Click here for Part I & Part II

Connecting people of all means to quality, relationship-centered therapy

Deb D'Arcangelo is the CEO of Council for Relationships, a nonprofit organization that provides individual, couple, and family therapy to people throughout the greater Philadelphia area. The group currently encompasses more than 60 therapists and psychiatrists (as well as more 50 clinical interns) in 10 offices and community-based locations in region. Additionally, Council also provides education and training to mental health professionals and conducts behavioral health research through a number of different programs.

EDWIN WARFIELD: You mentioned that your parents worked hard to give you opportunities they didn’t have. What major life lessons did you learn from them?

DEB D’ARCANGELO: I learned from my mother to take risks and look for opportunities. You never know what can happen, so why not try? That was a great thing about her, and very much appreciated. My father was a Marine for 20 years, and so I learned about structure and order, and doing things right and being prepared. That has helped me a lot. I believe in excellence and setting a very high bar, but then in working with people and with myself, I feel that we can only do what we can do; we just do our best, and that’s the best we can do. But by setting a high bar, you end up doing pretty well, so we don’t need to beat ourselves up about not being perfect, but we need to reach high and then just do the best we can—and then, in the process, help as many people as we can as well.

Q. Tell us about the people who work for Council for Relationships.

A. We have a wonderful staff at Council for Relationships. We have therapists who have been working for the organization for decades. We have world renowned therapists—they’re authors and they’ve won awards. And then we also have newer therapists and our interns. We have a range of people with a number of areas of focus, expertise, and backgrounds, and I think that's what makes Council for Relationships as rich an organization as it is in terms of its staff. We also have amazing administrative and other staff who support all the work to make it possible.

Q. What’s on your list of priorities moving forward?

A. For our online therapy, we are looking at using software that would be face-to-face therapy. As with all we do at Council for Relationships, we look at ensuring that we’re providing services with a high level of excellence and being highly ethical, so we’re making sure that we’re dotting our i's and crossing our t's to make sure that we’re providing that in a way that will be most helpful to clients, and making sure that we can meet their needs—or if we’re not able to meet their needs, to be able to refer them to somebody locally to where they are, because making sure that people who are reaching out to us for care receive high quality care is of utmost importance to us.

The benefits of our work include working with couples and working with families, and often, if a couple gets divorced, the ability to help as far as co-parenting is concerned—that if there are children, then it’s really important that the divorced couple be able to raise the children well and in a positive way. There are many times when our therapists work with families and talk about the benefits of working together to make sure that the children are being raised in as positive a way as possible and with very successful outcomes.

Council for Relationships has had the opportunity to benefit from donations from many people over the years, which we greatly appreciate. We are in the process of thinking about what funds do we need to raise in order for our ongoing operations, our work with our community partner, initiative partners, our work with veterans, and our work with low-fee clients. We’re always raising funds on an ongoing basis for those needs. But also, in terms of providing online therapy, we need additional technology, we need help in a variety of ways to help us with our research with transcending trauma so that we can do more and apply that research to other populations, and do even more research going forward. Long term, we would like to build an endowment to make sure that the organization can be sustainable into the future.

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NKF's 15,000 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NKF's strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NKF's full-service platform comprises BGC's real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

NKF is a part of BGC Partners, Inc., a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets. BGC's common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: BGCP). BGC also has an outstanding bond issuance of Senior Notes due June 15, 2042, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol (NYSE: BGCA). BGC Partners is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer  Howard W. Lutnick. For more information, please visit www.bgcpartners.com.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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