Founding Board Member - Trauma-Focused Therapist & Survivor Healing Advisor

Role Type

• Volunteer Board Member
• Founding / Early-Stage Working Board Role
• Trauma-Focused Therapist / Survivor Healing Advisor

Term

• Board Term: 3 years
• Role focus may be reviewed annually based on board and organizational needs

About Women’s Survivors Network

Women’s Survivors Network is a survivor-led nonprofit building a trusted ecosystem of guided support, resources, education, and services for women who have experienced abuse across the spectrum, including coercive control, narcissistic abuse, covert psychological abuse, workplace abuse, familial abuse, institutional abuse, and systemic harm.

WSN supports survivors through the journey of awakening, stabilizing, healing, rebuilding, and eventually stepping into leadership that helps transform the systems that failed them.

WSN is currently in an early infrastructure-building stage. The founding board is helping establish the organization’s governance, financial foundation, program readiness, partnerships, safeguards, policies, and long-term sustainability.

Position Summary

WSN is seeking a founding board member who is a trauma-focused therapist, licensed mental health professional, or experienced trauma-informed healing practitioner to help guide WSN’s survivor-centered approach to healing, stabilization, program design, and ethical safeguards.

This role is for someone who understands the long-term impact of abuse and trauma, including PTSD, C-PTSD, nervous system dysregulation, coercive control, narcissistic abuse, covert psychological abuse, identity loss, shame, isolation, and the emotional and cognitive overwhelm survivors often experience.

This is a board governance and advisory role, not a direct therapy role. The person in this role will not provide therapy, crisis counseling, diagnosis, treatment, or clinical supervision to survivors through WSN unless a separate formal structure, agreement, licensing review, liability coverage, and clinical protocol are established.

The role helps WSN build wisely, ethically, and sustainably so that future programs, partnerships, education, and survivor pathways are trauma-informed, survivor-paced, culturally responsive, and grounded in safety.

Core Responsibilities

The Trauma-Focused Therapist & Survivor Healing Advisor helps WSN:

• Bring a trauma-informed healing lens into board discussions, program planning, and survivor pathway design.
• Advise on the stabilization and healing portions of WSN’s long-term survivor journey.
• Help identify emotional safety risks, retraumatization risks, and areas where survivors may need clearer pacing, consent, or support.
• Support WSN in distinguishing between education, peer support, coaching, navigation, advocacy, crisis support, and therapy.
• Advise on ethical boundaries for survivor-facing programs and volunteer roles.
• Help review survivor-facing educational materials for trauma-informed language, emotional safety, clarity, and pacing.
• Support the development of referral standards for trauma-informed therapists, healing providers, and aligned partners.
• Help WSN think through safeguards around disclosure, consent, confidentiality, emotional overwhelm, trauma responses, and survivor agency.
• Contribute to board-level conversations about program readiness, pilot design, partnership standards, and risk management.
• Help ensure WSN’s healing-related work does not become extractive, rushed, overpromising, or outside the organization’s scope.
• Support the board in understanding the long-term nature of trauma recovery and the need for survivor-paced, non-shaming systems.

Programs & Partnerships Committee Participation

The Trauma-Focused Therapist & Survivor Healing Advisor sits on the Programs & Partnerships Committee and contributes through a trauma-informed healing, survivor safety, and ethical program design lens.

This may include contributing to:

• Survivor-centered program design and pilot readiness.
• Stabilization, healing, and long-term recovery considerations.
• Emotional safety, consent, pacing, and retraumatization risk.
• Ethical boundaries between education, peer support, navigation, coaching, advocacy, crisis support, and therapy.
• Referral standards for trauma-informed therapists, healing providers, and aligned partners.
• Survivor-facing materials, trainings, and educational resources.
• Partnership alignment with WSN’s trauma-informed and survivor-centered values.
• Safeguards that prevent overreach, extraction, urgency, or unintended harm.
• Questions about survivor capacity, cognitive load, nervous system overwhelm, and long-term healing needs.

The Trauma-Focused Therapist & Survivor Healing Advisor participates through a board governance and advisory lens. This role does not provide therapy, crisis counseling, diagnosis, treatment, or clinical supervision through WSN unless a separate formal structure is established.

Ideal Background

Strong candidates may bring experience in several of the following areas:

• Licensed therapy, clinical social work, counseling, psychology, trauma treatment, somatic therapy, or trauma-informed healing work.
• Experience supporting survivors of abuse, coercive control, narcissistic abuse, intimate partner violence, workplace harm, family systems abuse, or systemic trauma.
• Understanding of PTSD, C-PTSD, dissociation, nervous system regulation, trauma bonding, shame, grief, identity loss, and long-term recovery.
• Experience with culturally responsive, survivor-centered, feminist, relational, somatic, or liberation-oriented healing practices.
• Familiarity with nonprofit settings, board service, program design, safeguarding, ethics, or community-based healing work.
• Experience helping organizations create clear scope boundaries, referral pathways, and trauma-informed practices.

A current clinical license is strongly welcome, especially for candidates who may advise on clinical boundaries or referral standards. WSN will clarify the role carefully so that board service does not blur into therapy, supervision, or clinical responsibility.

Values and Leadership Fit

WSN is looking for someone who is:

• Survivor-centered and trauma-informed.
• Grounded, emotionally steady, and able to hold complexity with care.
• Deeply respectful of survivor agency, consent, pacing, and self-determination.
• Familiar with abuse dynamics beyond physical violence, including coercive control, narcissistic abuse, covert psychological abuse, and systems harm.
• Clear about ethical boundaries between board governance, advisory input, and direct clinical care.
• Comfortable with early-stage nonprofit ambiguity.
• Able to help build safeguards without creating fear, rigidity, or unnecessary barriers.
• Respectful of survivor-led and founder-led organizational realities.
• Committed to equity, dignity, cultural responsiveness, confidentiality, and long-term sustainability.
• Able to contribute without pathologizing survivors or reducing lived experience to clinical language.

Time Commitment

Estimated commitment: approximately 4–6 hours per month on average, with some periods reaching up to 8 hours during program design, pilot-readiness, or safeguarding conversations.

This may include:

• Quarterly full board meetings.
• Monthly committee meetings
• Monthly Board Member 1:1.
• Review of selected survivor-facing materials or program drafts.
• Input on referral standards, healing pathways, or trauma-informed safeguards.
• Participation in board discussions related to program readiness, survivor experience, ethics, or risk.

WSN values clarity and sustainability. The goal is not constant availability, but dependable contribution to survivor-centered governance and trauma-informed program development.

What This Role Does Not Do

This role does not:

• Provide therapy, crisis counseling, diagnosis, treatment, or clinical supervision to WSN participants.
• Serve as WSN’s clinical director unless separately appointed under a formal structure.
• Carry legal, ethical, or clinical responsibility for WSN programs alone.
• Replace future clinical staff, contracted therapists, crisis providers, or direct service professionals.
• Manage day-to-day survivor support or program operations.
• Make unilateral program, clinical, legal, or governance decisions.
• Approve survivor-facing services outside WSN’s board-approved scope.
• Create overly clinical, rigid, or pathologizing systems.
• Ask survivors to disclose personal trauma stories for organizational benefit.
• Take on responsibilities outside the defined role without discussion and consent.

Inclusive Recruitment

WSN is committed to building a board that reflects the communities, experiences, and values at the heart of our mission. We are a survivor-led organization grounded in women-centered governance, and we deeply value leadership shaped by lived experience, care, and accountability.

We welcome interest from candidates of all backgrounds and strongly encourage women of color, survivors, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, disabled people, and people from historically excluded communities to consider this role.

Candidates will be considered based on their background, skills, experience, judgment, mission alignment, availability, ethical clarity, and ability to contribute to WSN’s survivor-centered governance and long-term sustainability.