High Hopes was not built by people who read about the mental health crisis. It was built by people who lived it. Our staff have lost family members to homicide. To overdose. To a system that said wait, or no, or not here. Some are unhoused and in and out of halfway houses. One of our board members lost a niece to gun violence in 2025, while she was working her second job as a manager at One Stop Storage, trying to make ends meet. Leaving 2 kids behind. Every person who shows up for High Hopes has their own version of this story — family members who didn’t get help in time, who didn’t want help, who cycled in and out of help for years, who fell through every crack the system left open. Many of our staff are neurodivergent themselves. We understand from the inside what it means to be wired differently — to work twice as hard just to keep pace, to have a brain that sees things others don’t. We are learning alongside our clients. Bumps included. That is not a weakness. That is exactly why we understand the families who walk through our doors. Nicole’s dream started this. Her determination and momentum built the foundation. But it is the team and the board — each carrying their own grief, their own history, their own reasons for showing up — who keep it running. The highs and the lows. The losses along the way. We keep going because we believe, together, that no family should have to go through this alone. And because we know, from the inside out, what happens when they do.

Every clinician at High Hopes commits to a minimum one-year term — because we know what it does to a person when they finally open up and the clinician leaves. That does not happen here. Our team is trauma-informed, evidence-based, and deeply invested in the communities they serve.

High Hopes provides limited clinical supervision in a trauma-informed, supportive, inclusive environment for pre-licensed clinicians (with current BBS number) giving them the tools and mentorship to become the kind of therapists their clients deserve.