WHY WE'RE HERE
A world where healing, belonging, and collective liberation flourish, through courageous relationships and communities that dwell well together.
How we get there: ethical, community-based clinical care, education, and relational leadership for the current and next generation of socially responsive practitioners.
What we're building: counselors who are confident and connected across clinical work, supervision, research, leadership, advocacy, and teaching, grounded in research-based, multiculturally responsive practice.
OUR STORY
Born To Fill A Gap
The Ruby Institute grew from a vision: a place where healing, education, supervision, and belonging live under one roof, grounded in the five pillars of counselor education: counseling, supervision, teaching, research, and leadership and advocacy.
Early-career clinicians often leave graduate school with real clinical curiosity and little support for what comes next. Many feel isolated right as their most formative professional years begin.
Therapists are also increasingly asked to hold trauma work without trauma training that builds step by step. Without mentorship, embodied practice, and community, they risk burnout, vicarious trauma, and losing touch with the values that drew them to this work.
We exist to meet those gaps, outside academia's structural limits. By bringing together community-based clinical care, intensive supervision, relational training, and leadership development, we help clinicians grow into practitioners who are competent, connected, and courageous.
Supported therapists are better equipped to cultivate healing and justice in the communities they serve.
Meet The Ruby Institute Team
Founder, Director & CEO
Phoenix Rosewood,Ph.D., LMHC
Dr. Phoenix Rosewood (they/them/theirs) is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC), supervisor and counselor educator who lives in the hills of the Connecticut River Valley. Dr. Rosewood actively researches and writes about identity -based conflict (microaggressions) and conflict transformation, shame's role in professional multicultural training gaps and Transgender, nonbinary and gender expansive reproductive healthcare access.
Director of Operations
Al Rosewood, M.A.
Al Rosewood (they/them/theirs) serves as the Director of Operations at the Ruby Institute. They bring years of operations experience from national organizations advancing transgender justice and equity and local reproductive justice work in Western Massachusetts. A local to the area, Al is passionate about supporting their community and enjoys spending time on outdoor projects and playing pickleball.
Associate Clinical Mental Health Counselor
New Counselor Bio Coming Soon
Associate Clinical Mental Health Counselor bio coming soon.
THE NAME
This is a story about coming home to oneself and dwelling well.
A ruby invites us to consider adornment as both an act of resistance and an act of refusal.
Resistance emerges through the alchemical process of returning to ourselves, of healing, reclaiming, and remembering who we are beneath the wounds we have inherited and endured. Refusal is the practice of honoring our own lived experiences, truths, and self-determined expression rather than accepting the narratives projected onto us that distort our sense of self and worth.
Throughout history, rubies have been worn close to the heart by healers, travelers, and those seeking refuge from persecution. They were never merely decorative. To adorn oneself is to insist that the body is already whole, already worthy of beauty, care, dignity, and visibility. The ruby carries this enduring symbolism: love, fire, courage, and the heart(h), the place within ourselves where we find our way home.