OUR FOUNDER
As a Caribbean woman, Marsha I carries a powerful personal commitment to ensure that effective clinical services are created and are more readily available within Caribbean communities. In her current role as a family therapist, she serves a diverse population of clients with mental health diagnosis such as anxiety, depression, and schizoaffective disorders. She is a licensed mental health professional; the holder of a master’s degree in psychology; master’s degree in social work; certificate in “Adverse Childhood Experience and the Neurobiology of Trauma”, which focuses on effects of trauma on the psychic structure in early development; and a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology with a focus on community-based mental health and the intergenerational transmission of trauma.
Her community work includes, inter alia, working in the Intensive Support Program at the Center for Community Adjustment (CCA); a division of the Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) through Northshore Child and Family Guidance Center in New York. The primary goal of her current role at CCA is to provide clients with therapeutic care that is based in a systems approach, and which falls within the context of family work. The core focus of her work is to provide therapeutic services to families with a view of restoring and strengthening the emotional well being of children and families, thereby achieving a healthier community.
After Hurricane Irma ravaged numerous Caribbean islands, leaving many lives in ruins, Marsha founded “We Stand With Inc.”, a 501(3) c non-profit organization with the main focus of providing mental health support to school-aged children in an effort to abate the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress. The immediate objective of her efforts was to begin a pilot program, in collaboration with community leaders in the Caribbean, with plans to replicate the program regionally.