Speaker Bio - Ask Me Anything
Event Speaker: Dr. Dana S. Smith
Dr. Dana S. Smith is an associate professor and MSW Program Director at the University of Houston-Downtown, where she enjoys teaching ethics, practice, social justice, and policy courses. She has served at UHD for 13 years and was previously the BSW Director of Field Education. As the inaugural MSW Program Director, she is tasked with guiding the accreditation process and providing administrative oversight for the program launch - fall 2026. She is a licensed clinical social worker who supports clients experiencing trauma, grief, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. Dr. Smith has a passion for working with individuals who come from family traditions that may have caused them to shy away from therapy. She is a native Houstonian and mother to one adult son.
Event Speaker: Heather Goltz
Bio coming soon.
Event Speaker: Jessica Peralta
Jessica Peralta is a Licensed Professional Counselor. She attended the University of Houston-Victoria in Katy, Texas, where she earned her Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2021. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Houston-Victoria and received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology in 2016. She primarily works with adolescents, adults, and couples. She enjoys helping her clients identify the root of many of their initial concerns and working with them to overcome these obstacles to obtain more clarity about what they have gone through in their past and the impact it has on their present. Jessica approaches her clients by helping them speak their mind and openly work through their problems in a safe space. She also works with couples who are willing and able to take that first step in strengthening the friendship within their relationship. She strives to help all her clients achieve a stronger sense of autonomy and confidence in themselves and their abilities.
Event Speaker: Leslie Sirrianni
Leslie Sirrianni, LCSW-S, is a licensed clinical social worker, educator, and Director of Field Education for the Bachelor of Social Work program at the University of Houston–Downtown. She serves as a Research Fellow with The Young Widowhood Project, an initiative founded by Dr. Liza Lane to advance research, education, and awareness related to young widowhood. Leslie's work is grounded in a commitment to compassionate, evidence-informed practice, with professional interests that include grief and loss, behavioral health, and social work education.
Event Speaker: Dr. Liza Barros-Lane
Dr. Liza Barros-Lane, Ph.D., MSW, is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Houston-Downtown, where she explores how traumatic grief reshapes identity, family, and community. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Young Widowhood Project, an organization dedicated to supporting people navigating premature spousal loss.
Widowed at 36 after the sudden death of her husband, Dr. Brent Lane, she brings both lived experience and scholarly expertise to her work. Dr. Barros-Lane names the difficult realities of grief, the disorientation, the unraveling of identity, and the challenges of parenting and rebuilding in the wake of loss, while also highlighting the uneven and deeply human ways that meaning and connection can take shape.
Her research on traumatic loss and young widowhood has been published in leading journals, including Death Studies, OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying, and the Journal of Loss and Trauma. She has also presented nationally and internationally, with recent talks at the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and the Association for Death Education and Counseling.
Her writing has also appeared in The Conversation, HuffPost, and the Houston Chronicle, with pieces translated and syndicated across Latin America and Europe, including in BBC News Mundo.
Event Speaker: Martin Gonzalez
Martin Gonzalez has worked across multiple higher education institutions in various social work-oriented roles, including the University of Houston, Rice University, UH-Clear Lake, and UH-Downtown. These roles frequently involved providing tailored resources and circumnavigating barriers to a student's success and well-being at the university. More recently, Martin has served as Acting Director of the Accessible Education Center, where he now works in a new role to provide education and resources for the greater UH-Downtown community regarding disabilities, neurodivergence, and allyship.
Event Speaker: Naomi Berger-Perez
Naomi Berger-Perez is the Director of Counseling Services at UHD. She has worked in the field of mental health for 20 years and is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, holding a supervisor status for both. She has a passion for guiding and teaching other counselors and takes pride in those that she has led to becoming fully licensed. As a native Houstonian, Naomi has worked in a wide range of mental health settings, starting out in the non-profit sector at a domestic violence agency and an organization for children, adolescents, and families in Houston's inner city. She has also worked with those populations who have complex medical needs both physically and emotionally, and most recently, as an employee assistance program counselor for a large hospital system, offering a wide range of support through various counseling modalities for children, adolescents, and adults. Naomi operates from a person-centered approach and one of open-mindedness in that every day is a learning experience in which we can learn. Naomi has served as the Director of Counseling services at UHD for four years, oversees a staff of 6 full-time clinicians, 2 undergraduate assistants, and supports the team's work with 6 master's level interns.
Event Speaker: Dr. Richard M. Simonds
Dr. Richard M. Simonds joined the University of Houston-Downtown as an Assistant Professor of Social Work in 2024. His scholarship in financial capability and asset building focuses on the intersection of financial coaching, social work education, and financial capability in underserved and LMI communities. His work has created new and innovative ways of incorporating financial capability within social work curricula. Richard has spoken locally, regionally, and nationally about behavioral change, change management, and taking a systems approach to managing teams to make positive impacts throughout the community.
Event Speaker: Timothy Coulter
Timothy Coulter is a Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Houston-Downtown and a Master of Education in Counseling from the University of Houston. Before becoming a therapist, he spent many years as a banker providing financial solutions to couples and individuals from all walks of life. In addition to financial counseling, he has worked with teenagers, young adults, couples, groups, cancer patients, and individuals in many areas including anxiety, depression, sexual identity, leading a purpose-driven life, career development, substance abuse, anger management, smoking cessation, grief, motivation, and mindfulness. He's worked in many environments, including colleges, high schools, residential treatment facilities, private practice, and cancer centers, doing both traditional counseling and meditation.
Ask Me Anything
Wednesday, November 18
12:30–2:00 p.m.
Buffalo Bayou Room (next to Starbucks)