We recently connected with Kalin Alvey and have shared our conversation below.

Kalin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The Story Behind One4All Counseling

The idea for my business was born from both personal conviction and professional frustration. After a decade of clinical practice, I had seen firsthand how many people, particularly those in marginalized communities, were being left out of mental health services. Time and time again, clients would share experiences of feeling unseen, misunderstood, or even retraumatized in therapeutic spaces that weren’t built with their identities in mind. As a clinician deeply committed to inclusion and equity, I knew I couldn’t ignore that gap.

At the same time, I was working across multiple settings (veterinary, military, hospice, trauma-focused care) and I kept running into the same problem: the systems in place often prioritized bureaucracy over people. Clients had to fit into narrow molds, rather than services being flexible enough to honor the whole person. That dissonance left me restless. I knew there had to be a better way to deliver care—one that was affirming, trauma-informed, and holistic.

The moment that solidified my decision came during a session with a client who told me, “You’re the first person who hasn’t asked me to leave parts of myself at the door.” Hearing that, I felt both honored and unsettled. Honored that I could create such a space, but unsettled that it was such a rare experience. That’s when I realized: this wasn’t just about me as a single clinician. There needed to be an entire practice built on that foundation—a place where no one had to fragment themselves to receive help.

That’s how One4All Counseling came to life. The name itself is intentional: one service for all people. I wanted to send a clear message that every identity, every lived experience, and every story has a place here.

Why I Knew It Would Work

The logic was simple: people were desperate for inclusive, affirming care, and very few providers were offering it in a truly intentional way. I wasn’t just solving a business problem—I was addressing a human problem. The more legislative attacks I saw on gender-affirming care, the more urgent the mission became. One4All Counseling positioned itself not only as a private practice but as a safe haven, especially for transgender and LGBTQ+ clients who were being denied or delayed care elsewhere.

What excited me most was the opportunity to merge my clinical expertise with my entrepreneurial vision. I wasn’t just offering another therapy office—I was creating a model that could expand, bring on other like-minded clinicians, and eventually scale to reach underserved populations on a larger level. I was solving the gap between access and authenticity.

Ultimately, I knew this endeavor was worthwhile because it aligned with both my heart and my head: the heart of my values as a clinician, and the head of a business model that directly answered a growing need.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Introducing Myself & One4All Counseling

My name is Dr. Kalin C. Alvey (she/her), and I am the founder and CEO of One4All Counseling Services, Inc. I’ve been a practicing clinician for over a decade, and what brought me into this field was a deep belief that healing becomes possible when people are truly seen, validated, and supported. Over the years, I’ve worked in settings as diverse as military and hospice care, veterinary crisis work, trauma-focused programs, and graduate-level education. Each experience revealed the same truth: too many people feel left out, unheard, or even harmed by the very systems meant to support them.

That realization is what inspired me to build One4All Counseling. The name is intentional—“one service for all people”—and reflects our core mission of inclusion. We are a practice that provides trauma-informed, evidence-based, and identity-affirming psychotherapy. We specialize in gender-affirming care, trauma treatment, and support for those navigating oppression, identity, and transition. We also offer unique approaches such as veterinary social work and equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAGALA-certified), along with holistic options like trauma-informed yoga and circus-therapy-informed interventions.

What We Offer & Problems We Solve:

Our services are rooted in meeting clients where they are. We provide:

Individual, family, and group counseling (both in-person and telehealth)

Letters of support for gender-affirming care, delivered with compassion and efficiency

Specialized care for trauma survivors, including those impacted by religious trauma, military service, grief/loss, and systemic oppression

Veterinary and animal-assisted interventions, drawing from my certification in veterinary social work and equine-assisted psychotherapy

Educational and training services, including continuing education units (CEUs) for other professionals, to help spread trauma-informed, affirming practices across systems

What sets us apart is that we don’t ask clients to fragment themselves. In many therapeutic environments, people feel like they need to “check” part of their identity at the door—whether that’s their gender identity, culture, spirituality, or lived experiences. At One4All, we do the opposite: we invite the whole person in.

What Sets Us Apart

Depth of Expertise: I hold multiple certifications (LCSW, BCD, CCTP, EAGALA, Certified Veterinary Social Worker), and I bring over a decade of diverse clinical experience.

Commitment to Inclusion: As a WPATH member, a gender-affirming care provider, and someone actively engaged in advocacy, inclusion isn’t just a value statement for us—it’s our foundation.

Innovation in Therapy: From integrating trauma-informed yoga to developing curriculum for veterinary hospitals, we push beyond traditional models to create interventions that truly work.

Academic & Community Impact: Beyond the therapy room, I teach graduate-level courses, publish in professional journals, and provide CEU trainings—because creating systemic change requires education at every level.

What I’m Most Proud Of

I am most proud of the fact that One4All Counseling is not just a private practice but also a safe haven and a movement. In a climate where gender-affirming care is under attack, our work has become both clinical and political—standing up for the right of every individual to access care that honors their identity. Seeing clients walk away with a sense of empowerment, relief, and hope—knowing they were truly heard—that’s the heart of what keeps me going.

What I Want People to Know

If you’re considering working with us, I want you to know that you don’t have to leave any part of yourself behind to belong here. Our slogan, “Guiding Growth, Honoring Identity,” is more than words—it’s our guiding principle. Whether you are navigating trauma, identity, transition, grief, or simply seeking tools for growth, our role is to walk alongside you, not to lead you away from who you are.

One4All Counseling is about more than therapy—it’s about creating spaces where people can heal, grow, and thrive without apology.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

A Story of Resilience

When I decided to launch One4All Counseling, I was filled with conviction, but I was also staring at what felt like an impossible wall. I was leaving behind the relative stability of agency work and stepping into the unknown of building a business that didn’t yet exist in my community. On paper, the risks were obvious: overhead costs, credentialing, technology, compliance — not to mention the emotional weight of knowing that people were depending on me to succeed because my mission was tied to access and inclusion.

The first year tested me in ways I could not have predicted. I vividly remember sitting at my desk late one night after receiving my third denial letter from an insurance panel. Without those contracts, I couldn’t serve many of the clients who needed me most. It felt like every door I knocked on was slamming shut. For a moment, I wondered if I had made a mistake.

But resilience doesn’t mean never doubting — it means not letting doubt stop you. Instead of giving up, I got creative. I reached out to colleagues, I leaned on my professional network, and I started offering sliding scale sessions to make sure no one was turned away. I doubled down on writing grants, developing CEU trainings, and expanding into niche areas like veterinary social work and equine-assisted therapy to diversify income streams. Slowly but surely, the doors that had been shut began to open.

Looking back, that season of rejection was pivotal. It taught me to build a business not just on contracts or systems, but on values. I realized that if I stayed true to the mission — providing trauma-informed, affirming care to all — the rest would follow. Today, One4All Counseling is thriving, and those early hurdles became the very foundation of my resilience.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Here’s one I still carry with me:

The lesson I had to unlearn: “Neutrality is the safest way to care.”

I was trained to believe that the most ethical therapist is a neutral one: don’t take sides, don’t get “too involved,” treat every situation the same. It sounded responsible—clean, professional, risk-averse. For a while, I wore that neutrality like armor.

Then I met a client (a composite of many early in my career) who needed gender-affirming care. The policies where I worked were slow, confusing, and, in practice, obstructive. I followed the steps, checked the boxes, waited for the “right” approvals. Weeks turned into months. The client’s anxiety spiked; their hope thinned. I went home each night telling myself I was doing it “by the book.” But the book wasn’t keeping them safe. My neutrality had become complicity.

That season cracked something open in me. I realized neutrality isn’t the same as safety—especially for people who are already navigating systems that weren’t built with them in mind. Neutrality can preserve the status quo, and the status quo can be harmful.

Unlearning that lesson changed everything about how I practice and why I built One4All Counseling. I stopped equating “objectivity” with passivity. I started equating ethics with action: writing timely, thorough letters of support; designing policies that affirm rather than gatekeep; training teams to recognize how “treating everyone the same” can still produce unequal outcomes; building sliding-scale access before the spreadsheets looked comfortable; integrating trauma-informed yoga and animal-assisted work because bodies heal in many languages; and saying, out loud, that gender-affirming care is care.

What I learned is that good therapy isn’t colorless. It has a spine. It names barriers, advocates within systems, and—when necessary—builds new systems. It holds boundaries and takes a stance. It asks, “Is the person in front of me safer, freer, and more fully themselves because of what I did today?”

So the backstory is simple and not simple: I followed the rules until I realized they weren’t protecting the people I served. I unlearned neutrality as a virtue and replaced it with principled, justice-oriented care. That shift is the heartbeat of my work now. It’s why One4All exists. And it’s what I’m most proud of: choosing courage over comfort, people over policy, and impact over optics—every single time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://One4AllCounseling.com
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/one4allcounseling