Stephanie Simpson, PhD candidate
is the assistant program director at The Center for Urban Community Services in New York City and an adjunct professor at the University of the West Indies Open Campus. She has a master’s degree and is a licensed social worker with more than 19 years of clinical, training, and consulting experience in various settings working with underserved communities. She is a graduate of Mico Teachers College, where she earned a Diploma in Secondary Education. She is also a graduate from the University of the West Indies (B.S.W & MSW.) and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute for Clinical Social Work.
Stephanie’s career began with working with marginalized children and families as an elementary and high school teacher for over six years. Her career continued as a social worker in community development focused on community organizing, data collection, and participatory action research. She also worked as the director of social work at a state hospital in Jamaica, West Indies, for over seven years. Throughout her career, she has maintained the role of adjunct professor, teaching social work courses at the associate and bachelor level, both face-to-face and asynchronously for over 10 years. She has also worked as a guidance counselor and a social work investigator for children treated for abuse at a state hospital. Her work in New York spans from foster care clinician to social worker with the homeless population to director of family services and assistant program director. Her areas of expertise include homelessness, immigration, co-occurring disorders, stress, anxiety and depression, grief and loss, family/relationship issues, and personal growth. She especially enjoys working with the geriatric population as well as children and families.
Stephanie utilizes a psychodynamic approach to therapy, focusing on the psychological roots of emotional suffering. Her hallmarks are self-reflection and self-examination and the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient’s life. Her goal is not only to alleviate the most obvious symptoms but to help people lead healthier lives. She desires to work alongside others to assist them in healing from trauma, building self-worth, improving communication in their relationships, and reaching their goals.