We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marcel Crooks, LMSW . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marcel below.

Hi Marcel, thanks for joining us today. How did you get your first job in the field that you practice in today?

I was a young college student and accepted a job working for healthcare agency . I experienced some personal challenges and unfortunately had to leave position. then I was offered another job at a healthcare agency working with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and I’ve been there ever since. It is important to me to help individuals who cannot help themselves, as I have seen a lot of challenges in my personal life and my family. It gave me a lot of sense of pride and fulfillment. I then decided to continue my education in psychology so that I can continue to provide and understand the clients that I was serving. As I continued my education and received my masters degree in Social Work, I was promoted and provided additional responsibilities as management overseeing different programs.Even though I have experience a lot of challenges in my personal life and family I still feel compelled to help the clients and those that this is what keeps me working in this field

Marcel, 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?

A Wonderful opportunity was made available to me and I made it a point to follow up and it ended up changing my life. I was offered a position to be an assistant manager at one of our more challenging residential programs. Although I was eager to learn and accept the challenge I certainly had some reluctance as this was my first management level position. I faced all my tasks and responsibilities head on and was able to turn the program around in a positive direction and as a result it allowed me to continue my education as well as receive several promotions at my company. After working about eight years at my company, I noticed several parallels between some of the issues I saw with clients at my agency and issues that I saw in my community in regards to mental health. It was then that I decided to found and create my company Represent
the Alternative.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had a few lessons in my youth that I had to unlearn. In Reflecting back to my youth, I idolized a certain type of lifestyle, spending excessive amounts of money, partying all the time frivolously, realizing that would actually not lead me to what I needed in life. And even experienced instances in which emotionally or financially I was not in a good space but instead of addressing things head on I would allow circumstances to exacerbate causing even more issues. One of the other really important lessons I had to learn was that instant gratification would not lead to happiness as it does not allow you to appreciate the valuable things you have in the moment you can walk away from your past but never run from it.

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

During my senior year of high school I’ve experienced an extremely traumatic event which led me to unfortunately get shot I was unable to walk for an entire year after. Emotionally I experienced a range of feelings from intense anger, to sadness, fear, to feeling that my life was ultimately over. I experienced life-changing nerve damage, I couldn’t walk I was very angry and I was always in pain. I didn’t realize that I was resilient but continued my education even after this traumatic event occurred. I realize that my life was not over, I continued pursuing my education and I graduated with honors and a bachelors in English and psychology, and then I completed an advanced Masters degree in Social Work and I am currently pursuing my doctorate.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @repthealternative
• Facebook: Represent The Alternative, L.L.C
• Linkedin: Marcel Crooks, LMSW, CASAC-T
• Twitter: @talk_2_trey

Image Credits
Thomas Claude Photography