Barbara E. Dolan has spent a life of learning. She started her professional career as a newspaper reporter and continued to write throughout her life. She earned an undergraduate degree in political science and urban studies and continued on to earn a Master’s in Public Administration, after which she worked as a hospital administrator in two states. In Illinois, she then studied families, adolescents and children, graduating from Northern Illinois University with a Master of Applied Family and Child Studies. She began working for the State of Illinois’ Family Preservation program, helping families at risk of losing their children due to abuse or neglect, to learn appropriate parenting skills and to stay together. She was employed as a grief counselor, working with individuals of all ages, and offered groups for parents who lost their children, and for bereaved spouses. She was a youth counselor for children ages six through 18 and provided family counseling. As a residential youth worker, she counseled adolescent girls with conduct disorders and mental illness. She also served as a hospital emergency room behavior assessor to determine the need to place patients in an inpatient behavior unit.

While working on a Master’s in Community Counseling, Barbara served in a counseling practicum and internship for Clearbrook, meeting in their homes with individuals with developmental delays. Her specializations are working with individuals with developmental delays, with those who experience obsessional compulsive tendencies and anxiety, grief counseling, depression, and working with adolescents. She has represented families in court.

Barbara practices cognitive behavior therapy, offers mindfulness to her clients, and studies and employs dialectical behavior therapy. She also provides anger management, grief counseling, and solution-focused therapy for shorter-term problem-solving. Barbara offers person-centered therapy to help clients feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings.

In her free time, Barbara self-published seven children’s picture books for her grandchildren. In 2022, she published a compilation of her short stories and poems, three of which appeared in online-literary magazines. She won an award for commentary writing from the National Newspaper Association and from Lerner News when she was a newspaper reporter.