Richard M. Stubbs

MY GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: Co-founding a successful psychotherapy agency which employs eight therapists and serves over 300 clients, where I treat adolescents and adults with a history of trauma and suicidal ideation. I created the agency after the Jackson County Mental Health agency in Medford, Oregon, was devastated by funding cuts and 300 workers (myself included) were laid off, creating a mental health crisis for hundreds of families in the county. This was also just four months into the job, my first after graduation, and I opted to shape my own practice rather than seek a position with a new agency. I have also started a nonprofit named Banyan Refuge Center in Medford which provides free mental health care to refugees, immigrants, survivors of sex trafficking and other marginalized or disadvantaged persons. I am also doing my own clinical research, and am currently writing two case studies about songwriting and lyric analysis combined with cognitive behavioral therapy to treat adolescents with a history of trauma and suicidality.

HOW DREXEL HELPED: Drexel provided me with great therapeutic training, and incredible advisers who inspired me to push for more than mediocre.

MY HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: I hope in five years both of my companies will have grown to help more clients, and that Banyan Refuge Center will have started its first overseas charity missions to provide creative arts therapy and psychoeducation to countries with high need.