Building Professional Excellence

Kathy Shoemaker, M.A., Ed.S., NCC, ACS, LPC, CPS

Kathy Shoemaker is a licensed professional counselor and school counselor in New Jersey, as well as a National Certified Counselor (NCC) and Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS). As a doctoral candidate at Montclair State University in the Counselor Education program, she is focused on the synergistic relationship between neuroscience, counseling and learning and the implications for clients and students. She has trained in interpersonal neurobiology through the Mindsight Institute.

For two decades, Ms. Shoemaker has worked with children and adolescents in school and community settings promoting healthy developmental trajectories. As a prevention specialist and school counselor, she teaches brain-based concepts and uses mindfulness interventions with students individually, in groups and in the classroom to help overcome academic, behavioral and emotional obstacles to feeling successfully engaged in school. In her work at an intensive outpatient substance abuse program for adolescent clients and their families, Ms. Shoemaker incorporated neuroscience into the psychoeducational component of treatment to support client self-awareness. Most recently, she has integrated neuroscience research into the counseling courses she teaches and has presented on neuroscience and mindfulness in a variety of forums to support neuro-informed counseling. Ms. Shoemaker will teach in Rider University’s counseling program starting fall of 2016.

Q & A

Anneliese A. Singh, Ph.D., LPC, NCC

Anneliese A. Singh is an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development Services and program coordinator of the Counseling and Student Personnel Services doctoral program at the University of Georgia. Dr. Singh is past president of the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Counseling (ALGBTIC) where her presidential initiatives included the development of counseling competencies for working with transgender clients in counseling, supporting queer people of color, and ensuring safe schools for LGBTQQ+ youth.

Dr. Singh is a cofounder of the Georgia Safe Schools Coalition, an organization that works at the intersection of heterosexism, racism, sexism, and other oppressions to create safe school environments in Georgia, and has been honored with more than 11 national awards for her work in community-building. She also founded the Trans Resilience Project to translate findings from her over 10 years of research on the resilience that transgender people develop to navigate societal oppression. She is a co-primary investigator on a multi-site (Atlanta, New York, San Francisco) longitudinal study investigating transgender identity development, risk, and resilience, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Singh actively works on being a better ally to transgender people and developing empowering spaces for people of color who have survived sexual abuse, and has worked on initiatives to end child sexual abuse in South Asian/Indian communities. Dr. Singh is a Sikh American and passionately believes in and strives to live by the ideals of Dr. King’s beloved community, as well as Audre Lorde’s quote: “Without community, there is no liberation.”

Q & A

Donna Dannenfelser, Ed.D., NCC, MAC

Dr. Donna Dannenfelser received her master’s in counseling from Hofstra University before receiving her Ph.D. and Ed.D. from Long Island University and Dowling College, respectively. Dr. Dannenfelser has a unique career journey as a counselor; she worked for the New York Jets and even had a TV show based on her life. Necessary Roughness, the USA Network drama, ended its three-season run in November 2013 with an average of four million viewers. During this time, it earned accolades, including a 2012 Golden Globe nomination for star Callie Thorne, and the Voice Award for raising mental health awareness. It drew recognition for tackling controversial subjects drawn from the real world of professional sports, including illegal performance-enhancing drugs and gay athletes.

The show centered around Dr. Donna’s unique role as the first female mental health clinician to bring hypnotherapy to an NFL team in the 90s. She has been the subject of frequent profiles, both during the show’s run and her years with the New York Jets.

Dr. Donna regularly appears as an expert guest on television news programs. She was featured on The Dr. Oz Show, where she spoke about positive thoughts and how they keep us healthy. She has also joined Regis Philbin on ESPN’s Crowd Goes Wild, on which she spoke about athletes and their reliance on superstitions. She is the featured therapist on Flipping Out, with Jeff Lewis. She is also a sports correspondent to TMZ Sports, Bloomberg News, and Today. She is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post.

Dr. Donna is the author of the international bestselling Game On!: What I learned During My Time As The Shrink To the NY Jets – How To Achieve Anything You Want In Life! Dr. Donna is currently a keynote speaker and has her private practice in Encino, California.

Q & A

David Capuzzi, Ph.D., NCC, LPC

David Capuzzi is a graduate of Florida State University and licensed as a counselor in Oregon. He is certified by the National Board for Certified Counselors as a National Certified Counselor. Currently, Dr. Capuzzi is a core faculty member in the clinical mental health counseling degree program in counselor education and supervision at Walden University as well as a senior faculty associate in the Department of Counseling and Human Services at Johns Hopkins University. He is professor emeritus at Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon. From 2007–2009, he served as affiliate professor at Pennsylvania State University. He is past president of the American Counseling Association (ACA).

A frequent keynote and workshop presenter at professional conferences and institutes, Dr. Capuzzi has also consulted with a variety of school districts and community agencies on initiating prevention and intervention strategies for adolescents at risk for suicide. He has facilitated the development of suicide prevention, crisis management and postvention programs in communities throughout the United States; provides training on the topics of youth at risk, grief and loss, group work and other topics; and serves as an invited adjunct faculty member at other universities as time permits. He is the first recipient of ACA's Kitty Cole Human Rights Award and a recipient of the Leona Tyler Award in Oregon. He was inducted as an ACA fellow in 2008, and was the 2010 recipient of ACA’s Kathleen and Gilbert Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person. In 2011, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus by the College of Education at Florida State University.

Dr. Capuzzi has co-authored or co-edited 10 textbooks used in counselor education programs.

Q & A

Cynthia Miller, Ph.D., LPC

Cynthia Miller is a licensed professional counselor (LPC) with over 15 years of experience providing individual and group counseling to adults in institutional, community and forensic settings. She received her B.A. in psychology and political science from Alma College and completed her M.Ed. in counseling in higher education and her Ph.D. in counselor education and supervision at the University of Virginia. Dr. Miller is assistant professor and clinical coordinator at South University–Richmond.

Dr. Miller began her counseling career working with women in a domestic violence shelter, where she began learning about trauma. She later worked in a women’s prison, where she learned about the complex interplay between trauma, addiction and mental illness. While there, she received training in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and developed a modified DBT program for the facility. Her dissertation explored the common practices of supervisors providing supervision for licensure and provided a blueprint for practicing clinicians providing supervision to licensure candidates.

Dr. Miller's clinical interests include complex trauma, borderline personality disorder, clinical supervision and psychopharmacology, and she has presented on these topics at the state, regional and national levels. Dr. Miller resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she maintains a small private practice. She welcomes opportunities for collaboration and is always happy to hear from colleagues in the field.

Courtney Armstrong, M.Ed., NCC, LPC

Courtney Armstrong is a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee and a National Certified Counselor (NCC) who specializes in grief and trauma recovery. With a career spanning more than two decades, she owns and directs Tamarisk Counseling Center, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and has helped thousands of clients overcome trauma, grief and anxiety, and experience deep personal transformation. Ms. Armstrong also offers face-to-face and online training to mental health professionals, showing them how to help their clients to clear underlying trauma that may be affecting their health, their relationships and their lives in general. Her professional expertise has made her a much sought-after media guest, appearing on CBS Radio News, NPR, Shrink Rap Radio and The Trauma Therapist Podcast, among others. Ms. Armstrong has also contributed to professional publications such as Psychotherapy Networker, The Neuropsychotherapist and Counseling Today, and is the author of Transforming Traumatic Grief (2011) and her latest book, The Therapeutic “Aha!”: 10 Strategies for Getting Your Clients Unstuck (2015).

Q & A

Asha Dickerson, Ph.D., NCC, LPC

Asha Dickerson is a professor in the Counseling Department at Argosy University Atlanta. She is a National Certified Counselor and a licensed professional counselor in Georgia. Dr. Dickerson is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and alumna of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She received her Ph.D. in counselor education and supervision from Auburn University. Dr. Dickerson was an inaugural fellow of the NBCC Foundation Minority Fellowship Program.

Prior to entering academia, Dr. Dickerson served as the family and community service coordinator for Fellowship House, Inc., a private, nonprofit, substance abuse recovery program designed to serve the special needs of individuals who suffer from alcoholism or drug addiction and other mental illnesses. While in this position, she created and expanded multiple programs to enrich the lives of individuals who have family members suffering with substance addiction.

Dr. Dickerson is very active in several community, state and national organizations and currently serves as secretary for the Association of Multicultural Counseling and Development and chair of the NBCC Minority Fellowship Program Advisory Council. Her clinical and academic specialties include social and cultural diversity and counseling addicted families.

Q & A

Theodore P. Remley Jr., Ph.D., J.D., NCC, LPC

Theodore P. Remley Jr. is a professor of counseling at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. He is a National Certified Counselor (NCC) and a member of Chi Sigma Iota, the international counseling honor society. He is licensed as a professional counselor in Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi, and is licensed to practice law in Virginia and Florida. Dr. Remley holds a Ph.D. in counselor education from the University of Florida and a law degree (J.D.) from Catholic University, in Washington, DC.Dr. Remley is the author or coauthor of a number of articles, books and book chapters related to legal and ethical issues in counseling. He has worked with NBCC-International to offer counseling institutes in Bhutan, Argentina, Ireland and Malawi. Dr. Remley has held full-time counseling faculty positions at George Mason University, Mississippi State University, the University of New Orleans and Old Dominion University. Dr. Remley is former executive director and a fellow of the American Counseling Association (ACA). He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision.

Q & A