ABOUT GRETCHEN SCHMELZER
Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD is a licensed psychologist and trauma survivor who has worked for twenty-five years with the complex issues of trauma, integration and behavior change across every level of system from individuals, to groups, to large systems and countries. She is the author of Journey Through Trauma published in 2018 by Penguin Random House.
She was the the expert consultant for documentary film The Silence which aired on April 19, 2011 on Frontline regarding priest sexual abuse in an Alaska Native Village to ensure adequate resources for viewers and for proper follow on support for trauma survivors. She has worked with individuals and groups in large clinics, and clinics in housing projects, in residential treatment facilities, on psychiatric units and medical hospital units, and in private practice. Her work includes over a decade of working with traumatized children and adolescents in residential treatment and psychiatric units.
Gretchen is a senior associate with Teleos Leadership Institute with 21 years of experience in transformational leadership development, executive coaching and management consulting- working with individuals, groups, organizations and countries to help them achieve the change they want to make. She is an ICF certified senior coach who provides the internal supervision to the Teleos Executive Coaches and is a Core Faculty member of the ICF Certified Teleos Coach Development Program. A two-time National Champion in Rowing, Gretchen also has extensive experience in performance enhancement for individuals and teams working with Olympic, Master’s and Collegiate level coaches and athletes.
Gretchen was a German Lit major at Mount Holyoke College, and got her Masters in Athletic Counseling at Springfield College and her PhD in Counseling Psychology at Northeastern. She completed her psychology training internship as a Harvard Medical School Fellow at the Cambridge Health Alliance, and completed her post-doctoral training with adults in Behavioral Medicine at UMASS Medical Center, specializing in health psychology and mindfulness-based treatment completing a fellowship at the Center for Mindfulness started by Jon-Kabat Zinn. Her dissertation focused on the impact of meditation groups with juvenile delinquents in locked detention.
Her expertise in long term trauma was used to inform the design and delivery of a four year large scale intervention for the UN in Cambodia. She and her colleagues worked with 150 leaders each year who were survivors of the Khmer Rouge in a large scale leadership initiative to strengthen the county’s response to HIV/AIDS. More recently she has taken this program to Rural Alaska, working with Alaska Native Leaders to strengthen their response to Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.
Gretchen was faculty and adjunct faculty in the department of Counseling Psychology at Northeastern University from 2002 to 2007, and adjunct Faculty at the University of South Florida Medical School through their SELECT program- from 2011-2015. She is currently a lecturer in the Medical Education Masters Program in Penn’s Graduate School of Education.
She was recently featured on CNN with Anderson Cooper and Working from Home with Richard Quest. She is the founder and editor of The Trail Guide, a web-mag featured on www.gretchenschmelzer.com dedicated to healing repeated trauma, and since the beginning of the pandemic she has focused more of her work on intersection of leadership and trauma, working with hospitals teams, first responders, city governments, corporate teams and government agencies.