Dr. Coleman has more than 20 years of experience as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and Doctor of Clinical Psychology and has extensive experience working directly with students and training school based mental health providers.

 

Dr. Coleman formally served as the Senior Director of School Mental Health for District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). She led a workforce of more than 600 mental health professionals including school psychologists, social workers and school counselors during an international pandemic. Despite the challenges that accompanied the unpredictable nature of COVID-19, DCPS’ school mental programming was recognized as one of the best in the nation by the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH) under Dr. Coleman’s leadership. NCSMH released it’s first report card comparing school based mental health programming across the nation and ranked DC number 10. Dr. Coleman ensured that students, families and educators received quality, evidenced-based services that created trauma-focused, equitable and therapeutic environments for school communities. She also managed citywide crisis response and recovery for schools and ensured special education compliance. 

 

Previously she served as a Program Manager of School Mental Health and supervised the work of school-based providers. She has worked as both a Central Services Social Worker and a School Based Social Worker at DCPS, providing direct interventions to students and completing functional behavioral assessments, behavior intervention plans and social work assessments to help school teams make data-informed decisions.

 

As a part-time instructor of social work at Capella University, she also has extensive expertise ensuring that current and future members of the mental health workforce have the skills and knowledge to provide support to all students who have mental health needs.

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Dr. Coleman is known as MsDrKenya on all social media platforms. 

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