Stacey began as a program consultant with the NC Center for Resilience & Learning in 2019, currently primarily serving Greene County. Stacey is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and owner of a private psychotherapy practice in Raleigh, NC. Her life’s passion is helping schools and families create and sustain healing communities where children with complex needs and stressors grow into healthy, connected, engaged adults.
Stacey earned her Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012 with specializations in School Social Work and Child and Family Mental Health. Since then, she has gained a variety of career experience as a psychotherapist, school-based program manager, counseling supervisor, trauma-informed consultant, and trainer in the Raleigh-Durham area, NC, Boston, MA, and in the United Kingdom.
Outside of her work passions, Stacey loves learning about different cultures and places through travel, spending time with friends and family, walking through nature, and exploring the arts through dance, music, drawing, painting, improvisational theater, and writing.
I have worked as a consultant with the NC Resilience & Learning Project through the Public School Forum of North Carolina since March of 2019. At that time, I was just returning to my North Carolina roots after living and working for four years in Boston, Massachusetts, and then in London, United Kingdom for another two and a half years.
Two times a Tarheel, I graduated with my B.A. in International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006. After a year with Public Allies coordinating an afterschool program for students in public housing in Chapel Hill, followed by 3 years supporting neighborhood organizations and University-Community relations through Duke University’s Office of Community Affairs, I decided to get my Master of Social Work. I graduated with an M.S.W. from UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Social Work in 2012, specializing in School Social Work and Child and Family Mental Health. It was from there that I took a job in Boston, MA, working at a nonprofit agency providing school-based psychotherapy, programming, case management and consultation in Boston Public Schools. By way of a lucky surprise, I had the opportunity in 2016 to live and work in London, United Kingdom. While there, I worked for a nonprofit organization as a manager and provider of therapeutic services at an elementary school. I loved the staff and the students and felt at home there. I was also contracted by another organization to help design and deliver trainings for special needs schools and other care organizations across England.
Since returning to North Carolina, I have been so honored to connect with the incredible team of people at the Public School Forum and the Resilience & Learning Project, and to be a part of their meaningful and impactful work across my home state. I have also established my own private practice in Raleigh, offering psychotherapy to children and adults in person and over telehealth. I love continuing to work directly with children and families, learning from them and helping them discover healing and healthy ways of relating to themselves and each other.
The Passion Behind the Work
My passion behind the work that I do stems all the way back to my childhood. While growing up in a home which modeled a lot of love and reliability, I was a sensitive kid who often felt like an outsider for reasons I didn’t understand. I often connected to others who felt that way, or who were looking to understand and to be understood. I discovered I felt less alone when helping others feel less alone. I was also very involved in my church youth group, and participated in service trips to places across the state, country and once to Latin America. Time spent in service and in spirituality helped me connect to the systemic issues impacting peoples’ daily lives, and the role my own life could play. My career has evolved over time as I have followed my passion to help co-create a world in which every person grows up empowered in their lives and knowing they are not alone.
What is my “why?”
I discovered my “why” when working with students in Boston Public Schools. I had chosen the field of social work within education out of the belief that if every student could find success in school, they would be more connected and empowered throughout their lives. In Boston, I provided school-based therapy to children who attended separate schools specifically for students with “emotional impairment.” I learned that at least 90% of the students enrolled at these schools had a history of trauma that was complex and often intergenerational. It was here that I learned how social injustice and inequity, as well as related environmental stressors, give rise to the effects of complex trauma and derail a child’s healthy development. It was also here that I learned about a school’s power to help reverse those same effects by providing a trauma-informed environment that could provide the consistency, understanding and community children need to feel safe. I also noticed the potential of schools to leverage relationships to empower students to grow.
Since then, my “why” has always been the same. My weekly hour with a child as their therapist can’t have the same defining impact as the hours they spend with their community. While therapy is a powerful force for healing and growth, a child’s development depends on repetition and on the interactions they have with, and see modeled by, the people who shape their daily lives. Each school has the potential to be the community that defines a child’s development. And when school staff understand how to create trauma-informed environments and become therapeutic agents in their students’ lives, each child has a chance to grow up connected and empowered. My “why”’ is to be the supportive arms around the adults and educators we work with who are the arms around our students. We are all a part of the village it takes to raise every child.