Faculty
Windz Centre Staff
Karen Young, M.S.W., R.S.W. Angela Miceli
Director Marketing & Communications Specialist
Windz Centre Faculty
Karen Young, M.S.W., R.S.W.
Director
Karen is the Director of Windz Centre. She is an institute faculty teaching many of the Windz workshops and certificate programs. She organizes and designs training, oversees research projects, provides narrative therapy supervision and consults and trains walk-in clinics. For over 16 years, Karen supervised and provided single session therapy at a walk-in therapy clinic.
Karen has provided consultation and clinical training to many organizations in Ontario, across Canada, and internationally regarding re-structuring service pathways to include brief services such as walk-in clinics. She has been teaching narrative and brief narrative therapy for over 30 years and is a therapist with 36 years of experience working with children and families. Karen has contributed numerous publications
regarding applications of brief narrative therapy and research in brief services and walk-in therapy. She co-authored the Brief Services policy paper for the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health (Duvall, J., Young, K., Kays-Burden, A., 2012), No more, no less: Brief Mental Health Services for Children and Youth. Karen was the lead in the first in Ontario Brief Services Evaluation Project, 2014, a multi-organization evaluation of brief services.
Karen has a great deal of knowledge and passion for narrative practices and is one of the few trainers who can teach the traditional aspects of the approach and new evolutions in the thinking. She has particular expertise in the application of narrative in brief and walk-in therapies. Karen is regarded as a trainer who conveys narrative ideas in very clear and useable ways.
Shari Lecker, M.Ed., RP
Shari has a master of education specializing in counselling psychology from McGill University. She is a Registered Psychotherapist with 30 years of experience working with children, youth, individuals, families, and parents and caregivers. For 18 years Shari provided single session and brief therapy, in addition to clinical supervision and management support at a children’s mental health walk-in clinic.
Shari is a clinical supervisor to social workers, counsellors, therapists, and psychotherapists. She has a passion for training and mentoring counsellors and therapists and has supervised the practicum placements of numbers of university social work and therapy graduate students. As she believes that the therapeutic relationship is the major agent of change, in her clinical supervision Shari brings a particular focus to the safe and effective use of self and encourages the development of the therapeutic presence.
Shari adheres to a strength based, client focused approach in her clinical intervention. She has a strong theoretical background and extensive applied practice using evidence-based models such as Narrative Therapy, Family Systems, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, attachment focused therapy, and complex trauma therapy. Since Shari’s first introduction to Narrative Therapy, practices that are transparent, collaborative, and non-pathologizing resonated deeply with her and she immersed herself in Narrative workshops, readings, and practice.
Today Shari supports the practice of those who consult her in ways that enhance their Narrative skill development through clinical supervision and as a faculty for the Windz Centre teaching brief and narrative therapy and a postmodern use of self.
MacGyver Kou, M.Sc., RP
MacGyver is a psychotherapist and researcher that specializes in the exploration of diversity in family relationships, sexuality & attraction, gender & identity, acculturation & migration, youth & development, and social justice. He identifies as a postmodern and poststructuralist clinician that is informed by a wide array of therapeutic modalities, with a particular focus in Narrative Therapy. As MacGyver enjoys research and learning, he is also influenced by strengths-based perspectives, attachment, and neuroscience.
MacGyver's interest in psychotherapy, psychology, and mental health work was sparked by the unique experiences that came along with the diasporic and intersectional identity he inhabits. As Narrative Therapy's roots were founded in social justice and challenging the inequities found in society's systems of power, MacGyver found resonation with this modality. MacGyver currently utilizes these narrative perspectives to explore and support the diverse experiences of those he trains, supervises, and works with.
MacGyver holds a Masters of Science in Couple and Family Therapy from the University of Guelph, a distinguished program that was accredited by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and the Canadian Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. MacGyver has also completed the Brief and Narrative Therapy Certificate Program and the Advanced Brief and Narrative Therapy Certificate program at the Windz Centre.
MacGyver has experience working in non-profit mental health, community-based, and private practice settings. Currently, MacGyver's private practice work specializes in working with diverse individuals, couples, and families.
Guest Faculty
Jill Freedman, MSW
Jill Freedman is Co-Director of Evanston Family Therapy Center, a founding member of the Chicago Center for Family Health and an international faculty member of Dulwich Centre.
She has co-authored more than 30 book chapters and articles and 3 books with Gene Combs--Symbol, story and ceremony: Using metaphor in individual and family therapy, Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities, and Narrative therapy with couples.... and a whole lot more!
She teaches narrative therapy locally and internationally and has a therapy practice in the Chicago area where she also consults to schools and social service agencies.