She has over 30 years’ experience in counseling, building student support systems in public schools, as well as, building community networks of trained youth-serving adults who can implement best-practice youth development strategies to support youth at-risk.

 

She is the Executive Direction of Inspiring Dreams Network (IDN) and spends a considerable amount of time in her role as the Awareness Task Team Chair of the ACES Coalition of WV, developing curriculum, training resources, and other awareness resources aimed at helping families overcome and stop the generational reoccurrence of ACES. These resources include the three-part WV ACES Training Series, Issue Briefs, brochures, and a recently released video ACES in WV. Additionally, Dr. Brady worked with the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP) to develop the ACES component of the five-part Regrounding our Response WV (RORWV) curriculum aimed at more effectively addressing the Opioid epidemic that is plaguing so many WV families. She also trains Master Trainers to deliver this curriculum. She is a certified trainer in Youth and Adult Mental Health First Aid®, Connections Matter®, WV ACES, and RORWV ACES, and has developed and delivers training on a plethora of other youth development topics. 

 

Dr. Brady served as school counselor for nearly 25 years, then as the WVDE Coordinator for School Counseling and the Expanded School Mental Health (ESMH) lead for 10 years; developing inaugural school counseling performance standards, a state model, an aligned standards-based evaluation system, and school counseling program implementation protocols. She also led the development of the LINKS Student Advisement System, a 5-12 curriculum and best-practice program implementation system aimed at creating effective schoolwide supports for every student. She led the development of an extensive ESMH toolkit to support schools with effective implementation of the Expanded School Mental Health Model and a Mental Health Response Guide for School Crisis. Dr. Brady also served as a critical member on various state policy revision teams that led to positive changes in the school system. She served as President of both the WV and American School Counseling Association (ASCA). Dr. Brady has provided professional development for counselors, teachers, principals, and community stakeholders at the local, regional, state, and national level. She has extensive experience in conference planning, having led or co-led several state and national conferences, including the WV School Counseling Conference, KIdStrong, Student Success Summit, School Improvement Conference, and the ASCA National Conference and Leadership Development Institute. Dr. Brady was recognized as the School Counselor of the Year in 2002 and the School Counseling Advocate of the Year in 2009 and 2017 by the WV School Counselor Association. 

 

Retiring from the WVDE in 2017, she provides ongoing training, technical support, and consultation to schools through her business, Learning Support Consulting, LLC and in her role as Executive Director of Inspiring Dreams Network, Corp. (IDN). Through her work with IDN, Dr. Brady has developed several best-practice youth development trainings and resources to support adults who serve at-risk youth and led the development of IDN’s web-based Youth Development Portal filled with vetted, best-practice resources for youth, families, and adults who serve youth. She also developed a Social Emotional Learn Toolkit 2.0: A framework for Supporting Student Mental Health in partnership with the WV Education Alliance to provide resources and tools for mentors to support students with spiked mental health needs post pandemic. She continues to develop resources and provide consulting and training services for Marshall University School Health Technical Assistance Center, School of Medicine. Last, but not least, Dr. Brady remains an active therapist, providing web-based therapy to youth and families through BetterHelp and on her private practice platform.