Hi, I’m Amanda Baden.
Amanda was born in Hong Kong and was adopted by white parents in the U.S. Amanda has been a practicing licensed psychologist since 2001 and her practice is based in New York City (licensed psychologist in New York and New Jersey). Amanda is currently seeing clients in-person in her Manhattan office but she also works with people throughout New York and New Jersey. Amanda has specialized in working with adoptees and their families since she opened her practice. She believes in the power of self-understanding, the importance of enhancing adoptees’ racial and cultural lens, the need to support adoptees’ identity development, and the crucial role that critical thinking plays in helping adoptees’ build their own narratives about their adoption. Amanda focuses on developing coping skills to deal with adoptees’ histories of trauma, building communication skills to enhance familial and romantic relationships, and connecting adoptees to the adoptee community and perspectives.
Through her additional roles as a researcher and professor, Amanda has dedicated her career to building skills for therapists to be trained in working competently and ethically with adoptees and their families. Amanda hopes that adoptees will feel supported as they consider important questions about birth family search, adoptive identity, parenting, romantic and platonic relationships, adoptive family connections, career trajectories, and identity development, and oppression.
Professional Bio
Amanda Baden received her doctorate in counseling psychology from Michigan State University and she is currently a Professor in the Counseling Program and the Doctoral Program Director of the Ph.D. In Counseling Program at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey.
Dr. Baden has both personal and professional experience with adoption. She was adopted from Hong Kong and raised in a transracially adoptive family. Her experiences both personally and professionally have lead her to focus her research and clinical practice on adoption triad members, transracial/international adoption issues, racial and cultural identity, and multicultural counseling competence.
Dr. Baden has written extensively on adoption issues including having created a model of identity for transracial and international adoptees called the Cultural-Racial Identity Model. She is one of the editors of the book entitled, The Handbook of Adoption: Implications for Researchers, Practitioners, and Families (Sage Publications).
Dr. Baden is the co-chair of the Biennial Adoption Conferences held by the Adoption Initiative at St. John’s University in New York City. She serves on several advisory boards for adoption organizations including the Adoption Initiative (at St. John’s University), Families with Children from China, Chinese Adoptee Links, and the Chinese Adult Adoptee Worldwide Reunion. She was a regular columnist for Families with Children from China Journals across the US and Canada and for Mei Magazine (project now ended), a publication for Chinese adopted children. In 2005, Dr. Baden was chosen by her Congressman, Jerrold Nadler, and the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute as an Angel in Adoption.
In 2021, Dr. Baden was named a Fellow of Division 17 (Counseling Psychology) of the American Psychological Association. She was the recipient of the John D. Black Award in 2014 for the Outstanding Practice of Counseling Psychology and was named the Outstanding Graduate Advisor for Montclair State University in 2017. Dr. Baden served as a Senior Fellow for the Donaldson Adoption Institute, an independent adoption research and policy organization. She is currently on the Advisory Board for the Rudd Adoption Research Program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She also serves as a Board Member for the New York State Board of Psychology. She is on the editorial boards of the journals, Adoption Quarterly and Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless.
Dr. Baden’s clinical specializations include counseling adoption triad members, transracial adoptees, and individuals having multiracial backgrounds. She lives in New York City and is a licensed psychologist in New York and New Jersey with a clinical practice in Manhattan.
