Meet our new HEALers Circle Chair, Colleen Baker
Colleen Baker, LCSW
Project HEAL’s HEALers Circle is critical to fulfilling our mission to break down systemic, healthcare, and financial barriers to treatment. The HEALers Circle is comprised of treatment programs and outpatient providers at every level of care, all over the country, that generously donate pro bono care to Project HEAL beneficiaries each year.
We are so excited to welcome our new HEALers Circle Chair, Colleen Baker, to this role. Colleen Is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in eating disorders and has been with the Project HEAL family since 2013. She will be working closely with our Program Director, Ashlee Knight, to expand our HEALers Circle and place beneficiaries of our Treatment Placement Program with quality providers to meet their treatment needs.
A NOTE FROM COLLEEN:
I could not be more excited and honored to enter this new chapter of my involvement with Project HEAL, an organization that has been near and dear to my heart since meeting Liana and Kristina at the 5th Annual Gala back in 2013. From years of volunteering with Project HEAL as the NYC Chapter Co-founder, coordinating annual galas and different volunteer events, and helping create and ultimately years later supervise the peer support program, Project HEAL has been a constant within my development not only as a passionate member of the eating disorder awareness and recovery community, but as an eating disorder specialist within my own private therapy practice. I owe much of my professional path to the connections made and opportunities found within the Project HEAL network of volunteers, staff members, and providers committed to the cause. It certainly feels full circle to take on this role.
We are thrilled to venture into a new frontier of treatment access, led by the incredible Ashlee Knight, as we focus on initiatives to bring new HEALers Circle treatment providers on board to best deliver support for more folks, especially within our BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and Marginalized Communities Treatment Equity Projects. I am honored to serve as a recovered professional within the eating disorder treatment world who is in a higher weight body. While my own process of recovery may have been deemed “atypical,” I have learned over the years just how personalized and “atypical” each individual recovery process and recovered body can be.
Everyone deserves to recover. Everyone deserves the feeling of freedom that comes from body liberation and the feeling of release that comes from a recovered reality. It is my hope to continue to promote these ideals and work with Project HEAL to deliver care to those who need it. We hope to develop an increasingly diverse, dedicated and passionate network of professionals willing to do this work. In reality, it is not only a hope but an absolute responsibility. Thank you for your commitment to this cause as well.
Warmly,
Colleen E. Baker, LCSW