We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liv Tiffany a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Liv, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’re complete cheeseballs and so we love asking folks to share the most heartwarming moment from their career – do you have a touching moment you can share with us?
This past June, 2024, I co-created and co-led Camp Sisterhood, an intentional and intimate sleep away camp for girls in California. We had 14 campers (ages 11-13) and 4 counselors (ages 15-18) along with a handful of adult women leading the camp, activities, and sharing their gifts with the girls. It was everything we had always dreamed of creating for girls! One of the most heartwarming moments of camp was when 4 of our pre-teen campers wrote a song about camp all by themselves. They wrote all the lyrics themselves and played the ukelele; the song shares about the campfires, sisterhood bonding, magic of camp, stars, and not wanting to leave camp :) Every morning we would wake up to the girls singing and practicing the Camp Sisterhood song outside our window– hearing them giggle, collaborate on their creative project, and express their excitement to share it with the rest of the camp. Our last day of camp, the girls’ mothers joined us for a mother-daughter activity, where the girls shared their song with the group and everyone then sang it together. As I listened to all the girls and mothers singing the song, tears streamed down my cheeks, having to pinch myself that this was real– that my dream of creating a sleep away camp for girls had come true!
Liv, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Olivia (Liv) Tiffany and I am deeply passionate about the social, emotional, physical, and spiritual health of girls! I hold a doctorate in clinical psychology (PsyD), am a certified life coach for girls, and specialize in working with girls ages 5-21. In my twenties, I was a nanny, a teacher, and a camp counselor– I always knew my heart was in working with children. Towards my late twenties, I became certified as a life coach for teen girls and started to work with girls individually, in groups, and led day camps for girls. There was something incredibly special about forming a trusting relationship with the girls I worked with. They reminded me of myself at that age, and I deeply admired their fiery personalities, compassion and concern for others, and their opinions about the world. When I was a pre-teen, I worked with a life coach for girls, and also remembered having so many wonderful older female mentors in my life (teachers, camp counselors, therapists, coaches, aunts, cousins etc). I have always had a big heart, and having these older female mentors in my life meant so much to me! I knew that I could trust them, lean on them and share with them my truth. They made me feel seen, admired, loved, and inspired me to follow my heart. It is these relationships that I had when I was a young girl that has inspired me to give the same gift to the girls I work with today.
After many years of coaching girls, I went back to school and completed my doctorate in clinical psychology (PsyD). I was curious about the psyche’s of girls, their social and emotional development, and what factors created well-being for them. During my doctoral program, I gained hands on therapeutic experience working with girls of all ages and wrote my dissertation on the development of girls– exploring risk and protective factors in building social, emotional, and physical resilience.
Currently, I offer individual therapeutic work with girls through a program I designed called ‘Goddess Girl’. This focuses on supporting girls to reconnect with their heart-centered truth and overall well-being through self-discovery, creative arts, mother-daughter work, and self-empowerment within their emotions and mind. This includes individual sessions, field trips out in the world, individual sessions with the mothers, and mother-daughter joint sessions. My intention with this specialized design is for girls to get in touch with their authentic selves while also using the mother-daughter relationship as a powerful tool to shift their mental health positively. I also lead weekly girl groups through Goddess Girl where girls create a sisterhood where they can feel seen, a sense of belonging, and know that they are not alone in the ups and downs of all they experience in girlhood.
I am also the co-creator and co-founder of Camp Sisterhood– an organization that focuses on supporting girls’ well-being through the two core tenants of authenticity and belonging. We are so excited that our sleep away camp for girls (Camp Sisterhood) is up and running! It is led by myself and my best friend, Katie Goodman, both doctors of psychology and girl experts. Our intention was to create an intimate sleep away camp that prioritizes and supports girls’ mental health alongside the fun and joy of a typical camp. We engage the girls in the magic of skits, roasting marshmellows, water fights, relay races, cooking together, and looking at the stars, while also creating spaces where girls can have real conversations about body image, friendship difficulties, stress, puberty, identity, and perfectionism. Our camp in June 2024 was a huge success and we can’t wait for more camp sessions! Our girl campers are ages 8-14 and our counselors ages 15-21. The magic of camp is truly indescribable! Our organization, Camp Sisterhood, also offers workshops for girls of all ages and mothers and daughters year-round.
I feel incredibly lucky to work with girls– each have a different spark, heart, and mind. I love them all with my whole heart!
How’d you meet your business partner?
My business parter in our organization, Camp Sisterhood, is my best friend and fellow doctor of psychology, Katie Goodman! She and I met in our last year of graduate school. We always knew who one another was and admired each other from afar but was too shy to initiate a friendship. During our last semester in school, we were in a class together and instantly became besties! The magic was there and we knew our sisterhood was strong. The next year, we had a long distance friendship and spent time on the phone imagining opening a practice together, collaborating and what not. We had no idea what we were going to create, but our hearts knew it was something special!! Little did we know, only a year later we would come up with the idea of CAMP SISTERHOOD! Our intimate and therapeutically driven sleep away camp for girls. It was definitely fate for us to meet!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I was a theater and dance major in college– always a girl who loved to self-express, feel the rhythm in my body, sing my heart out, and be a part of a production. It was my happy place! I continued to act professionally after college when I moved back to LA– dreaming about being a part of a community on the set or stage. Around age 25, I realized this career might not be aligned with my true self. I realized I was chasing something not necessarily for the right reasons, and that my true heart was not feeling fulfilled. I thought about what truly made me happy, and it was working with children and connecting deeply with people. It was then that I turned to first teach Kindergarten, and then transition to the field of psychology. I made the choice quite quickly, and never looked back–which is a sign it was the right decision! I take with me my love of creative arts and performing arts into my work with girls. The community that I craved in the theater world, I get from my Camp Sisterhood family :) I look forward to creating a space at Camp Sisterhood where girls can dance and create theater productions– to combine both of my passions!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.campsisterhood.org & www.teensouls.com
- Instagram: @girl.souls
