Meet Keri

Hi! I’m Keri Willard. I’m a dedicated and compassionate counselor, committed to empowering children, adolescents, and their families to overcome anxiety and thrive in their lives. Through empathy and therapeutic skills, I create a nurturing and supportive environment where clients can explore their emotions, develop coping strategies, and build resilience.

I earned my Master’s degree in Counseling from Methodist Theological School in Ohio. As an undergrad, I designed my own major in Humanities with an emphasis on the study of Religion and Philosophy. Prior to counseling, I earned my Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. I’ve worked with nonprofits, faith organizations, and taught World Religions and directed community service at a boarding school on the East Coast. Throughout, I’ve been a mentor to children and teens.

Clinical Specialties

In my five years of experience working as a counselor, I have worked in school, community mental health, and private practice settings, providing individual counseling, group skills training, and family support services. My areas of expertise include anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, self-esteem, and behavioral issues, as well as postpartum challenges for women.

Along with training in pediatric OCD and anxiety, I’ve trained in Yale University’s Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) approach and am passionate about using my expertise to help families stop the anxiety spiral and find joy again.

I adopt a person-centered and strength-based approach to counseling, tailoring my interventions to each individual. I prioritize finding fun, developmentally-appropriate ways to integrate evidence-based techniques and believe that the counseling approach should meet each person’s unique needs. I practice cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), solution-focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), art therapy, sand tray therapy, play therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) to facilitate healing and growth. 

A Little More About Me

Besides being a therapist, I’m also married and a mom to three. My hobbies include reading, baking bread, prowling thrift stores for old tablecloths I can sew into dresses, playing the same board games and backyard sports over and over again with my children, and falling behind on housework.

I am licensed by the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker and Marriage and Family Therapist Board. My license number is C.1902160. As an LPC, I practice under the Supervision of Dawn Friedman MSEd LPCC-S (license number E.1100406). Occasionally, for your benefit, I might share details of your story with Dawn to gain insight about how to better meet your needs. If there are challenges in your life outside of my scope of practice, I will do everything I can to direct you to a therapist with the right training to help you meet your goals.

Finally, there are a few different spellings to my first name, so if you’re looking for me on the CSWMFT website, try “Kerrie.”