DANIELA PETERSON

Abriendo Caminos Para Mamas Solteras Director

 

Daniela Peterson grew up in Santiago, Chile and graduated from a small private University with a degree in psychology. Right after she graduated from college she got married and moved to the US.  Daniela started working as a home visitor for Head Start in Jackson. After two years completed her thesis, and surprisingly found out she was able to validate her degree here in the US. She became a Licensed Professional Counselor and started working at the Jackson Hole Community Counseling Center as the first native Spanish speaker therapist. At the same time she was also full time at the Curran-Seeley Foundation, a nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment center.  At this agency she started from scratch the first treatment program in Spanish for the Latino population.  She was leading an Outpatient Treatment Program, a Domestic Violence Prevention Program, DUI classes, and provided substance abuse evaluations for Spanish speakers.  In 2007, she was honored by the Wyoming Department of Health Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Division with the Starfish Award by Governor Dave Freudenthal for creating and leading the first Spanish speaking substance abuse treatment program in the state of Wyoming. In 2012, she started providing mental health services to the students of the Jackson Hole High School. The same year she was invited by the Community Safety Network to start a support group for Latino women victims of domestic violence and abuse. Throughout her work with Latino victims of abuse, she started exploring new ways to support people dealing with trauma as a consequence of abuse. Since then, Daniela decided to focus on the Latino population who has experienced abuse and trauma. She found out that the number of children that have been sexually, physically, and psychologically abused is intolerable. Sadly, many of them were not receiving treatment at all because their parents were lacking the English skills and did not feel confident to discuss their concerns with professionals who did not speak their language or understand their culture. Therefore, she decided to leave her job of almost 9 years at Curran-Seeley Foundation and focus on her private practice instead. At this time Daniela Peterson provides exclusively services for Spanish speaking children and women, who suffer from abuse and trauma, and works as a consultant and contracts with different agencies of the Teton County Community. Due to her work with victims of abuse (mostly children), the Wyoming Division of Victim Services has recently nominated Mrs. Peterson for the 2014 Visionary Award, receiving the Outstanding Service Provider which was given out at the 16th Annual Wyoming Victim Services Conference in Sheridan Wyoming.