Directors
Rosie Doherty - training lead & finance
Rosie trained as a speech and language therapist, and gained extensive experience working with children and adults with a wide range of disabilities. She also became a service manager in the NHS.
She trained in psychodynamic counselling in the early 1990's and has been working in this field with a wide range of people since then. She holds a Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling and Diploma in Post Graduate Psychoanalytic Studies, as well as having trained in various other models of working. She works with open-ended and time-limited models of counselling and is an accredited trainer and supervisor.
Aaron Davis - training lead & IT
Aaron lived in the Far East and worked as a company trainer for Honeywell and IBM before returning to the UK. He worked briefly as a teacher before deciding to train as a speech and language therapist specialising in developmental and acquired disabilities and impairments in both adults and children. An interest in the importance of relationships and longer term models of psychological therapy led to further training as a psychodynamic counsellor.
He has a Clinical Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling and an Advanced Diploma in Object Relations Theory. Aaron is also trained in brief therapy, short-term, solution focused work, has trained and worked with CRUSE, and is a Dynamic Interpersonal Therapist (DIT) accredited by the British Psychoanalytic Council. His most recent training relates to Critical Incident Stress De-Briefing.
Aaron has a wide range of experience in Employee Assistance Programmes working with performance related issues caused by stress, loss and relationship dynamics in the workplace. In recent years, he has worked with ex-servicemen and front-line public service personnel including the police, fire service, ambulance and NHS staff.
Aaron believes in giving more choice to people in distress. His motivation comes from the drive to provide a service which is flexible in its approach to mental health and is not limited to specific symptoms.
As a director at Catalyst, he has completed further training in leadership and motivation.
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Sari Kelsey - Clinical lead
Sari has worked in mental health within the NHS for thirty seven years. Retiring in 2020, she worked as a manager for a number of service lines across Waveney and Great Yarmouth for over twenty of these. This included; acute and older persons services, prison mental health teams, access and assessment service, therapeutic day service, local delivery of "Recovery College", and integrated working with social care and community adult mental health. Partnership working with both statutory and non-statutary agencies has been central within her work. As a clinician, Sari is an occupational therapist by profession, and spent fifteen years working in the NHS as a clinical specialist with adult survivors of childhood trauma.
Sari describes herself as liking people, and having an unreserved belief that a person should be enabled to become the person they really want to be. She is pleased to be now supporting Catalyst, whom she has known of and respected as an organisation for a number of years in her previous roles.
Tracey Darnell - company secretary, social value & marketing
A nurse practitioner for over twenty years and a psychodynamic counsellor at Catalyst since 2014, Tracey has a wide range of experience working in the areas of learning disabilities, mental health assessment and treatment services, neurology and end of life care with both children and adults. She has worked within the NHS, the voluntary sector and also in international NGOs based abroad. She holds a Clinical Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling, Certificates in Psychodynamic Assessment and Time-Limited Psychodynamic Counselling, and is trained in Critical Incident Stress De-Briefing.
Why the psychodynamic approach and why Catalyst? Tracey's belief is that the psychodynamic model allows individuals to work at a deeper, more qualitiative and sustainable level, and seeks to promote the best understanding and awareness of themselves and how they relate to others. This inner resource can then be held on to and proactively and positively carried forward into the future to support better psychological health and wellbeing long-term. As a not for profit organisation, the ethos at Catalyst has always been to provide low cost, equitable and accessible counselling for as many people as possible, responsive to their individual mental health needs and irrespective of diagnosis or label. This sits very seamlessly and neatly alongside Tracey's other professional role as a nurse.
Lisa Jackson - marketing, social media & continuing professional development
Lisa is a psychodynamic counsellor who trained at Catalyst Counselling. Originally born in England, Lisa has spent half her life in Venezuela and the USA. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and Art, from Lehigh University USA. Lisa has worked in a variety of professional roles, including as a preschool teacher, residential counsellor working with teenagers and young adults who have special educational and vocational needs, and also as a group therapist with adults dependent upon alcohol. Lisa has been at Catalyst for several years, and feels she has found her home there.
