In 2015, Marie Sheffield, MA, L.C.P.C., learned about Personal Leadership (PL) as a fellow at the Institute for Intercultural Communication. She has integrated PL 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.

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. Marie loves to expand the possibilities of PL by finding ways to integrate artistic expression and community-building into her facilitation. Working inter-culturally 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.

Marie is an art therapist and 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 consults to an Intercultural Community Peer Support Program 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 and social service networks supporting the health of all children.

Photo by Jane Ferber.