The Dude Therapist

Ashley McGirt is the founder and President of the WA Therapy Fund. She is a psychotherapist, Tedx international speaker, and author who has been featured in Forbes, MSNBC, The young turks, OWN, Bravo, & more. Ashley has received a Masters of Social Work from the University of Washington. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. Ashley currently owns and operates her own private practice. In her private practice, she focuses primarily on racial trauma, depression, and anxiety. Ashley actively works toward de-stigmatizing mental illness and reducing high rates of recidivism in American prisons, in an attempt to create a more socially just society for all. Ashley offers presentations, workshops, group facilitation, and consultation specializing in racial trauma, mental health, crisis response, social justice, and racial equity. Ashley strives to help others find happiness and healing within themselves through unpacking their baggage, resting, reflecting, and restoring themselves to be whom they were intended to be on this earth.

To her peers, Ashley is most known as a world traveler. Throughout Ashley’s extensive world travels, she has had the privilege of working with a wide variety of individuals and families from different cultures, with different backgrounds, as well as from varied age ranges. Ashley believes in incorporating the multicultural experience into practice as it plays such an immense role in one’s overall development and some of the traumas to which many people of color have become exposed. Due to Ashley’s extensive travels and lived experiences she was compelled to write, “I tried to travel it away: mental health tips for travelers”. Her book is also the theme for one of her most sought out workshops on self-care and travel!