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• Emotional Intelligence for Better Outcomes with Clients and Co-Workers

  • When
    01/28/2026
  •  
    10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom Webinar
  • Spaces left
    41
  • Registered
    19 registrants

  Register

  

  Emotional intelligence (EI) or emotional quotient (EQ) is the capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.

  Research has shown that psychological safety is a primary factor in effecting successful outcomes, both with co-workers and with clients. Higher emotional intelligence creates a zone where it is safe to:

  • Discuss Ideas
  • Experiment
  • Take Risks
  • Give Feedback
  • Learn from Mistakes

  Join Dr. Johnson as she talks about the impact and importance of Emotional Intelligence. Discover why this term has grown in popularity both at home and at work. By the end of the presentation, you will have a better understanding of both Emotional Intelligence itself and how to improve your own Emotional Intelligence.

  Objectives

  • Provide a more comprehensive approach in assisting clients to move toward self-sufficiency;
  • Develop increased empathy, self-awareness and self-regulation
  • Recognize the Emotional Intelligence principles that can make both co-workers and clients more passionate and engaged;
  • Gain an understanding of the dominance of survival over proactivity; and
  • Inspire practices that recognize individual needs for self-efficacy, self-determination and self-reflection.

  Presenter: Kate Leslie

  

  Kate Leslie, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker, originally from Atlanta, GA. She received her Honors BA in Modern Culture and Media (Semiotics) from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island in 2001 where she focused on post-colonial literature and politics. Kate received her MSW from Smith College School for Social Work in Northampton, MA. She completed her post-masters training fellowship at the McAuley Institute at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco, a psychiatric inpatient unit for adolescents.

  Kate is a member of the AAPCSW, NASW, and the mental health provider representative on the Colorado Medicaid MPRACC committee. Kate works with severe mental illness in families, eating disorders, and trauma, and is private practice in Boulder, CO.

  Eligible for three hours Certificate of Completion

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• MI for Supervisors & Champions - Feb 3 & 5

  • Start
    02/03/2026
  •  
  • End
    02/05/2026
  •  
  • Schedule
    2 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom Webinar
  • Spaces left
    28
  • Registered
    3 registrants

  Register

  

  Motivational Interviewing provides a “tool box” of techniques and strategies which will help you to be more effective in working with clients who bring a wide range of challenges. This one-day advanced Motivational Interviewing Training is the next step for teams who are serious about an evidence-based implementation of Motivational Interviewing skills. The development and maintenance of MI skills is a challenge for front-line workers. Participating in the workshops is a great start but ongoing feedback and mentoring are needed in order for most workers to use MI skillfully. This workshop can help enhance both supervisor MI skills and the quality and nature of the mentoring process. It’s a win-win for clients and agency staff alike.
  This advanced MI training is only for those who have already taken the Motivational Interviewing Basic Two-Day training series. The training builds on the two-day MI Skills Training and teaches supervisors and professionals who are passionate about MI how to keep the practice of MI alive within their teams. If you have not undergone the MI Basic Series, please register for that course instead of this one; we conduct MI Basic regularly.

  Participants will leave with an understanding of:
  • the research-based building-blocks of a successful MI implementation
  • MI coaching skills
  • how to facilitate MI practice sessions
  • a manual with tailored MI exercises to build & sustain their team’s MI skills

  _________

  

  Presenter: Avani G. Dilger, MEd, MA, LPC, BC-DMT, CAS 
  Avani specializes in substance abuse prevention and treatment with adults, teens and their families. She is the founder and director of the “Natural Highs – Healthy Alternatives to Drugs & Alcohol” nonprofit program. Avani has been training professionals in in Motivational Interviewing and other evidence-based practices worldwide for over 20 years. Find out more about Avani HERE.

  ________

  Eligible for 8 hours Certificate of Completion

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• Healthy Boundaries

  • When
    02/18/2026
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom Webinar
  • Spaces left
    55
  • Registered
    5 registrants

  Register

  While healthy boundaries can be subjective and consist of many different variables, defining healthy boundaries is imperative to the work we do, and allows us to gain a better sense of agency over one’s feelings, energy, and personal space. Setting healthy boundaries is a learned skill that, if done on a consistent basis, will allow us to form stronger relationships with our co-workers, clients and loved ones.

  When we set healthy boundaries, we lead by example for everyone around us. As we all know, every person has limits. When we demonstrate healthy boundaries we express our limits through verbal, nonverbal, and paraverbal communication. In this workshop we will delve into tools to support creating and maintaining professional boundaries. This two- hour workshop will allow us to get comfortable with setting healthy boundaries no matter how challenging it may feel. We will learn to better trust our instincts and delve into the barriers that make it difficult to set boundaries. In an anxiety ridden society it can be intimidating to establish healthy boundaries.

  Fear of rejection, the unconscious desire to please others, lack of understanding around setting boundaries, or the fear of being seen as someone who is “difficult” to work with are some of the many reasons we choose not to practice this essential piece of self-care. Together we can foster self-respect, community empowerment, and genuine happiness by implementing boundaries that allow us all to get our wants and needs met.

  Learning objectives:

  • Articulate what it means to set healthy boundaries

  • Demonstrate an understanding of boundaries and the intersection of cultural, ethical, and professional boundaries in the workplace

  • Analyze the purpose of boundaries and gain valuable insight as to why healthy boundaries are imperative to the work we do

  • Establish techniques to express ones needs and boundaries

  • Identify the supervisor’s role in dealing with boundary issues and create a protocol around violations.

  • Discuss boundaries and barriers when working with a team

  • Examine the correlation between boundaries and burn-out

  • Dissect issues that challenge our professional boundaries and ways to re-establish boundaries

  Presenter:

  

  Fatima Kiass, Founder & Chief Catalyst.  Empowered Connections

  Fatima is a creative strategist whose life work is committed to strengthening community connectedness and empowering vulnerable populations through leadership, agency, and advocacy. Known for her empathy, Fatima is gifted in having difficult conversations in a way that makes people feel valued and supported. Her communication and interpersonal skills shine at the intersections of community education, organizing, and wellness.

  She was named "Maverick Thinker" by Urban Peak and the City and County of Denver in 2019 for her leadership in designing and facilitating various trainings at national conferences, including the Runaway and Homeless Youth Training Technical Assistance Center (RHYTTAC) and The Race Forward conference. As a mentor, social worker, teacher, and facilitator, Fatima grounds her work in her lived experiences over coming trauma, generational poverty, homelessness, and structural barriers.

  
  

  Eligible for two (2) hours Certificate of Completion

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• Motivational Interviewing - Feb 24,26 & Mar 3,5

  • Start
    02/24/2026
  •  
  • End
    03/05/2026
  •  
  • Schedule
    4 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom webinar
  • Spaces left
    15
  • Registered
    16 registrants

  Register

  This evidence-based approach has consistently shown positive outcomes in dealing with resistance and defensiveness. Motivational Interviewing is a collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person's own motivation and commitment to change. It has been successfully used with populations where resistance is prevalent, including adults and adolescents who deal with legal problems, substance abuse and mental health issues. 

  Motivational Interviewing provides a “tool box” of techniques and strategies which will help you to be more effective in working with clients who bring a wide range of challenges. This is a four-day online training with a four-hour session each day. A broadband Internet connection and working webcam are required for participation. You must be on-camera during the event to receive a certificate of completion.

   Attendees will: 

  • Understand the basic principles and skills of Motivational Interviewing

  • Experience a collaborative versus an authoritarian communication style and see how you can effectively decrease defensiveness in clients​;​

  • Learn and practice resistance skills​;

  • Learn and practice directive skills that help move a client towards positive behavior change​;​

  • Be able to elicit commitment language from a client that is correlated to positive outcomes​;​

  • Explore proven implementation strategies that help improve your Motivational Interviewing skills in the field​.

  _____
  

  Presenter: Avani G. Dilger, MEd, MA, LPC, BC-DMT, CAS 
  Avani specializes in substance abuse prevention and treatment with adults, teens and their families. She is the founder and director of the “Natural Highs – Healthy Alternatives to Drugs & Alcohol” nonprofit program. Avani has been training professionals in in Motivational Interviewing and other evidence-based practices worldwide for over 20 years. Find out more about Avani HERE.

  Eligible for 16 hours MINT Certificate of Completion, valid worldwide.

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• From Policy to Practice: Navigating Change in Refugee and Immigrant Communities

  • When
    02/25/2026
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom Webinar
  • Registered
    8 registrants

  Register

  For those working in social, medical, mental health, and legal services, understanding how immigration impacts our clients is imperative. Ten percent of Coloradans and 12% of Denver-metro residents are immigrants. Nearly 175,000 (25%) children in Denver and 276,000 (20%) children in Colorado have at least one parent who is an immigrant. 329,000 residents of Colorado are at risk of detention and deportation.

  Working with refugees and immigrants in changing environments requires flexibility and adaptability from human service providers.This training will explore the impact of macro-level policy changes and micro-level clinical interventions.

  Participants will gain a deeper understanding of current policy shifts while exploring the psychosocial impacts of displacement on refugee and immigrant communities. Through hands-on world scenarios, attendees will practice navigating clinically sensitive conversations with cultural attunement and trauma stewardship.

  KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Analyze the impact of recent federal and Colorado-specific policy changes on mental health access and psychosocial stability.
  • Understand the compound impacts of trauma, displacement, and systemic oppression in resettlement.
  • Gain a deeper understanding of trauma stewardship during shifting social climates.
  • Synthesize knowledge through hands-on practice with complex client scenarios.
  • Implement tools that allow a deeper sensitivity during nuanced sensitive clinical conversations.

  ____
  

  P R E S E N T E R

  Osmara Medrano, LCSW, PsyD, is a bilingual clinician specializing in trauma-informed, culturally-responsive mental health care for immigrants, refugees, and individuals with severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI). With a background in clinical social work and psychology, she seeks to promote healing and resilience in marginalized communities. Currently she serves as a therapist at Aurora Mental Health & Recovery, where she delivers individual and group therapy to refugees and immigrants from diverse cultural backgrounds.
  

  Eligible for two hours Certificate of Completion

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• Healing Vicarious Trauma

  • When
    03/17/2026
  •  
    9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom Webinar
  • Spaces left
    60
  • Registered
    Be the first

  Register

  

  When working with people who are in the midst of personal crisis, trauma, or emotional distress, it is common to eventually exhaust yourself from vicarious trauma (aka secondary trauma or compassion fatigue). This workshop is focused on ways to exercise self-care and self-compassion for human services professionals. Self-compassion involves treating ourselves with the care that you would offer a close friend. We will discuss the benefits of self-compassion and how to cope with caregiver fatigue. We will also talk about how to incorporate self-compassion into everyday life. We encourage you to fight caregiver fatigue by taking this time to learn to care for yourself at this enjoyable, interactive workshop.

  Participants will learn about the impact of traumatic stress on the brain and on the body. Concepts of vicarious trauma, secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout will be addressed. Finally, we will explore organizational and personal strategies that can be employed to mitigate the effects of secondary traumatic stress.

  Causes of vicarious trauma

  Your clients may have experienced trauma associated with childhood abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault or other violent crimes, disasters, war, forced migration, or even political torture. Vicarious traumatic stress is now recognized as an occupational hazard of providing direct services to populations with histories of trauma. Vicarious trauma involves a transformation which occurs in the inner experience of the human services practitioner as a result of empathetic engagement with their clients' traumatic experiences. The emotional costs of caring for clients with histories of trauma can be significant, including the loss of personal and professional resiliency. A growing body of research evidence has demonstrated that secondary traumatic stress has the potential to erode work performance, undermine motivation and morale, and adversely impact the personal health of the practitioner.

  Healing (Trauma) Informed Self-Care (HISC) is an important best practice model for all direct care workers to understand. Understanding Healing Informed self-care is at least as important in the direct care field. Research in trauma, neuropsychology, positive psychology and other disciplines identify several approaches to self-care that help mitigate stress, trauma, secondary trauma, compassion fatigue and burn-out. Understanding how we are affected, as well as how we can care well for ourselves and others, will undoubtedly help us lead and shape the future together. Learning objectives include the following.

  By the end of the training, learners will be able to:

  • Describe Stress, Trauma, Secondary Trauma, Burn-Out, Compassion Fatigue, Zoom Fatigue, Moral Fatigue &/or Comparative Suffering;
  • Be able to identify symptoms in yourself and others and know how to access help;
  • Understand what predicts Vicarious Trauma;
  • Become aware of causes and consequences in order to help decrease vulnerability;
  • Practice self-administered stress reduction relaxation techniques
  • Identify at least one way to insulate themselves from Vicarious/Secondary Trauma, Burn-Out &/or Compassion Fatigue
  • Identify at least one thing they will do for better Self-Care.

  
  

  

  Presenter: Melinda Marasch, LCSW
  Aspire Training & Consulting

  It is my honor to do exciting work with the amazing, compassionate people in the nonprofit world! It has been my life’s passion to help others, first as a psycho-therapist and now as a consultant. I specialize in clinical supervision in the form of training (in-person and online), as well as individual and group sessions. We serve licensed and unlicensed individuals, as well as programs and organizations. I have expertise in many areas, including HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, mental illnesses and much more. I also provide coaching to clients who are motivated to maximize their assets. 

  Eligible for 3 hours Certificate of Completion

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