Meet The

Emerging Wellness Team

Denise Briales, LMSW

Denise Briales is a bilingual license social worker who earn her master’s degree in social work from Fordham University. She worked for Safe Horizon for 25 years and served as the Coordinator of the Brooklyn Rape Awareness and Victim Advocacy Program where she supported victims in their recovery from sexual and physical abuse. As an Educator/Trainer she provided trainings for area hospitals, schools and community-based organizations on the topic of Domestic violence and Sexual Assault Awareness. She was then asked to join the first multidisciplinary Child Advocacy Center in New York State conducting forensic interviews with child victims of physical and sexual abuse at the Jane Barker Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center.

Denise continues to support crime victims when she joined the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office in 2008, providing trauma therapy, forensic interviewing of children and adults, in cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Then in 2022 she transition to the Queens County District Attorney’s Office where she serves as the Associate Director of the Crime Victim Advocate Program providing supervision to staff, assisting in pre-trial forensic interviews, and trial prep with victims in the criminal justice system. Denise has served victims for the last 4 decades and wants to move beyond the barriers of physicality and has joined in a partnership with L. Nora Durand, LMHC to offer online services to those who are grieving loss and has experienced trauma in the New York area. We look forward to joining you on your journey and gently guiding you from a place of grief and despair to a place of remembering, acceptance and resolution.

L. Nora Durand, LMHC

Hi my name is Lynda Nora Durand and I go by Nora. I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with over 8 years of experience in the state of Florida and New York. I am a Florida native who migrated to New York. I have a Master in Mental Health Counseling and a certificate in Child and Adolescent Studies. I have worked in child welfare as an advocate and counselor to youth in foster care from there I became a crisis counselor for Hurricane Sandy Victims, to then run a crisis respite center for individuals with what we call “severe mental illness” where we provided a peer environment in which individual’s experiencing psychosis but did not rise to the level of hospitalization could have a place to stay away from their triggering environment, and currently I work with victims of crimes.

I shared so much detail as to my prior work experience because it speaks to the way I work with individuals. I believe in meeting every person where they are and providing a compassionate non-judgmental space to process and explore their individual reality. My approach is a combination of Intentional Peer Support, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and Need Adaptive Treatment model. I do my best to be creative with the therapy I provide and tailor it to the individual that I am working with. I am a believer in Jesus Christ and truly believe in faith and therapy not one or the other. I embrace being able to incorporate Biblical truths into the wellness space.

I am so happy that you have taken this step to work on your emotional and mental health and look forward to the opportunity to be a support alongside you in this journey.

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