Earn strictly private therapy through community volunteering

People Helping People Helping People

Mission – Board

Our Mission:

Volunteers In Psychotherapy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing affordable and truly private psychotherapy for the community, in exchange for volunteer work clients donate to the charity of their choice.

You, the client should decide how long you will continue in therapy:

Not an insurance company that profits by cutting the length of therapy.

VIP has been awarded grants by:

The J. Walton Bissell Foundation

The Daphne Seybolt Culpeper Memorial Foundation

The Carse Robinson et al Foundation, Fleet Bank, Trustee

The George A. and Grace L. Long Foundation, Bank of America, Trustee

The Jodik Foundation

Ziv Tzedakah Fund (an international charity)

The Maximilian E. and Marion O. Hoffman Foundation

The Ensworth Charitable Foundation, Bank of America, Trustee

The Timothy Mark Capers Foundation

Wild Oats Market

Healthy People 2010 (Yale-Griffin PRC)

The Cottonwood Foundation

The Ahearn Family Foundation

The J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation

The Andrews Company Limited Partnership

The Joseph S. Stackpole Charitable Trust, Bank of America, Trustee

The Sumner Gerard Foundation

Reid and Riege Foundation

The Universalist Church of West Hartford

Radio Shack Neighborhood Answers Grants

Elaine Gorbach Levine Charitable Foundation

Newington Kiwanis Club

The Greater Hartford Jaycees Foundation

The Aetna Foundation

The McPhee Foundation

Temple Sinai of Newington

The Mabel F. Hoffman Foundation, Bank of America, Trustee

The Deupree Family Foundation

Sharon R. O’Meara Fund of The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

Gerber Life Insurance Company

CT Association of Psychologists – PAC

The Louise and Arde’ Bulova Fund

The Nathaniel B. Field Memorial Foundation

The Caplin Foundation

American Savings Foundation

The Connecticut Psychological Association Educational Foundation

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

The Good People Fund

Board of Directors:

Leonard Dupille, Ph.D., our President, received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University where he began his academic career as a Teaching Fellow. He has been teaching a wide variety of psychology courses at various institutions for 15 years, and has received an award for teaching excellence. In addition to his work as an academic, he has held clinical positions at Northeastern Family Institute and The Institute for Family and Life Learning and where he was involved in conducting individual, group, and family therapy. He came to Manchester, Connecticut in January 2001 and is currently a tenured Full Professor in Psychology at Manchester Community College.  He resides with his family in Windsor.  He is committed to teaching as a vehicle for student growth and transformation.

Liz Halla-Mattingly VIP’s Secretary, received her MSW from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work with a focus in Administration. Liz began her career at the Sexual Assault Crisis Service (SACS) of the YWCA New Britain, where she worked for 8 years. Liz started out at SACS working in Prevention Education and as the Adult Advocate, where she saw firsthand the importance of confidentiality for survivors and their loved ones. She then worked as the SACS Volunteer Coordinator for five years before becoming the Food Ministry Coordinator at the Universalist Church of West Hartford. She currently works as the Development Associate at Gould Farm, a residential therapeutic farm in the Southern Berkshires for adults with serious mental health and related challenges. Liz and her family also live on the farm and participate in community meals and events alongside the farm’s guests, other staff, and their families. Previously they had lived in New Britain for roughly 12 years.

Dr. Evan Pitkoff, our Treasurer, received his B.S. in psychology from Brooklyn College, attained two Masters degrees (one in Special Education) from N.Y.U., and a Doctor of Education in educational administration from Teachers College, Columbia University. He spent the first ten years of his career in the New York City High School division, serving in Brooklyn as a special education teacher and coordinator, and eventually becoming assistant principal at Erasmus Hall High School. He came to Connecticut in 1988 and has served in the following positions over the past two decades: Principal of New Britain High School, Assistant Superintendent of the Hamden Public Schools, Superintendent of Schools for Region #10 (Burlington and Harwinton) and Superintendent of Schools in Newtown. He is newly retired from the position of Executive Director of Cooperative Educational Services (C.E.S.) in Trumbull, Connecticut, a regional educational service center covering the sixteen districts of lower Fairfield County. He has presented workshops and written journal articles in numerous areas of education. He is an active member and Past President of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (C.A.P.S.S.).

Omayra Rodriguez, LCSW, VIP’s Vice President,  is a seasoned, bilingual (English, Spanish) social worker whose clinical work has largely been with children and youth in Connecticut. Although her undergraduate studies were in graphic design, she took a job in a youth service bureau and never looked back. She did her graduate work at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work with concentrations in group work and administration. She is passionate about issues of diversity and earned a certificate in Latino Community Practice from Saint Joseph College. Omayra worked at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington for 13 years where she provided individual, family, group and crisis work to children and youth in emergency rooms, schools and clinics. Omayra has also worked as a clinical coordinator at the Hartford Juvenile Court and is currently a clinical social worker associate at the State of Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families. Her most treasured therapeutic relationships have been with teenagers who thought the world was against them but told her their story anyway. She lives in Hartford with her spouse, Carol.

Linda Scacco, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who currently teaches undergraduates in the Psychology Department at the University of Hartford where she is also the Coordinator of Undergraduate Internships. Besides having a Ph.D. in Child Psychology from St. John’s University in New York, she has a Master’s degree as well as a 6th year degree in School Psychology from Southern CT State University. Linda has taught courses in the Psychology of Gender, Adolescent and Adult Development, Abnormal Psychology, Multicultural Psychology and the Psychology of Prejudice. She enjoys incorporating into her courses contemporary issues as they relate to the particular class content; and loves having meaningful and lively discussions with her students. Linda has also worked as a school psychologist and in independent practice. For fun, she likes to read, travel, cook, knit, do creative writing and swim. Born in Waterbury, she lives with her husband in West Hartford and is the mother of three adult children.

Richard Shulman, Ph.D., our Past President (now ex-officio) and ongoing Director, is a licensed Clinical Psychologist.  He founded VIP after roughly a decade’s work at Hartford Hospital – Institute of Living, where he had provided psychotherapy and had supervised and trained psychologists and other therapists at the outpatient clinic.  That clinic primarily served Hartford’s poor or uninsured population.  He continues to serve as a volunteer on the Institutional Review Board of Hartford Hospital – Institute of Living, which oversees ethical and informed consent issues in psychiatric and medical research.  He previously worked at the Children’s Outpatient program of Wheeler Clinic, and served as Psychological consultant to Nutmeg Big Brothers – Big Sisters.  He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University before receiving a Rackham First Year Fellowship to attend graduate school at the University of Michigan in Sociology; after which he completed a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Toledo.