National Office for School Counselor Advocacy (NOSCA)

Vivian V. Lee is currently the senior director of counselor advocacy at NOSCA, focusing on equity and systemic change from a school district, state and national perspective.

Presently, Lee’s work centers on training school counselors to become culturally responsive practitioners who can engage in the systemic change necessary to meet the needs of all student populations. Lee works with counselors, district leaders, and state departments of education, professional organizations and counselor educators to advance equity-focused counseling practice.

Lee’s work promotes alignment of school counseling practice with district, state and national goals for increased rigor and college and career readiness. Her K-12 through training focused on the use of data for equity, cultural competence, strategic planning and systemic change, and college and career readiness counseling.

Lee is a co-director of the NOSCA-CSCOR Fellows Program, a new national initiative designed to build a community of young scholars by supporting doctoral-level counseling students who are interested in pursuing dissertations in the area of college readiness counseling. Since 2004, she has served as adjunct professor at University of Maryland, College Park.

She is a former teacher, secondary school counselor, director of guidance and counseling and full-time counselor educator at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Va. and the University of Scranton, Pa. Lee is the past president of the Maryland Association for Counseling and Development, served as membership chair for the Pennsylvania Counseling Association, trainer for The Education Trust National Initiative for Transforming School Counseling and has authored and coauthored articles and book chapters on developing school counseling programs, conflict resolution and violence, and group counseling. Lee worked in public education for 24 years before joining the College Board in 2004. She received her master's and doctoral degrees in counseling from the University of Virginia.

Lee supported a collaborative library and school building project in Ghana, West Africa at the Tema Royal Preparatory School. The library, commissioned for use in 2005, is open to members of Community 7, which is served by the school. This project began as an outgrowth of her involvement in a Fulbright-Hays Scholars Group Project Abroad to Ghana, West Africa in 2001. She is a recipient of the O’Hana Award in 2008 from the Counselors for Social Justice.