Whitney is a licensed Master’s-level Social Worker, obtaining her Master’s degree from the Indiana University School of Social Work. While a graduate student there, Whitney was named a Fellow of the Department of Health and Human Services Transitional-Aged Youth Studies. She has worked in the mental health and social work fields for more than eleven years, time which has required not only effective interpersonal skills, but also that she be proficient in both written and oral communications. Currently, Whitney is a member of an intensive, two-year, integrative trauma training fellowship, in which she receives substantial training, supervision, and direct field experience in obtaining clinical licensure and becoming a trauma-focused mental health clinician. In this fellowship, Whitney is responsible for the writing and completion of individual monthly biopsychosocial assessments and daily diagnostic progress reports for each client. She also aided in the social media advertisement and marketing campaign to increase client numbers within this program.

Whitney is also certified by the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services as a pre-screener, in which she conducts commitment evaluations for those in the midst of psychiatric crises and uses her diagnostic observations to formulate a written report supporting either release or further commitment of the individual being evaluated.

Further, Whitney has six and a half years of experience working as a senior-level social worker in local government, during which time she generated and edited routine legal documents and court reports, completed treatment plans, drafted investigative dispositions, and interpreted and applied state policy to key decision points in the world of family court and child welfare in the Commonwealth of Virginia. While in this role, Whitney was a member of the Process Improvement Management Team in which she worked with a team of colleagues charged with aligning specified internal program processes and procedures with the practices of continuous quality improvement as an organizational culture.