March 2019
In celebration of Women’s History Month, we are highlighting empowered women who are paving the road and empowering female leaders of the future.
Dr. Nicole St. Jean is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Director of Kovler Child Trauma Center, a program of Marjorie Kovler Center. Dr. St. Jean specializes in providing trauma-informed psychotherapeutic services and developing and delivering training and clinic resources to support youth and families who have experienced complex trauma, the majority of whom are from historically under served communities. This includes immigrant and refugee youth, adult survivors of torture, and youth and families who are part of the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In addition to her role with Kovler Child Trauma Center, Dr. St. Jean is a Research Associate at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where she serves as the Clinical Director of the Center for Child Trauma Assessment, Services, and Interventions. Dr. St. Jean has her own private practice working with children, adolescents, and adults, and she is a clinical consultant to the Illinois Department of Child and Family services.
- Q: Tell us a little about why you were drawn to this as a career and what has kept you there.
- A: When I first entered the workforce after college, I worked with homeless and substance using populations in New York City. As I began to get to know these individuals, they shared their stories of hardship and their worries about the impact of their behavior on their families. Much of their difficulties began during childhood. Through the building of relationships, I began to learn about the importance of human connection as healing resource. I also became motivated to address adversity and enhance inherent strengths at the time hardships occurred as a means to mitigate potential negative outcomes later in life. As my career advanced, it became clear to me that efforts of healing must be made on the individual, family, systems, and policy level in order to create larger scale change and ultimately the reduce disparities and create equity that to stop the injustices that keep occurring. It is as part of this justice and reparation process that humanity can be honored. I now work on all of these levels, but it is really the ongoing direct practice with youth and families who have experienced incredible human rights injustices that keeps me grounded, connected, and motivated to always push to create change and opportunities for resilience and healing.
- Q: What career achievement are you most proud of to date?
- A: I am proud to be the Director of the Kovler Child Trauma Center. Kovler Child Trauma Center is part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), which is a national network of child trauma centers that formed in response to a congressional initiative to raise the standard of care and improve access to child and families who experienced trauma. In this position, I was elected to the NCTSN National Steering Committee, which supports and guides the nation’s interests related to child trauma. I was invited to speak on behalf on this Committee to the NCTSN National Advisory Board in summer 2019. It is with this opportunity I will be representing the interests of Kovler and Heartland Alliance International and the NCTSN due to the growing focus on immigrant and refugee interests across the nation. I feel privileged to work with these families, am humbled and honored to bear witness to the stories they share, and to be able to serve as advocate on their behalf to create opportunities for increased awareness and support of their needs and interests.
- Q: What aspect of your work/new appointment are you most excited about?
- A: Kovler Center has a long, respected history of working with survivors of torture and are seeking safety and political refuge. Despite the remarkable impact services have made upon thousands of individuals, Kovler programming historically has not had consistent or ongoing child programming. The opportunity to build a child trauma center that builds upon Kovler’s expertise and is developed specifically for youth needs, that is not limited by legal or insurance status, and brings high quality mental health services to this population, fills a very important gap in Chicago and ultimately is a step toward decreasing health disparities and increasing equity to this population.
- Q: What advice would you give your younger self?
- A: Always seek out and become connected with mentors, supervisors, and leaders that both inspire you and support your growth. By seeking out and surrounding oneself with those who have both vision and the capacity to build and grow programming in strategic ways, that mentor younger staff and help accentuate staff strength’s individually and as a group whole, and that model struggling through adversity and hardship in the work place while keeping their focus on the families with whom they work was instrumental to my growth. If you are not in a space that provides you this, continue to seek it out. It is when you are among individual with shared drive and approach that you can bring the best out in each other and ultimately allow you grow into the leader that you have the potential to be.
- Q: As organizations get larger there’s often a tendency toward dampening inspiration. How do you encourage creative thinking within your teams?
- A: One of my approaches is to support diversified interests and strengths across team members. As organizations get larger, the potential for work also expands. One way to manage this is to encourage staff to become involved in activities, workgroups or coalitions, or engage in other areas of professional development that deepens staff knowledge and skillsets. This can then be filtered back into programming. As staff become more expert, engage them in discussions around this in supervision and as part of departmental meetings. When recognition of expertise and skills is honored as part of a group or collaborative process and/or toward a specific project or program goal, it can also make the team feel cohesive and part of something greater.
- Q: Tell us about someone who has inspired or mentored you. What key lesson did you learn from them?
- A: One of my primary mentors I met at the end of graduate school. I was fortunate to work with him the next 5 years, which became very formative years in my professional development. During this time I had the opportunity to listen, learn, observe, and be taught by him on how to interact and navigate challenging professional systems, learn how to grow collaborative relationships to create not just bigger, but better opportunities and outcomes, and reflect on how to keep focus on the what was ultimately the most important reason we engage in hard work- the participant. One key lesson I learned from him is simple, it’s about the relationship. Everything is done in relationship with another. Sometimes it is about being in a relationship to heal or be supported and sometimes it is about making a purposeful choice to change the dynamic of a relationship to create new opportunities. It’s okay and at times needed to take risks to create change, just recognize the next relationships you will be entering into as you seek out your goal.
- Q: Your work exposes you to hardship, crisis, and trauma. How do you cope and maintain a work/life balance?
- A: This is a very real part of working in social service and trauma and I am no exception to having felt the impact of this at various times throughout my career. One of the ways I have learned to manage this professionally is to diversify my professional roles. I work as an administrator, supervisor, and a clinician. I have learned for myself, fulltime clinical work takes an emotional toll on me. I have also realized that I would not be an effective supervisor or program administrator if I am not connected to directly working with families, who I am humbled and honored by every day and that fill me with compassion and remind me why I do this work. Additionally, outside of work, it crucial for me to stay to connect to those things that are important to me that are not related to my professional life. When I truly engage in my other passions and interests, it reconnects me with myself. This is process and it does take work. Recognizing that work life balance has to constantly be “worked on” and made intentional is a central part of this work/life balance process.
- Q: Tell us about a favorite book/show/podcast and why/how it inspires you.
- A: On a light note, one of my favorite television shows is an adventure series that was made about 10 years ago called “Departures.” It’s about two friends who travel to various countries around the world. What I enjoy about this series compared to other travel series is that in combination with the fun adventures, it emphasizes the journey rather than the destinations. It highlights sacred culture experiences, rituals, and routines and how over the course of the journey (multiple seasons) it not just impacts, but transforms the hosts in response to interacting with and being humbled by experiences of others around the world. When I think of the work that we all do, it is rooted in honoring, respecting, and healing human experiences. This begins with learning about and being responsive to one another and our differences, which ultimately can make us stronger individually and on a societal level.
