406: The Greatest Journey of a Woman Entrepreneur in Mental Health: Dr. Barbara Brown’s Story

Building a Mental Health Legacy: Dr. Barbara Brown on Empowering Communities Through Purpose-Driven Practice

In the latest episode of “On the Brink with Andi Simon,” I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Barbara J. Brown, a true trailblazer in the mental health field. Dr. Brown is the Founder and CEO of CapitolHill Consortium for Counseling & Consultation (CCCC) and Unicorn Health Care, LLC. With over three decades of experience, she has dedicated her life to building not just a successful practice, but a legacy that prioritizes community well-being, purpose, and significance over profit.

A Purpose-Driven Journey

Dr. Brown’s journey began with a vision to provide high-quality, accessible, and culturally responsive mental health services to underserved communities. In 2009, she founded CCCC with a mission to offer comprehensive psychological support to children, adolescents, and adults. What started as a solo practice soon evolved into a robust group practice with over 80 staff members, becoming a beacon of hope and healing for countless individuals.

Her success, however, is not merely measured by the growth of her practice but by the impact she has made on the communities she serves. Dr. Brown’s approach to mental health is deeply rooted in the belief that true healing comes from addressing the holistic needs of individuals—mind, body, and spirit—and fostering a sense of belonging and support within the community.

If you prefer to watch Dr. Brown’s video, please click here.

Expanding the Vision: Unicorn Health Care

In 2022, Dr. Brown expanded her vision with the launch of Unicorn Health Care, LLC. Unicorn was created as a sister organization to CCCC, offering boutique specialty mental health services tailored to individuals and couples whose public personas require discretion. Unicorn’s services go beyond traditional therapy, incorporating coaching, wellness workshops, and holistic retreats designed to align the mind, body, and spirit for optimal health.

Dr. Brown’s commitment to holistic care is evident in the unique offerings of Unicorn Health Care. Whether through personalized therapy sessions, corporate workshops, or stress management retreats, Unicorn provides a sanctuary for growth and transformation. This focus on comprehensive well-being is what sets Dr. Brown’s practice apart in an industry that often prioritizes quick fixes over deep, lasting change.

A Legacy of Leadership and Community Impact

Throughout our conversation, it became clear that Dr. Brown’s success is driven by her unwavering commitment to the communities she serves. Her work extends beyond individual therapy sessions; she is actively involved in training the next generation of mental health professionals. CCCC’s recent launch of a Clinical and Community Professional Development Program for early career social workers, counselors, and marriage and family therapists is a testament to her dedication to fostering excellence in the field.

Moreover, Dr. Brown’s influence is recognized both locally and nationally, not just for her business acumen but for her contributions to community health and well-being. She has built a practice that not only addresses the mental health needs of her clients but also empowers them to thrive in all aspects of their lives.

Conclusion

Dr. Barbara Brown’s story is one of purpose, passion, and profound impact. Through CCCC and Unicorn Health Care, she has created a legacy that transcends the traditional boundaries of mental health care. Her focus on community, holistic well-being, and the development of future leaders in the field is a powerful reminder that true success is not measured by profits alone, but by the lives we touch and the communities we uplift.

Tune in to this inspiring episode to learn more about Dr. Brown’s journey and the incredible work she continues to do in the mental health field.

To learn more about Dr. Barbara Brown:

Some other podcasts to listen to:

Lisen Stromberg: Lisen Stromberg: How Intentional Power Takes you from Control to Significance

Traca Savadogo:  Traca Savadogo—Rethinking Your Story: A Path To Transform Your Life And Find Joy

Donny Wills: How to Intentional Build a Better Life

Additional resources for you

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Read the transcript of our podcast below: 

Andi Simon:  Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon. I’m your host and your guide and remember, my job is to help you get off the brink. I want to help you see, feel, and think in new ways. So, I bring wonderful people here to help you do just that. I want you to be a little of an anthropologist, to step back and look at what’s possible and then make it happen. Here’s a new set of podcasts that we’re going to be doing, though, that I want to sort of set the stage for. We’re calling it the Wisdom of Women Entrepreneurs with the purpose to hear their voices. Dr. Barbara Brown is my guest today. She’s the first of a series of these podcasts where we’re bringing in wonderful women who have very interesting stories to tell you. They’re a little different, perhaps, in what we’ve done all along. Remember, we’re over 400 podcast episodes, but these are trailblazing women who are redefining what it means to build a business, lead a business, and then live lives with purpose. This is as much about their own journeys personally as it is professionally. And what I want you, my audience, to hear is how you too can move from simply being successful to having significance. From building a business that’s profitable, to really having purpose. And I say that because you’re going to be listening to a series of these women whose voices are going to tell you about it wasn’t a straight line, but it’s a journey. And now we’re at a wonderful stage or phase where we need to really reflect on its meaning, both for me personally and for the society in which we’re in. You’re going to love listening to them because we highlight some of the entrepreneurial companies of purpose within the Women Business Collaborative. Dr. Brown knows a little bit about the work. I’ve been a member since it was founded by Edie Frazier. This program is both me and Edie Frazier together, in a partnership to begin to build the voices of women with purpose. Something is going on that’s really transformative. So, these extraordinary women are shaping the future, and I think you’re going to see a different kind of woman coming through with resilience and meaningful impact on the world.  Thank you for joining us on this journey. And I think we are going to dive in and hear these wonderful women with joy. And now let me introduce Dr. Brown because I do think that Dr. Brown is going to tell us a whole lot about how you can have a successful life, a wonderful business and purpose well beyond what we do and the success that we breed. Dr. Brown sent me a wonderful media kit, so I’m going to read her short bio. I’ll tell you a little bit about her story, and then I’m going to let her tell you about her journey because you’re going to enjoy it from her perspective. Dr. Barbara Brown is a licensed clinical community psychologist with over three decades of experience serving as a founder and CEO of Capitol Hill Consortium for Counseling Consultants. Unicorn Healthcare is also a company of hers. They grew out of her solo private practice into group practices. She has over 80 staff, and they have local and national recognition for her business acumen and community impact. Established in 2009, CCCC provides high quality, affordable psychotherapy, psychological assessment and testing for children, adolescents, and adults, while also offering training programs for graduate students and early career psychology, social work, and counseling professionals. Not an anthropologist there, but we should talk about that. It might be an interesting place to actually see things through a fresh lens. This is a wonderful woman who’s going to talk about how to offer people something they need in a way that’s very accessible and very comfortable for them. She strives to provide thoughtful support to individuals who often prioritize caring for others over self-care. That’s a big theme. Family caregivers, providers in the helping professionals, and more. I understand that these unique individuals often do not ask for help themselves, and her mission is to normalize the crucial importance of mental health and emotional well-being. I think this is a blending of physical health. mental health, behavioral health. It’s a big question around America now about the rise of depression, about loneliness. This is really big. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Barbara, thank you for joining me today. Thank you.

Dr. Barbara Brown: Thank you for having me.

Andi Simon:  You have a wonderful bio, but I think your journey is deeper and richer.  Please share it with our listeners. Who is Dr. Brown and what has your journey been like so that we can share it with you and then understand the purpose that has emerged from it? Please.

Dr. Barbara Brown:  So, I’ll try to do the short version. But basically, I feel very blessed to have known that I wanted to be a psychologist since I was 17 and that had been born and the type of psychologist that I wanted to be and how I wanted to use my education as well. I was born into a family that had a lot of accomplishments, but they were all done for a community. Some of the women in our family were civil rights attorneys and trailblazers in their own respect. And the men were often physicians and just generation after generation. And so, they were healers, and they were all very committed to serving the community. And so, I grew up in that, that kind of atmosphere. And so, my first job was working for my father, and he was a wonderful diagnostician. And he recognized, I think, early on that a lot of the physical symptoms that he was seeing were related to stress. And so, I met my first psychologist at 14 because he made several referrals to a psychologist. And so, I really understood the integration of mind and body. Then I took a course in high school. I was able to take a course in psychology I always say I learned about Jungian dream analysis and primal scream therapy, and I was hooked so I that was interesting.

Andi Simon: Things to get hooked on to, too, aren’t they?

Dr. Barbara Brown: Right. Well, I just thought it was so fascinating this whole journey of understanding humans and why we act the way we act. And so, in college I was very clear that I was going to be a psychologist. And then I also picked up sociology. So really looking at the micro and the macro level of humans and how they interact by themselves and in their communities was really important.  And then so it was natural to go to Boston University and clinical and community psychology and really always keep that in mind. So, I never thought I’d be, and I never planned to be in private practice. I had always planned to be in a more community-based agency, but one of the things that I discovered through the course of it was the level of the bureaucracy can sometimes strangle clinical work, and there were so many people who were in need that it just didn’t it didn’t seem to go together. It’s like we can’t let all this paperwork get in the way of treating people. And so that really drove me eventually to start my private practice. Also, in a particular kind of private practice. I did not, because of the way that I grew up and being community oriented and wanting to make sure that there was access to care, it was important to me not to just do a self-pay practice the way that many of my colleagues were doing, to do one that really was accessible. So, making the decision to accept public and private health insurance was very important, as well as having the freedom to create programs that were meeting the needs of people. So, again, I had been trained in child, adolescent, and adult therapy. So, I was able to have that kind of practice and then, really add more and more clinicians over the years who could fill one or more of those. So, we see ages 3 to 83. That’s what I always say. and we do individual family couples, group therapy as well as the psychological testing for educational purposes for testing intelligence for neuropsychology and neuro divergence, as well as personality assessment. What came close to my heart over the years was really working with trauma because what I found for both women and men, just high levels of trauma that happen in our society. And so, trauma informed therapy and developing ways to help women with both, simple or single case trauma as well as complex trauma really became my specialty area and training other clinicians to do that so that we can really create an army of therapists to meet the demand has always been important, and even more so now as, through Covid, where the mental health challenges became so significant that finally I feel like there’s been a breakthrough of understanding on a higher scale,  the largest scale I’ve ever seen of people recognizing that there is no health without mental health, to really coin Doctor David Thatcher’s words. And he’s always been a hero of mine ever since he was in the Carter, and since he was the Surgeon General in the Carter administration. So, I’ve been doing a lot of talking. Is there?

Andi Simon:  Oh, no. You’re educating me and our audience. Because what you’ve done, you created your own community health system without the bureaucracy in a way that allows you to develop it in innovative ways, around the needs of the folks that you’re seeing and in response to whether it’s Covid or other things that are developing. I mean, depression was quite ubiquitous before the Covid, and people were also living alone. And I did some work for the Community Health Center of Denver, and I had to take the Science of Wellbeing course that came out of Yale. We were disturbed by all these successful Yale students found that it was the most wonderful course to take because they needed to find happiness. And you began to wonder about our society losing its focus on health and well-being and happiness and collaboration and community.  So interesting as you’re looking at a couple of thoughts that came to mind, one of which is you’re a woman business owner. Some thoughts for our audience about the ups and downs of building something because I do think that it isn’t a straight line. Your career hasn’t been a straight line. You didn’t see this at the beginning. You said, that’s what I want to build. So, what was it like as you went through this journey?

Dr. Barbara Brown: I think in terms of business, when you’re doing it just by yourself, like when I was doing my solo private practice, it’s such a different animal. Even though that, the brick and mortar is the same in terms of the processes that you have to go through when you scale it. the way that we’ve scaled it, and we see over a thousand people a week, in the DMV area, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, for those people who aren’t from this area, when you go, you have to build the infrastructure along with it.  And so that is a huge reliance on people and secondarily on now more than ever on technology. And so, making sure all the pieces come together is so important. And again, when things happen with people or with technology, like we had to rebuild our whole infrastructure when we went from 100% in-person to 100% remote. We had to do everything differently and spent quite a bit of money. So, it really is helpful the more forecasting that you can do, the better. But even then, things happen. And so, what I feel is the grit that is needed to be a businesswoman, and to face the challenges. And, you know, we’re human just like everyone else. And when you have things that are new and uncomfortable, again, you have three responses. You can fight, you can fight through it and go for it. You can do flight and avoid it, or you can freeze. And I’ve done all three of those. But you can’t stay. I have never stayed in the flight or the fright mode. I’m more into trying to handle what needs to be handled. And so, my orientation toward finding solutions to problems really has helped. And, you know, just trying to gather my team of leaders to assist me in moving through whatever the challenges have been. And I’ve had to rely on families sometimes. I’ve had to, you know, bootstrap it most of the time. But it pays for itself at this point, which is great.

Andi Simon: As you have been building a very successful practice, and a thousand patients a week is enormous, how did you weave in the world of your family and their focus on community or on purpose and meaning? You know, those words have to be concretized in some fashion. And I say the word purpose and meaning and significance. But I always ask, what does that mean? My hunch is that as you’ve been doing it, it’s more than simply a bottom line or profits or shareholders. It’s also been your staff and the folks in the communities. Can you share with us some perspective on what was the driver here, or how it made you feel, or what was your legacy?

Dr. Barbara Brown: Well, again, I think I shared a little bit of where it came from. But one thing that has driven the business is that each person who we choose to work in the business buys into our philosophy. And so, it is a value driven business from the beginning. I feel like I have a cadre of therapists and our staff who support the therapists, who really believe that giving back to the community is what we do. And yes, we do need to survive and make money along the way. But our purpose for being here is larger than that always. And so, it’s been so important to find like-minded people. And I had business again. I went for my solo practice, and then I had FACs plc, which I have no short names here. Family assistance in coping with trauma and stress and so I had that for 11 years and that was with partners, and we built that up.  And then I morphed into the consortium because I really wanted it to feel more like everyone’s input. Everyone is valuable here. And so, you know, all together, we make this consortium that comes together and helps the community in some significant ways. And so, it’s like a thousand points of light. Or if you go to George Bush, but like all these people coming together for the same thing. So, we developed a mission statement, a core community values, and our core group values that we stand by, but we created together.

Andi Simon: It’s so interesting because there’s humility here. There’s curiosity here. There’s empathy. There are all kinds of strong feelings that must inspire the folks who join you, not only to rise to the occasion, but to do well for your patients, your communities, for themselves as well. Do they feel the meaning and the purpose? Do they end every day and say, that was a good experience for me?

Dr. Barbara Brown:  I do believe so because we get together, we have weekly staff meetings, we have challenging case reviews, we have peer supervision, we have continuing education forums and invariably and of course we do our own internal surveys.  And what invariably people say is they are here for our clients. They get so much out of it, personally, in terms of giving back. But they also are here to serve. And so, it is wonderful to hear that repeatedly from everybody. The dedication is amazing.

Andi Simon:  It’s interesting. I have nonprofit clients. And among the nonprofit clients, there’s sort of an expectation that you haven’t signed on for the money. You signed on for the purpose. And when I was coaching the CEO the other day, he said, it sounds like these are businesses, all of which have become not for profit like. And I said, well, I don’t see it as a profit, nonprofit. I do see it as purposeful, non-purposeful. You know you can be in business to do stuff, good stuff, but you have transformed the lives of the folks you serve and the folks who are serving them. And they are different people aren’t they.

Dr. Barbara Brown: I do think we have transformative experiences. And I do think that all our clients benefit from the work that we facilitate with them. I do see the growth in our clinicians as well. And we offer opportunities for the clinicians to grow in their development as well. We have, again, people who are still in school and training. We have early career clinicians. We have mid-level clinicians who are more in our administrative. They want to grow and in some other ways other than clinically. And then we have our seasoned clinicians, which I am one of at this point. I always say, we like to do what we want to do so we explore things. But again, you know, it’s just a wonderful developmental model.

Andi Simon: As you’re thinking about it, other businesses are struggling with the generational differences. I often think that the new generation has a strong feeling of wanting to have purposeful jobs. Not just a job. Are you seeing differences in the young ones coming through? And is there good or bad or both?

Dr. Barbara Brown:  It’s good because I think we give each other different things. I didn’t grow up with technology. When I did my dissertation, it was on a typewriter. People don’t even know what a typewriter is at work.

Andi Simon: I did mine on punch cards, so I had it. I still have them. I don’t know what to do with them.

Dr. Barbara Brown: Right. There were no PCs. The data management was a room as big as your house. And so, the technology that they bring, the way that they think, the way that they innovate is extremely important to the work.  I do think the grounding that we baby boomers and millennials can do as people get older is really helping ground people in a life purpose. I do think we help each other tremendously.  Listening is an important skill. Not just for therapists, but for administrators, for all of us.  And listening to each other and really seeing what you can learn from other people. And I do think that that’s the wisdom of children, too. That’s why I think children coming into our society is so important because they make everything fresh and new. And I feel that same way with our early career clinicians as well as our season. It’s like they make it fresh and new. That’s why I love having a new class of trainees every year.

Andi Simon:  You know, it does it opens your mind to what’s coming next. What’s coming next for you?

Dr. Barbara Brown:  So, as I said, I’m a seasoned clinician, so I am in my succession planning mode. And I am so happy to have a group of leaders who actually want to take on the mantle and keep the legacy going and also expand it in their own vision. And so, we are in the process of moving and have made inroads, into moving into what we call our six pillars. So, I told you about the clinical pillar, and that will continue to be affordable, accessible, health care and using contracts in addition to insurance, because insurance is becoming a little more bureaucratic, which is unfortunate. We want to make sure that access is maintained. You can do that through contracts as well. And we’ve already started that process. and then I have a continuum of care and services. So, we want to make our training program bigger. We have about 14 trainees this year in psychology. We have an APA, American Psychological Association, approved accredited internship for psychologists. But we do external postdocs, interns, as I said. And then we have early career social work and counselors that we’re training. So, we’re building that into a separate pillar. and that may become a 501 C3, a nonprofit because we really want to create an army of therapists in that way. We have testing. We want to expand our testing program. That becomes a pillar to just grow that. And then we have our holistic vision that just has started. This is more unicorn in our self-pay piece, but we’re focused on holistic health care. So, we’ve had retreats, where we’re building clinicians who have a broader view, and working with Allied Services to expand that. We find that, again, the mind and body are so important. And there are a lot of people who are into the holistic piece, as we are, and they want to blend more yoga, more exercise, more acupuncture more, all of those things together into a wellness model. So, it’s not the pathology model of traditional psychology, but it’s more the wellness model and trying to prevent things from happening and then we have gone into corporate care because we know most of the people spend their lives at work, after school, then work. And so, we make sure people are healthy. They’re to both the leaders as well as the employees. And the last piece is really, an extended therapy, specialized therapy services for again the people who are not likely to seek treatment without it being highly discreet because of their public personas, and they need help. But they often won’t seek it, or they want to seek it, but they have to do it in highly discreet ways because there is still some judgment less than there used to be.  But, you know, people need to protect themselves at the same time.

Andi Simon: You sound like you’ve had a wonderful career journey, purpose, life is blended. Work and life for you. Do you ever think about life and work as separate, or it’s always been integrated. I have a hunch it’s been blended for you as well.

Dr. Barbara Brown:  Absolutely. You hear that?  I think that most of my friends say that I have a level of intensity that is somewhat palpable. But I wasn’t with my group. I’ve been in the same book club, for the last, well, since 1989. And so, we are a wonderful blend of people and of women who get together monthly and have been for that long time. And they call on me often for my wisdom. and of course, I enjoy their wisdom as well. But, yeah, it’s hard because I am who I am, and I am who I have been meant to be. And so, it’s really ingrained in me. And so, it doesn’t feel like a burden. It feels like a blending, you know. And so that’s why. Yes, that’s why I will not retire. We were talking about that a little bit earlier. I will rewire.

Andi Simon: I mean, you and I share so much because I discovered anthropology as an undergraduate, and it was who I was, not what I was going to do.

Dr. Barbara Brown: Yes.

Andi Simon:  And when you have that epiphany and then it becomes, how do you live it in a way which makes it viable? And people say to me, oh, I loved anthropology. I just didn’t know how to get a job in it. And I said, well, you make it up. And that was one of those moments where there isn’t a job per se, or how do you help people see, feel, and think in new ways or step out and understand their organizations? And then they say to me, I thought, and businesses, how do you I thought you study small scale societies.  I say, what makes you think of businesses in a small-scale society? And, you know, and the rituals of mating, of dining, of, you know, rites of passage into positions, the spirit, and the spiritual part. They’re humans and they build a culture that thrives, and they build it with people who need your help to make sure they have a wellness approach to life where they feel good every morning and they wake up smiling. Right? It’s an interesting time. I could keep talking to you because I’m so enjoying this. But, Dr. Brown, can you share with the audience one or two things you don’t want them to forget? And then we’ll wrap up?

Dr. Barbara Brown:  Again, mental health is my passion and so I really want people to really view mental health care as a right, not a privilege as an important, just as important as your physical and your spiritual health and your financial health. They all go together, to really create a life that you want, that you love to live, and that nothing is irreparable. I mean, I guess there is a solution, you know, for every problem. And so, I don’t want people to lose hope. You know, if you’re struggling with something, reach out. It does take some courage, but you can reach into yourself, and you can reach out to other people. There are people who care, and they want to help.

Andi Simon:  So that’s a beautiful way for us to end our conversation about your own journey of building something remarkable to bring health and wellness to people all around you in the DC, Virginia, Maryland, DVM markets. I hope our listeners understand that. I bet you can get ahold of Dr. Brown and find out more about her programs, even if you don’t live in Virginia or Maryland or D.C. because in today’s world, particularly what we learned during the pandemic is you could be anywhere and get help anywhere. And if you need someone to talk to and to better understand your own well-being, don’t wait. It’s a good time to reach out and to learn more. May I use your email there or your website? What would that be?

Dr. Barbara Brown: Absolutely, absolutely. So, our website is seekmentalhealth.com

Andi Simon: Good seekmentalhealth.com, I got that right. yeah. For our listeners, thank you for joining us today. Whether you’re watching or you’re listening, I get wonderful emails from you from across the globe. And today’s talk with Dr. Barbara Brown about her own story and how she has gone from building something wonderful to help you with your own well-being, to building something that’s also purposeful for herself and all of her staff, and actually for the world around her. When she talks about going to a book club with them, listening to her wisdom, it’s as a whole person. It’s not just what she does. It’s who she is, and her wisdom is well worth sharing for you. I do want to remind you that we’re going to be doing a whole series of these on women entrepreneurs who have purpose, and we want you. Edie Frazier and I have joined together because we want you to hear their stories because there’s so much more than just successful people who have gotten off the brink to rise, but they really have done something with significance. And that word has lots of meaning. But you’re going to hear it over and over again in very soft ways because I don’t think anybody went into the business to be significant. They went in to do wonderful things for others, and out of it came purpose and meaning that have given joy to lots of other people. So, thanks for coming today. Remember, our books are all on Amazon, On the Brink, Rethink and Women Mean Business and I love you. When you read it, you write a review of it and you thank me for helping you see, feel, and think in new ways. That’s my job. And thank you, Dr. Brown for being with me today. It’s been a pleasure.

Dr. Barbara Brown:  Thank you. I enjoyed it.

Andi Simon: Me too. Bye. Now, remember, your job is to take your observations and turn them into innovations. Be an anthropologist, see things through a fresh lens and say,