Dr. Angel Brutus, LPCC, ACS, BC-TMH, CMPC®, F-AASP. In addition to serving as Assistant Professor in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program with UWS, Dr. Brutus is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Synergistic Solutions, a Business-to-Business (B2B) clinical, sport and performance consulting firm designed to curate professional development experiences for high performance professionals across multiple performance domains as well as facilitate customized trainings for sport organizations. She is a member of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee's psychological services team within the sports medicine department, joining the organization in 2021 after serving as the inaugural Assistant Athletic Director of Counseling and Sport Psychology for Mississippi State University department of athletics. There, she provided direct clinical and performance enhancement services, administrated and developed programming to address MSU's sports culture and served as an appointed member of the Southeastern Conference's Council on Racial Equity and Social Justice. In this role, Dr. Brutus collaborated with a multidisciplinary team of SEC stakeholders as she provided subject matter expertise as a co-author for the Conference's initiatives concerning the hiring practices of diverse, competent practitioners supporting the mental health and wellbeing of SEC athletes.

She completed her B.A. in audiology and speech-language pathology and M.A. in rehabilitation counseling at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as well as her Psy.D. in sport performance psychology at the University of Arizona Global Campus.

Dr. Brutus is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC®) and Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) Fellow (F-AASP) within which she serves as an Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS) and Approved CMPC Mentor in the registry of mentors per AASP. She is also a certified workshop facilitator with Positive Coaching Alliance® (PCA), HeartMath® practitioner and a training facilitator in Mental Health First Aid® for adults. She serves as an executive board member and professional standards division head for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) supporting the ethics, continuing education and webinars/virtual conference committees and liaison between AASP and the Certification Council. She is former co-coordinator of AASP's Race & Ethnicity in Sport Special Interest Group (SIG). She is also a member of additional SIGs (High Risk and Extreme Sports, Women in Sport, Anger and Violence in Sport, Eating Disorders in Sport, Adaptive Sport & Physical Activity) and has been a member of multiple committees within AASP in which she has co-chaired nominations, leadership, and development while previously assisting with professional ethics and serving as an IGNITE mentor. Dr. Brutus serves as treasurer for the American Psychological Association's Division 47 Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology, Charter Advisory member for the Center for Credentialing Education (CCE) tasked with co-authoring the inaugural ethics code for Board Certified Telemental Health (BC-TMH) credential holders. She is an advisor for Alston for Athletes supporting legislative efforts addressing the mental health and wellbeing initiatives of student-athletes in the United States and newly selected board member for Z Girls Foundation, an organization designed to use sport psychology frameworks to support middle and high school girls' empowerment through sport.

Dr. Brutus incorporates several different integrative strengths-based approaches to support clientele navigating the full spectrum of mental health, well-being, and performance optimization. She uses narrative therapy, bibliotherapy, liberation-based psychological approaches to affirm individual clients' identities, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), clinical hypnotherapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction, self-compassion, somatic practicing, and heart rate variability (HRV) when appropriate.

Dr. Brutus' areas of personal and clinical counseling expertise include trauma, depression, anxiety, eating concerns, substance recovery maintenance, identity, emerging adulthood, injury and disability, education and career counseling. Her areas of focus in the performance enhancement space further include return to sport (co- treating with medical), attitude, motivation, goals and commitment, people skills, self-talk, imagery, competition anxiety, emotion regulation and concentration, team leadership development, team building and team cohesion as well as performance profiling collaboration with coaches and other sport stakeholders.

Dr. Brutus is licensed to provide mental health services in the states of California, Colorado, Utah, New York, Mississippi, Nevada and Georgia as a licensed professional counselor (LPC), board-certified telemental health counselor (BC-TMH), and Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC®). She is also a Level V yoga instructor and remains under supervision for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) certification.

Dr. Brutus has developed a reputation for serving as a subject matter expert regarding the intersection of culturally-responsive, ethical and legal practices necessary for successfully engaging in the field of counseling and sport performance psychology. Her penchant for ethically inclusive practices has served as the bedrock for her involvement and development of organizational best practices, guidelines, policies, and procedures in various organizational systems.

She is known for her interpersonal leadership style that curates meaningful identity-affirming experiences necessary for navigating various high stress, high performance environments. Many of Dr. Brutus' mentees and supervisees have successfully assisted organizations with developing and maintaining sustainable counseling and sport performance psychology programs within athletic departments across the United States and Canada. Her work has since transcended the world of sports, into other performance domains to include, but not limited to: aviation, tactical populations, corporations, performing arts and entertainment, medicine, and civic organizations.

Dr. Brutus currently resides in southern California. In her spare time, she loves being with her husband, three daughters and family, and enjoys participating in philanthropic initiatives in communities serving under-resourced communities. She also facilitates workshops and keynotes discussing the intersection of mental health, performance, and multiculturalism