Vanessa Prosper, a licensed clinical psychologist, joins the Lynch School this fall with 15 years of clinical experience in child and adolescent psychology. It’s work that requires thinking outside the box, she says, since many children and adolescents find it difficult to identify and articulate their emotional pain. With patients at different developmental stages, she explains, “You have to figure out what is going on internally without necessarily receiving that information verbally.”

Prosper spent her early career working with HIV-positive children, Haitian immigrants, college students, and children on the autism spectrum before accepting a postdoctoral fellowship at the Neighborhood Partnership Program, ​​a community outreach program at Boston Children's Hospital. There, she led services such as depression and suicide awareness trainings, cultural competency workshops, therapy, consultation, and crisis intervention in several schools around the city.

During her time at Boston Children’s Hospital, Prosper began her own private practice in Boston’s Back Bay, and in 2015, she joined Boston Latin School as its clinical coordinator. While there, she worked to further develop and expand the school’s mental health infrastructure. In addition to overseeing clinical services, Prosper co-led two programs: one for students transitioning back to school after a long absence, and another for students with individualized education plans for emotional difficulties that severely interfere with their academic functioning.

Important to this work, Prosper mentions, is providing psychoeducational opportunities for teachers so they can identify symptoms of depression and anxiety in their students: “It’s about equipping teachers with tools to readily identify kids who could be vulnerable so they can be referred early on.” This way, their depression and anxiety won’t escalate.

“Working with youth is unique,” she says, “because it involves close and frequent communication with the systems around the child, like parents, teachers, and outside providers. That is the formula to get the best outcome for that child.”

In addition to her clinical experience, Prosper comes to the Lynch School with a 15-year career in higher education. While teaching at Lesley University, William James College, and BC, she drew on her unique strengths as an educator.

“My approach is to provide students with the best tools I was given while enabling them to be the most culturally competent, sensitive clinicians they can be,” she says. In her new role as associate professor of the practice, Prosper looks forward to continuing her work at the Lynch School while bringing real-world examples into the classroom so students can translate theory into practice.