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FLORIDA COUNSELING ASSOCIATIONFACES LEADERSHIP 2022-2023 |
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Get to know your FACES Leadership |
Lotus Nelson, Ph.D., LCMHC, ACS, NCC- President Dr. Lotes Nelson is an Associate Professor at the University of the Cumberlands. She is also a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, a Board Approved Clinical Supervisor, and a National Certified Counselor. She is also an award recipient of the prestigious National Board for Certified Counselors Doctoral Minority Fellowship. Dr. Nelson enjoys her clinical work as a counselor educator and supervisor and as a private practitioner. She is enthusiastic about serving the underserved and marginalized populations. She has a particular interest in working with immigrants and refugees who are adjusting to life in the mainstream and other trauma and crises work. She works in various areas of adolescent and adult mental health. You will often find Dr. Nelson at professional speaking engagements to share her zeal for the profession and help influence social change and advocate for justice domestically and internationally. She is committed to continuing to strengthen her professional identity; therefore, maintains her professional memberships in the following associations:
Dr. Adriana Bovee is an Assistant Professor at Buena Vista University and a Contributing Faculty member at Walden University. Dr. Bovee is a bilingual Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and a Board-Qualified Supervisor. She spent over seven years working as a hospital administrator advocating and providing crisis services to those with acute mental health and substance use disorders. Dr. Bovee has a passion for working with underserved and marginalized populations, particularly with individuals who have been diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI), and immigrants and refugees who have experienced trauma. She also maintains her private practice (Bovee Counseling and Wellness) where she specializes in mood disorders, trauma, and anxiety disorders with the adolescent and adult population. She has a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision from Walden University. She received her Master’s in Mental Health Counseling and Bachelor’s in Psychology from Nova Southeastern University. Dr. Bovee's current research interests include SPMI, resilience, leadership, and workplace trauma. She is an active member of counseling organizations including the American Counseling Association (ACA), Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), Florida Counseling Association (FCA), Florida Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (FACES), and Florida Mental Health Counselors Association (FMHCA).
Growing up in Rhode Island, Jane has always enjoyed helping others through her love of music and teaching. She and her family moved to Naples in 2000 where she began her journey in psychology and mental health counseling. She is a certified professional in Gottman couples counseling, DBT, hypnotherapy, and Rapid Resolution Therapy for trauma. Jane has served on the Skills Mentoring Committee for Walden University in 2020 and is a past board member for the Gulf Coast Mental Health Association. She is a member of Chi Sigma Iota, Honor Society since 2011. Jane is completing her doctoral degree in the next few months and writing her dissertation "Mental health counselor integration of complementary and alternative approaches for anxiety disorders". After graduation, Jane would like to be a counselor educator at a university and grow stronger in her supervisory role with counselors in training. She is passionate and motivated in helping counselors in training grow to be the best version of themselves and become exemplary additions to the profession. You can find out more about her and her counseling skills on her website: www.peacefulmindtherapy.org.
Professor Vera has been a mental health counseling professor, clinical counseling practitioner, pedagogy researcher, and counseling supervisor for over 35 years. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Ed. in Counselor Education & Supervision (University of Orleans, USA), specializing in mental health & human service counseling. Likewise, he holds a Counseling Psychology M.Sc. (CIPPSV) and a Counseling and Guidance B.Ed. (University of Zulia). At the advanced practitioner and field research levels, Dr. Vera earned a clinical counseling postdoctorate residency diploma (The McFarland Institute, New Orleans, USA) and a human science postdoctorate diploma (The University of Zulia, Venezuela). In addition, he holds various professional counseling licences and credentials, such as the Licence Professional Counselor (LPC), Connecticut, the National Certified Counselor (NCC), Certified Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS), Board-Certified TeleMental Health Provider (BC-TMH), TeleMental Health Credential (THTC), and Mental Health Facilitator Master Trainer Credential (MHF-MT). Dr. Vera has extensively published in refereed professional journals, presented research papers, facilitated professional development workshops, and gave speeches at national and international counseling and field-related conferences. His professional and research interests included counseling pedagogy innovations, clinical mental health counseling, narrative-reflective clinical supervision, culturally sensitive counseling techniques, innovative intervention strategies, postmodern and emerging approaches to counseling, multilingual counseling practices, counseling leadership, professional certification, program accreditation at national and global levels, and qualitative and mixed research epistemologies and methodologies. Dr. Vera is one of the founders and an active member of The International Society for Policy Research and Evaluation in School-Based Counseling (ISPRESC) and the Latin-American Counseling Network (RELAPRO). Likewise, he is a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA), American Counseling Supervision (ACES), and the Florida Counseling Association (FCA). Reflective, dialogical, and ethical-critical frameworks imprinted Dr. Vera’s counseling, educational and clinical supervision frameworks. Dr. Vera uses holistic-wellness approaches nurtured by transtheoretical and cultural-sensitive counseling in servicing diverse populations: veterans, immigrants, families, adolescents, couples, and families, who are suffering from a range of challenges; Mental Health Issues: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, grief, and loss. Relational Issues: intra-family, parenting, divorce, marital, behavioral, socio-emotional development, and conflicts. Life Transition Issues: educational, learning, vocational, academic performance, career, employment, and retirement matters. As an Educator, Dr. Vera follows a reflective-practitioner teaching-learning model; his pedagogy framework is oriented toward the premise that learning counseling implies learning diverse ways of being, thinking, feelings, understanding, intervening, relating, and interacting. He thinks these ways must resonate with the philosophical corpus and highest purposes of counseling and its professional, procedural, methodological, and technical body of knowledge. Dr. Vera’s counseling pedagogy stands by the vision that any classroom, physical or virtual, is a space where diverse cultural beings are interreacted, unique voices are encountered, different learning styles are intertwined, and a symphony of inspired meanings are shared. Consequently, Dr. Vera’s teaching intentionally facilitates students’ engagement, reflective thinking, ethical reasoning and energizes curiosity in a community that encourages self-directed learning, empowers creativity, and stimulates personal growth by long-lasting discoveries emerging from the educational encounters.
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Adriana Bovee, Ph.D., LMHC- President-Elect