I have been working in career counseling and mental health for fifteen years, but the majority of my experience has been in colleges and universities. I love working in higher education, and I credit my various roles on campuses in NY and NJ with sparking my interest in and love for working on career and gender-based issues.

As the former coordinator for a campus Women’s Center and a member of a group that created a campus Bystander Intervention program, I learned what abuse and assault look like and how different it is for each person. I have put together several violence prevention campaigns and facilitated psycho-educational groups to increase awareness and discuss instances of intimate partner violence.

Sometimes, what we experience as women isn’t necessarily violent, but it is discriminatory. That is something I have experienced firsthand, and it is why you can trust me on your journey to empowerment. I am a daughter, mother, wife, sister, and most importantly, I am a woman. A woman who knows what is like to be treated “less-than”, to be discriminated against because of her gender, and to struggle with self-esteem because of negative internalized messages. This pushed me to continue my education to become Dr. Kelly and focus my research on gender-based violence. This is also why I have completed multiple trainings toward the NJ Domestic Violence Specialist certificate and why I was a trained Confidential Sexual Violence Advocate in Essex County, NJ. I know that traumatic experiences (including but certainly not limited to abuse, violence, and discrimination) are often the root cause of feeling powerless, so I also became a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional to learn effective ways to work with survivors of trauma.