About Me
Carolina Gleason has spent the last twenty five years serving the needs of children and their families in the Greater Tampa Bay Area as well as internationally and remotely. A vast majority of
this time was dedicated to diverting high risk children from the foster care system by working extensively and tirelessly to correct maladaptive behaviors
and dysfunctional family dynamics to establish unified, bonded and stable family units that maximized the potential for appropriate child development.
At The Spring of Tampa Bay, Carolina spent the first two years of her professional career working as an individual and group facilitator with domestic
violence perpetrators, victims and witnesses of domestic violence. In this capacity, Carolina worked to empower abused women and correct their
developed patterns and thought processes that led them to be repeat victims. She provided crisis trauma care and corrective therapies to the exposed
children to alleviate the effects of the exposure and prevent the continuing cycle of violence.
For the following seven years Carolina went on to serve Polk County’s high risk children as a member of The Family Builders Unit, fulfilling the roles of
Mental Health Therapist, Program Trainer, Program Manager and was part of the Alcohol, Drugs and Mental Heath team for the Department of Children
and Families. Her uncanny talent in establishing healthy, respectful working relationships with her clients enabled her to apply her broad range of
therapeutic knowledge to treat individuals and families and prevent the removal of children due to child abuse/neglect allegations from their natural
environments. Appointed to the position of Program Trainer, Carolina could now impress her approach to mental health upon the whole team. Her role
contributed to the emergence of a well-knitted team to address the diverse issues faced by families. Polk County now effectively had a team that could
offer a consistent quality of service to its families in distress regardless of which therapist was assigned to them. A continuation and elevation of this
influence occurred with Carolina’s appointment to Program Manager. Now, not only charged with the responsibility of creating a dynamic and well trained
staff, Carolina was entrusted to follow the progress of each family and offer her guidance to her team on an ongoing basis to ensure the best possible
outcome for each family.
The next five years were, in part, a sabbatical as Carolina left the full time work force to begin a family. During this time Carolina worked with Roaya
Noori LLC, a Tampa based therapeutic company contracted to provide individual and group therapy to addicts and addicts in recovery. Carolina was no
stranger to the disruptiveness of addiction as her prior work with families in crisis frequently involved alcohol and substance abuse.
This would prove valuable experience for Carolina as she was recruited by Mental Health Care Inc. (MHC) to provide crisis intervention therapy in their
Children’s 1st Response Team. Carolina was returning to her true passion of working directly with those children and families who needed her services.
The program was a cornerstone of Hillsborough County’s child welfare system and was the last chance for intervention before State Prosecutor’s Office
moved forward with the removal of children. During her ten years tenure at MHC, Carolina again fulfilled several leadership roles including Interim
Program Manager, Program Trainer and Lead Domestic Violence Assessor and Expert at Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, while maintaining her
commitment to serve her families. For the final four years of her work for the program, Carolina was a participant with The Child Welfare Domestic
Violence Board contributing to the development of risk assessment tools for domestic violence intervention.
Despite Carolina's success in every leadership role, her true passion remained in providing direct care to the population she enjoyed the most. It was at this time that she became a Certified Life Coach and established her private coaching practice to provide services to children and adolescents diagnosed with co-occurring disorders and co-morbidities. Carolina presently works with children, adolescents and young adults with executive functioning disorders, ADHD, anxiety disorders, depression and substance abuse. She prides herself in providing individualized attention to every individual and family she serves.
Carolina received her Baccalaureate of the Arts in Criminology from Florida State University in 1988 and her Master of the Arts from The University of
South Florida College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in 1992. She is revered by her peers, supervisors, supervisees and most importantly by her families. She
resides in Tampa and has three children.