Ricardo A Santiago LMHC, MS was recently selected to serve as Coordinator of Publications/Communications of AEE’s Therapeutic Adventure Professionals Group Leadership Council. Ricardo is co-owner/co-founder of EPIC Adventures Therapy LLC in Palm Beach, FL and also serves as clinical director of a local substance abuse treatment center . He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication and a Master of Science degree in Counseling Psychology from Palm Beach Atlantic University . Ricardo has served in the social services arena as a mental health counselor and program director since 2000 and was licensed as a mental health counselor in the state of Florida in 2003. He has worked in a variety of settings including inpatient & outpatient mental health, child and adolescent group home/shelter, adolescent and adult homeless shelter, in-home individual and family counseling, therapeutic foster care, adolescent and adult residential substance abuse. Ricardo is also an Adjunct Professor at Barry University and Palm Beach Atlantic University where he teaches psychology courses. He has extensive experience in trauma, child welfare, abuse/neglect, grief/loss, dual diagnosis, substance abuse and program management.
Ricky is new to Adventure Therapy but has very quickly immersed himself in it and describes having “fallen in love” with AT as a treatment modality. Before his recent jobs (2.25 years now), Ricky had never even heard of AT and confesses he is not even an “outdoorsy” guy but has grown quite passionate about AT in the last year. Ricky attended his first TAPG pre-conference in 2014 at the behest of his supervisor and was so inspired by the passion that AT practitioners bring to their work. “It was really something I hadn’t encountered before, coming from the traditional mental health field. The people at TAPG were so welcoming of the ‘newbie’ and were so open to embracing me and teaching me this new “bag of tricks.” I was hooked at that point and haven’t missed a conference since.” Ricky was honored to present at 7IATC in Denver, CO in June 2015 and humbled that his TAPG peers were so receptive to the “new guy’s ramblings.” He describes that his career has made a “pretty radical change as a result of my involvement with AT…so much so that I am now in the initial stages of fulfilling a long-time dream of opening my own practice specializing in AT/experiential therapies (I had a dream but didn’t have a “big idea” to set me apart from the rest until I found AT).” Ricky is thrilled and honored to give back to the TAPG community that he feels has already given him so much and has embraced him so openly by serving as a member of the Leadership Council.
For more information on AEE (Association for Experiential Education and Therapeutic Adventure Professionals Group (TAPG) visit www.aee.org and http://www.aee.org/tapg