Meet Dr. Allison Brownlee | Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, #89484

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dr. Allison Brownlee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dr. Allison, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I started Stronger Together Community Services to build a trauma informed training and education organization for therapists in their masters and doctoral programs. I founded the agency with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) first to ensure that these principles and practices are never an afterthought at STCS. We value individual’s identities and their unique perspectives and honor collaborative workspaces and a culture of support. This is unique to community mental health agencies, as many therapist in graduate school have experienced toxic training environments where they are disempowered, devalued, and feel taken advantage of. STCS strives to provide an experience where clinicians are able to learn evidenced based models of therapy, get quality supervision, practice in a safe community and build confidence in their ability to provide effective trauma informed therapy to clients from diverse populations. I firmly believe that therapist who are well supported and resourced are able to provide effective, compassionate, meaningful and transformative therapy to clients. Our model ultimately benefits client care by way of creating a safe place for therapists to learn and grow.

What should our readers know about your business?
I am really proud of how we lead and train our therapists at STCS. We model vulnerability, make mistakes, practice rupture and repair to build and maintain safe relationships with our staff, and we genuinely care about the quality of education we provide. We know that how we, as leaders, show up, matters and we engage in self reflective practices, implement change based on feedback, engage in accountability practices and maintain humility as we lead collaboratively.

At Stronger Together Community Services, I serve as the clinical director and supervisor to our graduate and post graduate masters and doctoral level therapists. I am dedicated to providing the clinical team at STCS with training and education that is tailored to their specific needs and addresses their learning edges. I facilitate individual and group supervision where I review session recordings, provide live supervision in therapy sessions, and engage in co-therapy with our team members. This three prong approach to supervision allows clinicians to learn and grow in a supportive environment- we truly are stronger together, we do not learn in isolation at STCS, our staff know that they can lean on their supervisor without judgment when they are struggling. I am so proud of our team and the way they engage in the learning process, their vulnerability and openness to feedback supports optimal growth and allows them to be effective therapists to their clients.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Beaches are a must, in South mission you can regularly see dolphins surfing, swimming, and playing in the waves.

Paddle boarding on Mission Bay is also a relaxing activity that gives you an opportunity to take a little tour of the marina and even out to the ocean if you want.

Drinks at Top Sail overlooking the San Diego Bay and enjoying a sunset next to a fire pit is a nice way to end the day.

We love a good sushi spot, Bang Bang in the gaslamp is a treasure, good vibes and great food.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The leadership team at STCS is an incredibly special group of people who have come together with shared values and commitments to the work we do. Not only are they amazing individually, but they collectively work together to build programs, support our learning clinicians, design trainings and ensure STCS is accountable to our DEIB mission and vision for STCS and the larger community.

Website: https://strongertogethersd.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/StrongerTogether_SD/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strongertogethersd/

Image Credits
Stacey Taylor Photography