Welcome to the season finale of the Who Cares… Podcast! 🎉

In this deeply provocative episode, Wendy sits down with Ronald Mah, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Educator, whose career is rooted in the belief that everyone deserves to be seen, valued, and understood.💡

Ronald and Wendy explore the profound impact of identity, connection, and advocacy in shaping the human experience. Ronald shares personal stories of his Asian American identity and how a teacher in his early life inspired his journey into education and human services. For Ronald, the ability to make others feel important and valued is not just a career—it’s a calling.

During their conversation, Ronald shares his approach to working with adolescents, balancing authority with relatability to create breakthroughs in communication and trust. He also dives into difficult but necessary conversations about how insecurities can fuel discrimination and dehumanization, offering a historical perspective on these issues.

Join us for this compelling finale episode as we reflect on what it means to care for others, to lift one another up, and to build bridges of understanding in our communities. 🌟

🔔 We are excited to announce Season 2 is already in the works! Subscribe and turn on notifications to catch it as soon as it drops and for even more bonus content until then!

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Get to Know Ronald Mah, LMFT:

Can you tell us about your background and what led you into this profession?
I am Ronald Mah, therapist, trainer, and educator… son, father, and husband… activist, “radical,” and interventionist… speaker and author. Being 4th of 5 kids of an Chinese immigrant working class family, who grew up primarily in a black community (and elementary school) in the sixties in Berkeley definitely shape my world view. That includes multi-culturalism, personal/family/community empowerment, social justice, and acceptance of others. My experiences of being different and not quite fitting in, give me compassion and perspective to that experience for so many clients. From following the implicit if not overt goals of the Asian-American towards science/math/technology careers, it was a wonderful Asian-American teacher late in high school that motivated me to be important to kids (others) as she made me and fellow students feel important. Initially, it was to be a teacher, so Social Science and Psychology undergraduate degrees at Cal lead to graduate school resulting in both elementary and high school teaching credentials. As Proposition 13 undercut school funding, I wrote Asian-American social studies curriculum for the Berkeley U.S.D., and then ended up teaching preschoolers. Then started my own school- first as family daycare and then as a preschool and daycare program. Eventually, as the kids were great, it became clear to me that intervening with the parents was key to real growth and health. Hence, my entry into the therapy world to become a Marriage Family and Child Counselor (now Marriage & Family Therapist)… at the program that I’ve been faculty for about 30 years.

I am driven to benefit people in their lives- to be happy, getting better, recovering, & growth. While I am a fairly sensitive, nurturing, and supportive person, I also want people to realize that lives are not unsolvable mysteries- that they can make sense of all of it: to learn how they came to be; to help them become more aware of self and feelings, thoughts, and behavior. To help others through the sometimes painful and frightening process of growth; a more complete and fulfilling life as an individual, as a partner, as a parent, as a family member, as a friend, as a colleague, and in the community. That is a logical process, as w/o emotions everything becomes pseudo-logical- that is, BS!

What Drives You Professionally and Personally?
I am driven to be for others what that teacher was for me back at the end of high school. To provoke, support, validate, and especially to empower them. I want to matter by helping them matter.

What Are Your 5 Core Values?
My core values are integrity, courage, making sense of self and others, effort/energy, balance and consistency (more than 5!)

What Motives You?
What motivates me is experiencing helping someone heal, grow, own themselves, and come to know and accept themselves. And having adventures! BTW, engaging with someone as a therapist IS an adventure!

Who is Ronald, the Person and the Therapist?
The person and the therapist I am, challenges self and others, seeks to be aware of self and take ownership, stretch and grind, works through depression, anxiety, and stress to keep on keeping! I am an educator, a therapist, an activist… a role model (for myself, striving to get the real me to live up to the ideal self; and for others, to see struggle, self-esteem and humility… their humanity).