President of Counselors for Social Justice, a division of the American Counseling Association.

Dr. Walo-Roberts brings more than twenty years of clinical experience across hospital, community mental health, sexual violence, and private-practice settings. Before joining NYU full time, she served for a decade as director of a countywide rape crisis center, providing counseling and advocacy to survivors while leading prevention, community education, and systems-level initiatives. Her work included service on a New Jersey Attorney General committee that developed statewide standards for the treatment of sexual assault survivors. She has also taught at Drexel University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Montclair State University, and maintains a private practice serving refugees, asylees, and individuals navigating trauma, migration, acculturation stress, and relational concerns.