Meet The Speakers
Susan Barbeau, MPA (she/her)
Owner & Founder - Follow the Knowing
With over 20 years of executive leadership experience, Susan knows how to build a team. She served as the CEO of a multi-million dollar non-profit for nearly a decade. She also holds a Master's Degree in Public and
Non-Profit administration.
Her most important job is being a Mom to an energetic 9-year-old boy. She also
coaches a boys' soccer team, where group facilitation, communication, and motivational skills are put to the test!
As an Enneagram 8, she is a challenger, who loves to try new things and move ideas into action.
Abigail Bocanegra, LMFT (she/her/ella)
Owner & Founder - Creative Heart Therapies
Abigail Bocanegra is the Founder and Director of Creative Heart Therapies and is a bilingual/bicultural Expressive Arts Psychotherapist and Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant. She has extensive experience utilizing culturally resonant arts practices with diverse young children and their families impacted by colonial intergenerational trauma, racialized trauma, and discriminatory systemic immigration policies. She is the co-developer and co-author of The Integrative Cultural Healing Model, a treatment approach intersecting Tribal Traditional Knowledge and Western-based practices to treat trauma and foster ancestral healing for Indigenous children (0-5) and their families. She is also the creator and author of the Family Play Group Curriculum, designed to strengthen and support secure relationships between young children and their parents residing at Rising Strong: a holistic, family-centered drug treatment and housing program supporting children and their parents. Her work is strongly influenced by her lived experience as First Generation Mexican-American/Chicanx and is grounded in Nahuatl Philosophy of In Ixtli In Yolotl - a pursuit of a life purpose, living in alignment with wisdom in consciousness and the strength and guidance of the heart.
Abigail is faculty of the Advanced Clinical Training (ACT) Program at the Barnard Center for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health at the University of Washington. In this role, she provides Reflective Practice and IECMH Consultation for Spanish-Speaking Bilingual clinicians serving young children and their families. In her teaching, she centers relationships and principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in program curriculum and delivery. As an IECMH consultant, she offers educational workshops and training to community and mental health providers aligned with DEI core competencies as foundational to attachment, trauma, family systems, workforce development, and organizational systems.
Christine Buckley (she/her)
Loan Readiness Center Director - Business Impact NW
Christine Buckley manages the Loan Readiness Center at Business Impact NW. She is a Certified Business Coach and Certified Credit Counselor. She has been an advisor to small businesses through her work with several Puget Sound SBA Women’s Business Centers, as well as through her private consultancy. She has owned several businesses in varied industries in Spain, California, and Washington. Christine brings her hands-on knowledge, experience and education to thousands of clients, specifically in the areas of commercial lending, business financial management and analysis, credit counseling and loan package preparation. She provides individual advising and training.
Christine has also worked in leadership roles and advised non-profits and supports community partners including other lenders and business support organizations. She is also a licensed mortgage loan originator and brings this combined knowledge and experience to assist clients with loan readiness. Travel and adventure bring her joy and inspiration and she enjoys being outdoors (preferably the beach), running, and working out at the gym.
Haylie Castillo, LSWAIC (she/her)
Owner & Founder - Castillo Financial Therapy
Haylie Castillo (she/her) is a financial therapist whose passion is to see people find freedom and agency through healing their relationship with money. As a therapist in private practice, she understands the unique challenges of building a small business while navigating your own relationship with money.
As a LSWAIC and a Certified Financial Therapist - Level 1, Haylie works from a trauma-informed, anti-oppression lens to create a shame-free space for her clients to heal from financial trauma and explore their emotions around money, supporting them in building a healthy relationship with money by decreasing shame and increasing self-trust around their finances.
Through disrupting the default beliefs around money and success, Haylie has a gift for helping people envision a new reality for themselves, their communities, and the world. One in which they have a sense of peace, joy, and ease around money. She has a degree in communication and a Master’s in Social Work with a certificate in Financial Therapy.
When she is not in the office, she can be found making memories with her partner and their two little boys, spending time at the beach, binge-watching the latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, or doing deep dives into astrology.
Nicole Damaris (she/her)
Owner & Founder - Social B Marketing & Communications
Nicole Damaris Green is the founder, owner, and Chief Marketing Strategist at Social B, spearheading innovative marketing initiatives since its establishment in 2018. With over 20 years of comprehensive experience in business development, direct marketing, and digital marketing, Nicole has consistently driven success in diverse professional capacities.
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In the early 2010s, Nicole pioneered NDG FIT, a prominent fitness and wellness brand/studio nestled in the vibrant landscape of New York City. Relocating to Washington State in 2012, she assumed the role of Director of Marketing and Business Development within the behavioral health space, leveraging her expertise to orchestrate impactful strategies.
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At Social B, Nicole passionately champions the ethos of "Together We Are SAVING LIVES" through dedicated efforts in Addiction, Recovery, and Mental Health Marketing. Specializing in crafting campaigns and outreach initiatives grounded in data analytics, Social B excels in empowering organizations within these critical sectors to expand their reach and cultivate robust patient bases.
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With a cumulative tenure of 10 years intersecting the realms of marketing and behavioral health, Nicole's visionary leadership merges her twin passions: fostering business growth and facilitating access to vital support for individuals grappling with addiction or navigating mental health challenges.
Owner & Co-Founder - The Practice NW
Matt is the co-founder and Chief Operations Officer of The Practice NW. With his M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, he worked for a few years as a therapist, but then left the field to assist Veterans at the Department of Veteran’s Affairs in a non-clinical role where he sharpened both his analytical eye and his business organizational skills as a quality assurance analyst and adjudication specialist.
Through The Practice NW, he works to develop a place where the resources and support he couldn’t find when he was in the field can be found. By co-creating and attending to the day-to-day operations of The Practice NW coworking space, he is able to use his education, prior clinical experience, and business organizational skills to help provide a safe industrious space for others seeking to hone both their clinical and private practice knowledge.
Rebekah Jackson, MSW (she/her)
Owner & Founder - Harbor Happiness
As the co-founder of Harbor Happiness and Garden of Peace, Rebekah facilitates opportunities for self-discovery and connection. She has spent nearly a decade studying the Enneagram, an ancient tool that helps us discover the patterns associated with personality function, explore underlying behavioral motivations, and unlock the gifts we have to transform non-productive encounters with others. An animal lover at heart, you can usually find Rebekah outside working in the garden or with her Rottweiler, Mr. Blue Bear.
Sharon Shadwell, LMHC (she/her)
Owner & Founder - LoveBuilt
Sharon Shadwell, MS, MPA is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who is passionate about the importance of relationships to our emotional well-being as humans. After more than six years of public administration focused on early childhood social-emotional development and mental health, she returned to private practice. At LoveBuilt, she is a practicing psychotherapist for children, adolescents, and families; a mental health consultant; and a champion for the wellbeing of transdisciplinary early childhood and behavioral health workforces through her engagement in policy advocacy. She is also co-founder with her spouse Matt Horner of The Practice NW and 6R Learning Collaborative.
Sharon is a past fellow (2021) of the Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship program through the University of California, Davis. She currently serves as a board member for the Washington Mental Health Counselors Association,and President of the Pierce County Counselors Association.
