Bio of Elizabeth Venart

Elizabeth Venart, M.Ed., NCC, LPC is the Director of The Resiliency Center and a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Pennsylvania. She is also a National Certified Counselor through the National Board of Certified Counselors.

Individual and Group Counseling

Elizabeth has twenty years of experience in providing counseling, clinical supervision, and training services. For nearly ten years, she worked in non-profit crime victim centers providing individual and group counseling—as well as crisis intervention and critical incident stress management services—to women, children, and men impacted by traumatic grief and crimes of violence. She developed innovative healing programs for survivors, supervised a team of counselors and counseling interns, and trained new staff and volunteers in counseling, trauma, and crisis intervention skills.

With advanced training in Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), she has been providing on-site critical incident stress management services through Crisis Care Network since 2001. Elizabeth also has advanced training in EMDR, mindfulness strategies, expressive arts therapy, relational counseling with traumatized persons, couples therapy, creative interventions with children and groups, and the use of metaphor in career exploration.

In addition to her work with trauma survivors, Ms. Venart has worked in a comprehensive addictions center and in two school settings. Working over four years in a school for special needs children (emotional, behavioral, and learning challenges), Ms. Venart gained extensive understanding of the multiple needs facing families today. Ms. Venart also worked for three years as a school counselor at an Independent School for boys. While there, she provided services to children ages five through fourteen and their families, including counseling, consultation, and information on social, emotional, and behavioral concerns.

She has been in private practice since 1998. In Summer 2008, she launched The Resiliency Center, LLC, in Ambler, Pennsylvania, as a way to bring together the expertise of skilled professionals from a variety of disciplines. The Resiliency Center LLC offers counseling services as well as acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic services, nutrition, and integrative medicine. Additionally, the center provides educational workshops and groups, training programs for therapists, and fun opportunities for people in the community to learn, play, and connect with one another.

Teaching, Writing, and Consultation in the Human Services

Ms. Venart has been providing consultation and training programs to professional helpers since 1996 when she offered her first workshop on vicarious trauma and practitioner self-care. She provides on-site trainings to human services organizations on topics of trauma, resiliency, and systemic vicarious trauma. She also works individually with mental health clinicians and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, providing clinical supervision, vicarious trauma consultations, and practice-building guidance.

From 2003 through 2007, Elizabeth served on the American Counseling Association's Task Force on Impaired Counselors (>Visit the Task Force website). Part of her work on the task force included the development of effective intervention programs to facilitate counselor wellness and serving as a co-editor for a special journal issue on counselor wellness through the Journal of the Counseling Association for Humanistic Education and Development.

Elizabeth has published two articles in professional journals on the topic of counselor wellness and co-authored a chapter on Healing Trauma through Humanistic Connection for the book, "Humanistic Perspectives on Contemporary Counseling Issues" published by Routledge in August 2011.

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Elizabeth is an adjunct instructor with the Behavioral Health Counseling Sciences Program of Drexel University where she teaches Group Counseling I and II.  Previous courses taught include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Counseling Theory and Practice, and Assessment and Treatment Planning. She also serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal for Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development.