Alison Beckman

Alison Beckman, MSW, LICSW has worked at CVT for 25 years in a variety of capacities. From 2000-2002 and from 2004-2013 she provided psychological evaluation and treatment services to survivors of torture in group and individual capacities in Minnesota.  In 2003, she was a member of a CVT mental health services team in Guinea, serving as a trainer/supervisor of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian paraprofessional psychosocial counselors. From 2013-2017 she served as project manager and clinical supervisor for the Healing Hearts, Creating Hope project; an RCT testing the effectiveness of co-locating CVT mental health services in a primary care setting. She has served as a clinical supervisor throughout the 25 years and has coordinated and conducted training to asylum officers, attorneys, health care providers, social workers and school staff. Since 2018, she has worked on CVT’s policy and advocacy team as Senior Clinician for External Relations. This work has included consultation with defense council for the Guantanamo Bay detainees, advancing inclusive legislative policies for new Americans in Minnesota, participation in national coalitions focused on policy/advocacy work for refugees and asylum seekers, and participation in the NCTTP policy meeting.

 

Previously, Ms. Beckman worked at the Walk-in Counseling Center in Minneapolis where she produced and wrote the video, Torture and War Trauma Survivors: Initial Assessment and Treatment Issues for Counselors and Therapists. She taught Direct Practice with Immigrants and Refugees at the Schools of Social Work at St. Thomas and St. Catherine from 2019-2021. She volunteered in Burkina Faso from 1996-1997 and studied in Madagascar in 1995. Ms. Beckman received a Master of Social Work Degree from the University of Minnesota in May of 2000 and is licensed by the Minnesota Board of Social Work as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker. Ms. Beckman completed a two-year advanced psychotherapy program from the Institute for Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in July 2009.