I received both my B.S. degree in business management and my Master of Professional Studies in Counseling Psychology from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. I am a Certified, Level IV, Addictions Counselor ( CAADE #155970-IV ) a Licensed Advanced Alcohol & Drug Counselor (LR01700815) and an Internationally Certified Clinical Supervisor. I am also a Certified Hypnotherapist and a Certified Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming.
I have had a private practice as a Counselor and Coach since the middle 1980s. Currently, my practice focuses on coaching and advising business and professional clients, who are recovering from alcoholism and addictions to work and live at their exquisite best. I also consult with Sober Living and Drug and Alcohol Treatment facilities, writing the license proposal, designing the elements of a successful program, guiding the start-up process including hiring of staff and advising on general business start-up concerns and on-going operations.
In my private practice, Over the years I have assisted countless clients walk through the trials, tribulations and joys of their lives. I have worked with Hollywood celebs that needed assistance with stage fright and with the fears and hassles that quick success and fame can bring along with their ill-fated attempts to cope via alcoholism and addictions. I coached executives on how to better work and communicate with their employees and bosses. I, also have coached Parents of Teens and Young Adults,, teaching and coaching effective parenting. Many clients, including parents of teenagers, have credited my coaching with being the critical factor that allowed them to successfully walk through difficult personal relationships and transitional times in their lives. I have an ability to intuitively know the “rest of the story,” and combining that with my skill as a certified hypnotherapist and Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner, I have been able to serve my clients well. Because of my skills in coaching the “inner game,” I am regularly called on to assist clients who are having problems with getting their insides in sync with their aspirations.
In 1971, while still in grad school, I founded Alpha House, a residential therapeutic community for drug addicts and alcoholics in Ithaca, N.Y. and was its Executive Director for four years. In those four intensive years, I accumulated over 8,000 hours of group counseling experience and more than twice as many hours counseling individuals.
I then turned my attention to a much neglected group of teenagers, the street kids. Since then, I have developed a methodology called “Counseling On Demand,” that enables therapists to reach and assist the most unreachable and incorrigible of street kids. In my programs, a single team of therapists have been able to move an average of 25 adolescents and young adults per year, off of the streets. Over the years, I have designed and run programs that have effectively worked with youth and young adults of many backgrounds, such as middle and upper class white kids in Ithaca, N.Y., male street hustlers and gay and Lesbian youth in Phoenix, AZ. and Hollywood, CA and Mexican-American kids, in Phoenix, AZ.
In April 1995, I founded and was the Executive Director of Los Angeles Youth Supportive Services, Inc. (LAYSS) because there was a need for a social and supportive services agency to work with adolescents and young adults in Hollywood, CA, who, through circumstances beyond their control, were on their own without any semblance of support and guidance from responsible adults. Over the next 15 years we moved an average of 25 young folks per year, off the streets and on to a better life. I also continued working with private counseling clients during that period.
Through the years, I have done many interesting things. I am a trained community drum circle facilitator and a percussionist. I am a press, commercial and fine art photographer. I was an Air Force officer, including a tour in Viet Nam. As a Fuels Management Officer, I was responsible for all the petroleum products used on an air force base. In my off-duty time, I raced motorcycles in the Mid-West and had the largest live collection of poisonous and non-poisonous reptiles in Viet Nam. I has been a private pilot; a progressive-rock disc jockey; an actor, a singer, an ice hockey player; a licensed, single-parent foster parent and raised 13 foster teens and an adopted son; a practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan; an urban farmer; a welding sculptor and most recently, an author of a biographical novel, “The Street Shrink Chronicles”. I have had other work experiences including being a farm hand, a car salesman; an undercover narcotics investigator, a private detective, an owner/operator of a mobile windshield repair business and a facilities manager of a manufacturing plant. Other than that, I have led a pretty dull life.
My Resume can be viewed HERE.