BIO
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Jeffrey Harper, LCSW, ACSW, is a psychotherapist and mental health professional with over thirty years’ experience treating adolescents, adults, couples and families and over two decades serving as an Executive Coach and organizational consultant specializing in leadership development and communications.
He possesses substantial experience treating a broad range of life challenges – anxiety, depression, transition from adolescence to adulthood, marital conflict, career challenges, sexual identity issues, divorce and remarriage, among others. The former Assistant Director of the Counseling Center at Fordham University at Lincoln Center, where he co-created and led a seminar on “The Technique of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy,” supervised doctoral students and carried a full caseload of undergraduate and graduate students from ages 18-65 years old, Jeffrey Harper has also worked and trained at Montefiore North’s Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic in the north Bronx (formerly Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center’s Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic); at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, New York Presbyterian Medical Center; at Lehman College’s Counseling Center. He has been a Grand Rounds speaker on the topic “The Decline of Adulthood, The Culture of Adolescence.” With over twenty years’ experience as an executive coach and communications consultant, Jeffrey Harper has worked with C-suite executives and senior management on leadership development, organizational challenges and communication design that blends business and psychological insight to create compelling organizational story-telling. Certified in Kaiser Solutions’ “Leadership Versatility Index” tool, Jeffrey Harper helps individuals and organizations’ leaders develop strengths, reduce weaknesses and drive personal and organizational performance. Jeffrey Harper has applied his psychological insight and story-telling expertise to write and direct short films for Bristol-Myers Squibb, BNY Melon, Xerox, the Coca-Cola Company, Biogen Idec, Deloitte and Southern Company. As a creative communications consultant he has devised the strategic design and execution of proposals for NGOs' global and local development initiatives, national and global health summits, product launches, national sales meetings, sales recognition events, industry awards meetings, global marketing summits, B2B and B2C trade shows and press events for audiences numbering in the thousands – in the US, Canada, Africa and Europe. He is also a pro bono communications consultant for the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York and enjoys creative writing as a hobby. A dual US/Canadian citizen, Jeffrey received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and his graduate degree in clinical social work from the Hunter College School of Social Work. Jeffrey Harper has enjoyed creative writing as a hobby and is a national prize-winning playwright and novelist. He has completed two novels – Thy Will Be Done, a crime novel/psychological thriller on religious themes and Please Cooperate – a comedy of manners about social class and real estate in Manhattan. Jeffrey Harper was awarded the Playwrights First Award, a national literary prize, for his play In the Valley of the Shadow, a drama with gospel music based on years researching a New York City murder case and the prosecution of a schizophrenic choirboy. In the Valley of the Shadow has received numerous readings in New York and Los Angeles with actors Tim Daly, Andrew McCarthy and Stephen Lang. Harper has been awarded a fellowship as playwright in residence at New River Dramatists in North Carolina, and is also a past recipient of a Canada Council grant in playwriting for his play about Canadian veterans of the First World War, A Cross for Vimy Ridge. Commissioned by Sundog Theatre, he wrote the book, lyrics and contributed music for several songs for If You Could See: The Alice Austen Story, an original musical (Louis Tucci composer), which had its world premier in New York in November 2011. The musical tells the riches to rags to redemption story of Alice Austen, the social iconoclast and one of America’s first women photographers whose work spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His play Remembrance, about three friends attempting to survive the Stalinist Terror of the 1930s and 40s, who encounter Solomon Sherashevsky – a man with infinite memory (and an actual historical figure) – was named a Finalist in MultiStages 2011 New Plays Contest and received a reading in New York, February 2012, directed by Tony Award winner Bob Kalfin. His play Eden, a drama based on his research of the Rwandan genocide, has received numerous readings in London (Jermyn Street Theatre) and New York, including one in October 2009 at the Dramatists Guild of America, starring Tony-nominated actress Jayne Atkinson and Michel Gill (both featured in House of Cards) and David Margulies of The Sopranos. His screenplay Borderlines, based on his stage play of the same name, and inspired by documentation of the Balkan civil war and siege of Sarajevo, was optioned for film by Zuckerman Entertainment in Los Angeles – and, in addition has received staged readings in New York and Los Angeles with Richard Portnow (The Sopranos) and Bruce Davison. With Damon DiMarco, Jeffrey Harper co-wrote My Mariners, an original, historically-based play and murder mystery, set in the 19th-Century with traditional Anglo-Irish and American sea chanteys, which was produced by Sundog Theatre. His play, Songs of the Religious Life, grew out of Harper’s work as a rural development volunteer in West Africa, and has received numerous productions in Manhattan. |
