Veronica Franklin, LCPC

Dr.Veronica Franklin, LCPC, also known professionally as Dr. V, is a licensed counselor, behavioral health executive, educator, consultant, Fulbright Scholar, and professional speaker with more than 20 years of experience across behavioral healthcare, higher education, clinical operations, trauma-responsive services, and culturally informed mental health treatment.

She is the founder of Hiking, Healing, & Horses, a Southern Maryland practice integrating nature-informed therapy, experiential psychotherapy, hiking-based experiences, and psychotherapy incorporating equine interactions. Her work is especially focused on supporting Black women and other clients whose experiences of trauma, identity, relationships, culture, spirituality, and systemic stress may not be fully addressed through conventional office-based treatment alone.

Professional Background of Veronica Franklin

Veronica Franklin currently serves as Director of Urgent Behavioral Health and Operations Manager for the Largo Medical Office Building within Kaiser Permanente’s Mid-Atlantic region. Her role combines behavioral health leadership, urgent-care operations, program development, staff support, quality improvement, and the coordination of services for clients presenting with immediate or complex mental health needs.

Dr. Franklin’s broader career includes leadership in public and private higher education, graduate-level teaching across four states, behavioral health program management, and clinical services addressing eating disorders, substance-use concerns, trauma, and culturally responsive care. She previously served as Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Refresh Mental Health Services and held leadership responsibilities connected with eating-disorder and substance-use treatment programs in Washington, D.C., and New Mexico.

This combination of executive leadership and direct clinical experience gives her a practical understanding of how treatment quality is influenced not only by individual therapist skill, but also by organizational systems, access barriers, staffing, cultural responsiveness, workflow, and the emotional demands placed on behavioral health professionals.

Nature-Informed Therapy

Nature-informed therapy is one of the defining areas of practice for Veronica Franklin. Her work uses thoughtfully selected outdoor environments, sensory awareness, movement, reflection, and contact with the natural world to support therapeutic goals.

Nature-informed treatment may involve walking, observing the environment, noticing sounds and physical sensations, exploring metaphors found in the landscape, or using outdoor experiences to examine themes such as safety, change, resilience, boundaries, grief, connection, and belonging.

These practices should not be presented as simply “taking therapy outside.” Ethical outdoor psychotherapy requires attention to:

• Client consent and preferences
• Physical accessibility
• Weather and environmental conditions
• Confidentiality in public spaces
• Emergency procedures
• Allergies and medical needs
• Transportation and mobility
• Cultural relationships with land and outdoor settings
• The possibility that nature may feel activating rather than calming

A forest, trail, field, or equine environment will not automatically feel safe to every client. Dr. Franklin’s approach emphasizes matching the experience to the individual rather than assuming that one environment or exercise has universal therapeutic value.

Equine-Assisted Services and Psychotherapy

Veronica Franklin has completed specialized training connected with PATH International and the Ebony Equine Assisted Therapy Community. Through Hiking, Healing, & Horses, she integrates equine interactions into experiential and trauma-informed clinical work.

PATH International recommends equine-assisted services as the broad term for services incorporating horses. When licensed behavioral health professionals provide treatment, PATH advises using therapy-first language, such as “counseling or psychotherapy incorporating equine interactions.” This terminology helps distinguish licensed clinical treatment from equine-assisted learning, therapeutic riding, and other non-psychotherapy services.

In an appropriately structured clinical setting, interactions with horses may give clients opportunities to explore attention, boundaries, emotional regulation, trust, communication, nonverbal cues, fear, confidence, and relationship patterns.

A horse’s behavior should not be interpreted as a diagnosis or as definitive proof of what a client feels. The clinician and client can instead explore what the interaction brought up, how the client understood it, and whether the experience connects meaningfully with the person’s treatment goals.

PATH also emphasizes specialized preparation, safety standards, professional scope, and the welfare of the equines participating in services. Licensed clinicians may work alongside trained equine specialists and support staff to protect both client safety and animal well-being.

Experiential Therapy and the “Soul Nerve”

Experiential psychotherapy is another major focus of Veronica Franklin. Experiential approaches invite clients to participate actively in therapeutic exercises rather than relying exclusively on verbal discussion and intellectual insight.

Depending on the client and treatment setting, experiential work may involve movement, imagery, role exploration, creative expression, outdoor activities, equine interactions, sensory awareness, or guided reflection on present-moment emotional and physical responses.

In her Clinical Events presentation, Experiential Therapy and the Soul Nerve, Dr. Franklin introduced an integrative framework combining equine-assisted, nature-informed, and other experiential methods with vagus-nerve–informed regulation practices. The training examined how clinicians can use embodied and relational experiences to support emotional regulation, resilience, and cognitive-emotional integration.

For clinical accuracy, “Soul Nerve” should be described as the name of Dr. Franklin’s educational framework or workshop concept. The phrase should not be presented as a separate anatomical structure or an established medical term.

Trauma-Informed and Embodied Care

Trauma may affect memory, relationships, emotional regulation, attention, bodily activation, trust, self-perception, and the capacity to remain present during difficult experiences.

The work of Veronica Franklin helps clinicians consider how trauma responses may appear through agitation, withdrawal, muscular tension, numbness, vigilance, avoidance, disconnection, or difficulty identifying emotional needs.

Experiential methods can create opportunities for clients to notice these patterns as they occur. However, the purpose is not to push clients into intense emotional experiences. Trauma-responsive experiential therapy should preserve choice, pacing, consent, and the client’s ability to pause or change direction.

Clinicians should also avoid assuming that every bodily sensation represents a traumatic memory. Sensations may have psychological, environmental, medical, cultural, or ordinary physiological explanations. They are best explored collaboratively and considered alongside the client’s full clinical presentation.

Professionals interested in related approaches can explore Clinical Events’ guide to somatic and emerging approaches to trauma treatment, which discusses the use of body awareness, nervous-system regulation, and experiential methods alongside established trauma treatment.

Culturally Responsive Care for Black and BIPOC Women

A central dimension of Dr. Franklin’s work is the mental health and wellness of Black women and other racially marginalized communities. Her research, professional education, and clinical practice examine how culture, racism, gender expectations, spirituality, access to care, mistrust, identity, and social systems may affect whether people seek and remain engaged in counseling.

Black women may encounter cultural expectations to remain strong, self-sufficient, emotionally available, professionally successful, and responsible for the needs of others. These expectations can make it more difficult to express vulnerability, seek support, recognize exhaustion, or trust that a provider will understand the cultural context of their experiences.

Culturally responsive treatment does not assume that every Black woman shares the same beliefs, family structure, spiritual life, or response to trauma. It requires the clinician to remain curious about the individual’s identities, relationships, community, resources, experiences of discrimination, and understanding of healing.

Dr. Franklin’s doctoral research examined factors influencing African American women’s decisions to pursue counseling. Her related scholarly work has also addressed the support needs of African American women and the experiences of African American female adolescents in sports.

Spirituality, Wellness, and Community

Veronica Franklin has developed experiential workshops addressing racial-minority wellness and mental health within spiritual communities. Her work recognizes that spirituality may be a meaningful source of identity, connection, resilience, ritual, and support for some clients.

Spirituality should be included only when it reflects the client’s worldview and treatment goals. Clinicians should not assume that faith is always protective, nor should they impose spiritual language or practices. Some clients may have experienced exclusion, shame, rejection, or trauma within religious environments.

A culturally and spiritually responsive therapist can explore both supportive and painful dimensions of the client’s experience without treating either as universal.

Eating Disorders, Substance Use, and Treatment Access

Dr. Franklin’s leadership background includes work with eating-disorder and substance-use treatment programs. She has also spoken publicly about treatment barriers and the ways eating disorders may be overlooked or misunderstood in racial-minority and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Eating disorders are sometimes incorrectly associated with a narrow demographic profile. That assumption can delay assessment and treatment for people whose symptoms do not match familiar stereotypes.

Culturally responsive assessment should consider food access, body ideals, athletic history, discrimination, gender identity, family and cultural beliefs, medical risk, trauma, and the ways that eating or exercise behaviors function within the client’s life.

Similarly, substance-use concerns should not be reduced to weak motivation or poor choices. Treatment may need to address emotional regulation, trauma, relationships, physical health, environmental stress, identity, and access to appropriate support.

LGBTQIA+ Affirmative Care

The professional interests of Veronica Franklin include LGBTQIA+ mental health and the experiences of sexual-minority youth and adults. Her scholarship and public education have examined the intersection of African American lesbian identity, spirituality, and sense of self.

Affirmative treatment does not treat a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity as pathology. It considers how rejection, concealment, family conflict, discrimination, community support, faith, race, and other intersecting identities may influence mental health.

The clinician should use the client’s language, avoid assumptions about relationships or family structure, protect confidentiality carefully, and recognize that identity-related stress may exist alongside unrelated concerns such as grief, anxiety, trauma, work stress, or relationship difficulties.

Teaching, Research, and International Experience

Veronica Franklin has taught graduate-level students in multiple states and has held leadership roles in higher education. Her professional background also includes service as a Fulbright Scholar in Vienna, Austria, where she taught English.

Her academic contributions have addressed African American women’s use of counseling, educational support needs, sports participation among African American female adolescents, diversity and inclusion, beauty standards, sexuality, spirituality, and women’s wellness.

This range of experience supports an interdisciplinary teaching style that connects clinical practice with leadership, culture, identity, education, embodiment, and community engagement.

Behavioral Health Leadership

In addition to clinical and academic work, Veronica Franklin brings substantial experience in behavioral health operations. Leaders in urgent and complex care environments must coordinate clinical quality, access, staffing, workflow, patient safety, communication, and organizational accountability.

Dr. Franklin’s background allows her to address the connection between therapeutic outcomes and the systems surrounding treatment. A clinician may provide excellent individual care while working inside a system that creates barriers through delays, fragmented communication, limited cultural responsiveness, or inadequate support.

Effective behavioral healthcare therefore requires both skilled clinicians and responsible organizational leadership.

Professional Training With Veronica Franklin

Dr. Franklin offers professional education and experiential workshops through Hiking, Healing, & Horses. Her programs are relevant to counselors, social workers, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, clinical supervisors, behavioral health leaders, and other helping professionals interested in nature-informed treatment, equine-assisted services, trauma-responsive care, experiential methods, and culturally responsive practice.

Her educational approach encourages clinicians to expand their therapeutic toolbox while remaining attentive to professional competence, informed consent, treatment goals, environmental safety, cultural meaning, client choice, and the welfare of animals involved in clinical services.

Explore Current Clinical Events

Professionals interested in Dr. Franklin’s areas of expertise can continue their learning through Clinical Events’ current trauma, somatic, experiential, and ethics-focused programs.

Working with Developmental Trauma and Attachment from a Somatic Lens takes place on August 15, 2026, and examines attachment, nervous-system regulation, somatic awareness, safety, and relational repair.

Trauma and Dissociation: Navigating the Complexities in Clinical Practice is scheduled for September 5, 2026, and provides practical education on dissociative responses, stabilization, grounding, therapeutic safety, and readiness for trauma processing.

Ethical Healing Frontiers: Trauma-Informed Practice That Transforms takes place on October 3, 2026, and examines trauma-responsive care, ethical decision-making, professional boundaries, cultural responsiveness, and prevention of re-traumatization.

Visitors can browse the complete Clinical Events continuing education calendar for additional live programs on trauma, somatic therapies, attachment, cultural responsiveness, professional ethics, dissociation, clinician wellness, and evidence-informed psychotherapy.

Learn With Veronica Franklin

The professional work of Veronica Franklin, LCPC, brings together behavioral health leadership, nature-informed therapy, psychotherapy incorporating equine interactions, experiential methods, trauma-responsive care, cultural identity, spirituality, LGBTQIA+ affirmative practice, research, and graduate-level education.

Her approach encourages clinicians to recognize that healing may occur through conversation, movement, relationships, environment, sensory experience, reflection, and meaningful participation.

By integrating experiential work with professional ethics, cultural responsiveness, and careful attention to safety, Veronica Franklin helps behavioral health professionals expand their clinical practice without losing sight of client autonomy, individualized treatment, and responsible professional scope.