OUR FACILITATORS

Marie Sheffield, L.C.P.C.

Bath, Maine, U.S.A.

• Intercultural community builder
• Social transformation
• Collective healing

PL work
In 2015, Marie Sheffield learned about Personal Leadership when she was a fellow at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. Since then, she has integrated Personal Leadership into her own facilitator training for the Intercultural Peer Support Program at the Center for Grieving Children in Portland, Maine. Through that work, she supports children resettling from war and persecution,

Marie loves to expand the possibilities of PL by finding ways to integrate artistic expression and community-building into her facilitation. Working interculturally with children and families for nearly 20 years, Marie’s passion is to implement PL training into the networks of people who support children in community.

She provides ongoing trainings in Personal Leadership, including with AmeriCorps, both the New Hampshire and Maine public school districts, recipients of the 21st Century federal grant, and the Multilingual and Multicultural Center, Portland, Maine.

Other work
Marie is a licensed clinical counselor, and for the past 18 years she has worked in the field of complex loss, mass trauma and children. Her focus is on children who lost a parent on 9/11, and children who have experienced forced migration to the Northeastern United States because of war and persecution.

As an intercultural team leader, Marie maintains an Intercultural Community Peer Support Program for 4th to 12th graders at the Center for Grieving Children in Portland, Maine.

In addition to consulting and training on the subject of intercultural communication, collective loss and healing, both nationally and internationally, Marie established and continues an intercultural advisory council. This council is made up of the cultural leaders and advocates of the children served at the Center for Grieving Children. The council ensures equity, humanity, love and mutual knowledge in regard to collective healing practices. It also “sparks change” within the school, health-service and social-service networks supporting children in the surrounding communities.

She has also consulted professionally with Harvard University, America’s Camp, Multilingual and Multicultural Center in Maine, and the Migration Policy Institute.

Personal background
Born and raised in Rhode Island, Marie grew up knowing only half of her cultural heritage—Northern and Eastern European. Perhaps because of that, Marie has found herself immersed in intercultural knowledge, with a curiosity for Indigenous knowledge and its integration in collective healing.

Academic
After receiving her Psychology degree from the University of Washington, Marie finished a dual Master’s in Clinical Counseling and Art Therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.