Ashley Rhodes-Courter
Most organisations talk about wellbeing without changing how they actually treat people under stress. The gap between stated mental health commitments and the lived experience of employees, particularly those in caring, frontline, or trauma-exposed roles, is widening. Leaders need a sharper account of what trauma-informed practice means in operating terms, not in policy language.
Ashley Rhodes-Courter is a New York Times bestselling author and Licensed Clinical Social Worker who helps organisations move beyond wellness messaging into trauma-informed practice for their people.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ashley Rhodes-Courter
- A clinical credential behind the personal story. She is an LCSW running a mental health agency, the Foundation for Sustainable Families, which means her work on resilience and wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not motivational framing.
- A specific account of what trauma-informed care looks like in real institutions. Nine years across 14 foster placements gives her a rare credibility on systems that fail vulnerable people, and on what it takes to redesign them.
- Authority on schools, social services, and helping professions. Her talks for educators and frontline workers address abuse identification, burnout, and self-care with the precision of a practitioner, not a guest speaker.
- A New York Times bestselling memoir used in college curricula nationally, plus a published children’s book on a transgender sibling listed on the 2022 ALA Rainbow Book List. The body of work is taught, not just sold.
Biography highlights
- New York Times bestselling author of Three Little Words (Simon & Schuster, 2008), with sequel Three More Words and the picture book Sam Is My Sister (Albert Whitman & Company, 2021).
- Licensed Clinical Social Worker. MSW from the University of Southern California; undergraduate degree from Eckerd College.
- Founder of the Foundation for Sustainable Families, a non-profit mental health agency providing trauma-informed care.
- Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, Today, The New York Times, USA Today, and Glamour, including selection as one of Glamour’s Top Ten College Women and to USA Today’s All-USA Academic Team.
- Profiled on NBC’s Women of Worth (December 2021).
- Sam Is My Sister included on the American Library Association’s 2022 Rainbow Book List.
Biography
Most public conversations about resilience treat it as a personal trait. In organisations that depend on people doing emotionally demanding work, teachers, social workers, healthcare staff, HR leaders, that framing breaks down. Resilience is built or eroded by systems, supervision, and the quality of care that workers themselves receive. Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s work begins from that point.
She is unusual among speakers on this subject in holding the credential that matches the content. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Master’s from the University of Southern California, she runs the Foundation for Sustainable Families, a mental health agency providing trauma-informed care. The clinical work informs the talks, and the talks track current practice rather than stories from a decade ago.
Her authority on the subject is also biographical. Three Little Words, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, traces nine years across 14 foster placements in Florida. The book began as an essay in The New York Times Magazine, became a New York Times bestseller, and is now used in collegiate social work and education programs. Three More Words extends the account into adulthood and adoptive parenting. Sam Is My Sister, her 2021 picture book with Albert Whitman, was placed on the American Library Association’s 2022 Rainbow Book List.
The combination matters for serious buyers. A leadership team that wants a substantive session on burnout, on what schools and social services actually need from staff, or on inclusion as a duty of care, gets a speaker who has lived inside failing systems and now treats people inside the current ones. The argument is not that adversity creates strength. It is that institutions decide whether the people inside them recover or break.
Key speaking topics
- Trauma-informed leadership and organisational practice
- Burnout and self-care in helping professions
- Resilience after adverse experience
- Foster care, child welfare, and adoption
- Mental health in the workplace
- Inclusion and family diversity
- Educator and frontline-worker wellbeing
Ideal for
- CHROs, heads of wellbeing, and people leaders designing trauma-informed support
- Education sector leaders, district superintendents, and school principals
- Healthcare, social care, and non-profit boards
- DEI and inclusion leads working on family diversity and lived-experience inclusion
Audience outcomes
- A clearer working definition of trauma-informed practice and what it asks of managers
- Specific signals of burnout and abuse that frontline staff and leaders can act on
- A frame for resilience that holds institutions, not only individuals, accountable
- A more confident vocabulary for inclusion conversations involving family identity and lived experience
Talks
A keynote drawn from the bestselling memoir, on what nine years inside the foster system reveals about the institutions meant to protect vulnerable people.
Key takeaways:
- How institutional failure compounds over time, and the leverage points where it can be interrupted
- The role of a single committed adult in a vulnerable person’s recovery
- What survival inside a broken system teaches about organisational duty of care
A talk for staff in caring, education, and social service roles on burnout, secondary trauma, and sustainable practice.
Key takeaways:
- How secondary trauma shows up in helping-profession workforces
- Self-care framed as professional discipline, not personal indulgence
- What employers owe people doing emotionally demanding work
A session for educators on identifying abuse, neglect, and bullying, and on the family dynamics that surface in classrooms.
Key takeaways:
- Concrete signals of harm that staff often miss
- How schools function as protective infrastructure for vulnerable children
- Practical responses when a child discloses
A talk on growth, communication, and the working psychology of adversity.
Key takeaways:
- How reframing alters decision quality under pressure
- Communication patterns that build trust across difference
- A working response to impostor experience
A keynote on adversity, transformation, and adaptability through institutional and personal change.
Key takeaways:
- How adversity becomes capability rather than identity
- Practical adaptability when context shifts faster than strategy
- The distinction between recovery and reinvention
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| Europe | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| Middle East & Africa | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| South America | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| United Kingdom | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |