Simone Golden is a Licensed Social Worker and Certified Professional Coach with more than 15 years of experience working primarily with individuals, children, and families of color across the home, school, and community settings.
She began her career working in community mental health where she navigated the worlds of homelessness, addiction, psychiatric hospitalization, and more. It was in these early years that she began to understand that her true knowledge within the helping profession would come from the hands on, frontline, immersive work that truly allowed for her to connect with not only the people, but also the systems that were in place to support them.
While those early years were essential, it was after she obtained her Master’s Degree with a specialization in health and mental health in 2009 that Simone began her clinical work within the field, first as a therapist within the Jefferson Hospital systems and then as a contractor providing both Mobile Therapy and Behavior Specialist Consultant services to students and families within the Philadelphia area.
The last 6 years, however, Simone has worked in the capacity of Clinical Director within a private educational company, during which time she also served as a field instructor to both Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania BSW and MSW students. It was during her role as Clinical Director that Simone was able to begin creating and delivering professional development workshops for school district personnel and company staff on topics such as trauma informed classrooms and social emotional learning and it was through these trainings that she realized her knack for engaging audiences as well as her ability to address cultural gaps in educational training and programming.
Simone was inspired to create Golden TLC as a means of combining her knowledge and experience over the years to address the very gaps that she experienced first hand in practice. Creating spaces in which people of color can explore themselves and their experiences within the world in a setting that is well-informed and safe. Creating opportunities for learning, conversing, and growing as professionals who work with students of color to ensure we are operating cross-culturally informed institutions. And ultimately, working on both the individual and systemic levels to influence positive change within the individual lives, workspaces, schools, and communities of people of color.
