Embracing the courage to grow

She is a collaborator. A visionary. One who has the audacity to see humanity as what can be, not what it is. A champion for children, Natalie has spent the past 25+ years advocating, supporting and cheering hundreds of children on to greatness. She is mother of two neurospicy children and married to the greatest man she knows. She works hard to practice what she preaches and it is evident in every training she gives.

Natalie earned her MSW from Louisiana State University and completed advanced, trauma-informed trainings in relevant interventions such as Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT, certified), Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI, Practitioner level) and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She opened her private practice, Thrive Therapy, in 2020, at the height of Covid and the social justice revival. With the mindset of “Go big or go home”, she launched into building her pediatric-focused practice with courage.

Six years later, what she founded has grown into a group practice, filled with invested clients, but Natalie has realized that her community needed more. The community she was a part of, made up of caregivers, mental health professionals, educators, law enforcement, child development professionals, needed access to the experience and knowledge she had, delivered in that unique way of hers, a way that connected the dots and empowered those who gathered to build the skills to help children more effectively.

That realization revived her commitment to expanding her speaking and professional development work. Natalie has optimized opportunities to speak to hundreds of clinicians, social services professionals, parents, educators, school counselors, physicians, both locally and internationally. Gathering in with those in attendance, she creating opportunities to explore thought-provoking topics such as pediatric mental health, navigating neurodiversity in “neurotypical” world, organizational health, parenting, and finding healing from high conflict relationships and family dynamics. Her delivery, highly relational yet rich in evidence-based knowledge, Natalie commits to connecting with those who come and calling them to action, to make the world a better place.