Dr. Tanisha Thelemaque helps organizations and individuals develop their understanding of equity while fostering systemic inclusion.
Dr. T has helped numerous institutions and individuals grow.
She has developed and overseen quality improvement projects, led teams of people from different professional and cultural backgrounds, and developed programs that last long after she has left an institution. She has also presented her work at international conferences and within numerous professional organizations.
She is a content developer with an intersectional eye who continues to work with international corporations, start-ups, non-profits, and educational institutions in furthering their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.
Examples of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) trainings
Building an Equitable Work Environment
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Length: 60 to 90 minutes
Description: This interactive presentation explores how to implement clinical research and systems-level analyses to improve anti-oppressive clinical supervision practices. Ultimately, this is a space that will cultivate awareness and skills around creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for supervisees. Participants will also receive tools for effective dialogue around DEI-related issues. -
Length: 45 to 60 minutes
Description: A resilient working community is one that is trauma informed. This session begins by using metaphors to describe trauma and define resilience. Before diving into industry-leading guiding principles for a trauma-informed approach, which has been adapted into a phase-based process of developing a trauma informed work environment. The guiding principles and approach are discussed in addition to multiple examples of trauma-informed actions that organizations have taken to transform their workplaces. The presentation ends with numerous policy-related recommendations based on several sources.
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Length: 60 minutes
Description: This presentation defines the types of stress that different groups experience that oftentimes intersect when in a working environment with different cultures. How to curb the damaging mental health impacts of this dynamic are explored.
Building Equitable Environments within Psychology
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Length: 120 to 180 minutes
Description: This interactive presentation explores how Oppressive systems that marginalize certain groups can influence the presentation and management of anxiety disorders. Illustrative case examples and interactive discussion bring this topic to life while also providing practical skills and tools based on evidence-based scholarship.
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Length: 60 minutes
Description: This interactive presentation explores how to use a combination of clinical skills, research, and DEI knowledge to inform therapeutic and consulting work. This is a space building awareness around cultivating an inclusive environment and utilizing clinical skills to work in both traditional and non-traditional settings.
Examples of Clinical DEI trainings
Racial Trauma Series
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Length: 60 minutes
Description: The vision for the workshop series is to create a space for open dialogue and increased awareness about culturally responsive clinical care. The first installment is an one-hour long workshop crafted to provide a foundational understanding of what race-based traumatic stress is and how it impacts mental health. Specifically, definitions of key concepts are explored and a model of discussing race will be reviewed as an introduction to exploring individuals’ experiences of racialized violence. This is an interactive experience meant to elicit conversation as well as explore strategies for supporting marginalized individuals. -
Length: 30 to 45 minutes
Description: This session focuses on utilizing emotion regulation-based skills to promote healing in people coping with race-based stressors. Oftentimes, individuals are enveloped by negative emotions and potential despair when interfacing with race-based trauma. Strategies focused on collective and individual empowerment are presented as methods of allowing people to move through their emotions and engage in healing.
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Length: 30 to 45 minutes
Description: This session focuses on utilizing values-based action in combination with the emotion regulation skills discussed in the previous session to promote healing in clients coping with race-based stressors. With empowerment, there is often a motivation to impact the world. However, engaging in social justice oriented behaviors can provide additional exposure to race-based traumas and triggers. Throughout this session, we will discuss how to facilitate a space of values-based exploration so that you can empower your clients to engage in meaningful ways that promote their mental health.
LGBTQIA+ Issues in Therapy
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Length: 60 minutes
Description: The vision of this workshop series is to create a space for open dialogue and increased awareness about culturally responsive clinical care for the LGBTQ+ population. To this end, there will be a combination of instruction, thoughtful questioning, and illustrative case presentations that will ground participants in the best practices for working with individuals with intersecting identities. The first workshop will focus on unique challenges that may arise when working with LGBTQ+ clients of color through an intersectional and decolonial lens. Key concepts related to sexual orientation and racial identity development will be explored. By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to describe and define racism as well as heterosexism. Participants will also be able to identify at least one strategy to explore racial or gender identity among clients.
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Length: 60 minutes
Description: The second 60-minute workshop in this series focuses on affirming gender identity and assisting clients in navigating gender-related transitions, which include but are not limited to social transitions and medical transitions such as gender affirming surgeries and hormonal treatments. This presentation will provide clinicians with tools that will not only allow them to think about their own gendered experiences but also gain the building blocks for guiding a client through an exploration of their gender. Guiding clinical questions and case examples focused on transgender and gender non-conforming clients of color will be utilized. This is an interactive experience meant to elicit conversation as well as explore strategies for supporting clients. No prior knowledge of providing care to transgender or gender non-conforming individuals is necessary to take this course.
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Length: 90 minutes
Description: The ability to effectively implement intersectionality, anti-racism, and healing practices in therapeutic and academic settings is an integral part of forming an inclusive environment. This 90-minute training creates a space for increased awareness around culturally responsive clinical care with people of color who exist along the spectrum of sexual and/or gender. To this end, there will be a combination of instruction, thoughtful questioning, and illustrative case presentations that will ground participants in the best practices for working with individuals with intersecting identities. Participants will also be provided with tools to continue the exploration of their own gendered and racialized experiences.
Colleague
“In everything she does, Dr. Tanisha Thelemaque epitomizes an extraordinary mix of intelligence, creativity, and integrity, leavened by warmth and wit... As a clinician, educator, and consultant, Tanisha brings a clear-eyed and engaging energy and focus that invites her clients, learners, and colleagues to lean forward and to joyfully join in the work at hand. I leave interactions with Tanisha feeling a greater sense of clarity and purpose, and more enlivened for the steps that lie ahead. I refer others to her with complete confidence that she will go above and beyond, and that she will inspire whomever she works with to do the same.”
Former Client