Name: Hadassah Margolis

Joined NSGP: I joined in June 2020 but I was thinking about joining for years!

Graduated from: Simmons School of Social Work

Place of Work: I am a clinical social worker and Lead Therapist at McLean’s Spirituality and Mental Health Department, where I helped develop the hospital’s first-ever Spirituality and Treatment groups. I am also a staff clinician at the Brandeis Counseling Center.

Special Interests: I met Kitty Dukakis at the 2018 CJP/Ruderman Foundation event on mental health inclusion in synagogues, and that summer we launched Spirituality and Mental Health Discussion Groups at Kehillath Israel. With Kitty’s blessing, I have developed groups, workshops, and talks at 12 other area synagogues.

Fun Fact: I enjoy working across a mashup of communities, weaving together crafters and vulnerable populations (Got Masks MA), knitters and immigrant rights activists (Welcome Blanket Brookline), local government leaders and social studies teachers (InclusiveBrookline), and changemakers and farmers’ markets (Inspo:Expo). In all my work, there is a common thread: I create civic infrastructure and make it possible for people to transform themselves through dialogue, reflection, and common action.

Why I Joined NSGP: I fell in love with group work at my very first internship at a day treatment center, and I am excited to be with colleagues who value group work as much as I do.

Name: Bret Hector Schermerhorn

Joined NSGP: December 2020

Graduated from: Lesley University

Place of Work and Play: I recently started working at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater, MA. Outside of my time there, given the current world we live in, I’m most often at my apartment in Brighton with my partner and our pup. Fortunately, both have turned out to be phenomenal co-quarantiners!

Special Interests: The location I currently work at specializes in the treatment of incarcerated sex offenders and individuals classified by the state as Sexually Dangerous Persons. It’s posing a new and unique challenge and is certainly not the work I anticipated doing when I decided to pursue counseling as a career path. However, the program is largely structured around long-term process groups and I’m finding I enjoy it immensely.

Fun Fact: I (barely!) maintain a blog where I try to explore ideas of personal interest in psychotherapy and philosophy by examining the lyrics of some of my favorite songs.