We recently connected with Kristen Guskovict and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristen, thanks for joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

Defining moments can come from anywhere. Many of mine have come from the every day moments and mistakes. The two that I’ll share here came from follow up conversation after a bad result on a college entrance exam, and a movie at a slumber party.

So, let’s start with the first one… the slumber party movie. I was 12. The movie was Dirty Dancing. My friends, like many people who watched that movie, came away from it wanting to learn to dance. I came away from it wanting to join the Peace Corps. Every time I tell this story people give me a look of confusion. So, for those who do not remember, the main character, ‘Baby’ was joining the Peace Corps after that summer. I think that fact is probably given one line in the movie, it is not important to the plot of the story, but it was important to me.

I later asked my mom what the Peace Corps was, and she explained that ‘it is an organization that goes around the world and helps people.’ I decided I wanted to join. But I wasn’t old enough to join the Peace Corps yet…. I was however old enough to understand the concept of volunteering and I was old enough to begin wondering about the world around me. These elements were important because I wasn’t a popular kid. Volunteering and looking at maps became ways to escape the confines of middle school. It gave me hope about the life I would have.

At the time, Peace Corps required that most volunteers have a college degree before you could be accepted. So, I worked hard in school. But, I wasn’t a natural at school. So even when I studied hard, I was still only a mediocre student. When the time came to take the entrance exam, I bombed it. Twice…

My high school had a guidance counseling center, as most do. Having bombed the test, I was required to go talk to my guidance counselor. We were assigned to our counselor alphabetically, but the assignment changed every year. So, each year of high school I had a different counselor.

The counselor I had that year was not sympathetic. She told me that I would never get into college and shouldn’t bother applying. I cried as I left her office. Trying to imagine a different life for myself. One wherein I couldn’t go to college.

The counselor from the year before, Mr. McIlvain, saw me leaving in tears and called me into his office. When he found out what happened. He explained that many colleges rated extra-curricular activities, such as volunteering highly, regardless of entrance exam scores. Later that day, he presented me with several pages of such colleges. I remember my own sense of disbelief. Volunteering mattered! That thing that I had taken on because it seemed a little similar to Peace Corps and because it gave me a world that was bigger than my school was going to help me get into college.

Looking back at this moment, I am forever grateful that Mr. McIlvain didn’t let me walk out of the office that day without asking what happened. I might not have ever known that there were schools that would be right for me, despite that one test. I went to college, and upon graduation, I joined the Peace Corps and lived in Burkina Faso, West Africa for two years. Later I went on to attain two graduate degrees.

All it took was a movie, to spark some imagination and creativity and someone who took the time to check in after an upsetting conversation.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a Social Worker. I work as a consultant with refugee service providers both domestically and internationally on staff care and mental health program design. I also work in private practice.

In my private practice I work with people who struggle with anxiety, depression and trauma. The experiences we have influence our ability to connect with one another and to reach our goals. I collaborate with my clients to help them move through their unique experiences.

I bring a similar sensibility to the organizations. Staff can only do their best if they feel supported and valued. Organizations can only provide that support and value if they can see the ways in which organizational culture impacts staff.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started my business in 2013. Initially, I was a consultant. I focused on the needs of organizations. I didn’t add the private practice side to my work until 2016. I like the blend of the two because people make up organizations and it is easier for me to see what’s happening in an organization when I think of it from the perspective of the individual. But, from 2016-2020, my private practice was only about 25% of my work.

During the pandemic that began to shift, as organizational culture began to shift. My consulting projects were put off, as everyone waited for the world to ‘go back to normal’ and then they evolved with the ‘new normal’. All the while, my private practice had to grow, to make up for that shift in consulting work. Through talking with other clinicians, I learned how to build up the practice.

Now the private practice is 75% of my work. I love working with individuals. I still do some consulting work. But, I spend more time honing my skills as a therapist now.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

It’s important to remain curious and to remain a student of the world.

I’m fortunate that I’m in a field wherein there are always more things to learn. As science understands more about the brain and how our experiences and emotions influence us, there are always more opportunities to learn.

One of my goals, for myself, is to be the best I can be at what I do. So, I am trained in specialized areas of treatment such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and am seeking training another specialized treatment area (Somatic Experiencing) to help my private practice clients. But I also continue to learn more, such as further honing my conflict resolution skills for organizations.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://heartofaidwork.com/
• Instagram: heart_of_aid_work
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-guskovict-ms-lcsw-b825804/
• Twitter: @KristenGuskovi1

Image Credits
The ‘Get Human’ photo is from the Berlin Wall.