Equinox Founder and Partners

As the founder and CEO of Equinox, Mary brings extensive insight, knowledge and experience with each of the various levels of treatment care available to parents seeking help for the complex mental health challenges their children are facing. More than 30 years of experience in the mental health field has led her to examine the treatment path that not only separates youth from their parents and family system but is also so readily recommended by many mental health professionals. Mary cares deeply about young people and their families facing complex mental health challenges and has dedicated herself to ensuring youth in need of intensive treatment experience safety, kindness, and compassion by a clinical team and system of care that delivers results.

Mary has become a prominent voice within the professional treatment community on the importance of parent and family involvement in the treatment process.  Her work centers on helping parents achieve a deep understanding that families that grow, learn and change together, heal together.   As a result, she has ensured that youth and their parents have another option; no longer do families have to move from provider to provider, be separated by treatment in wilderness or residential settings, or be in and out of psychiatric hospital settings to get the help they are seeking. In 2009, after 22 years in the mental health networks of Colorado, Nevada, and North Carolina, Mary developed an out-patient intensive level of care that combines the best of residential treatment, wilderness therapy and hospital settings to help keep youth and families together on the path towards healing. 

Additionally, Mary is the co-founder of the Parent Leadership Academy which is an integrated component of the Equinox program.  The Parent Leadership Academy has helped thousands of parents learn to parent with confidence, love, warmth, and compassion, while at the same time holding important boundaries necessary to improve their child’s functioning.  The Parent Leadership Academy teaches parents that alignment with family values and parenting a child with complex mental, emotional and behavioral health issues no longer are mutually exclusive of one another. 

Mary received her bachelor’s degree in business management and therapeutic recreation from Mesa State College and attended the University of Northern Colorado and Lesley College for master’s coursework in clinical psychology. She has over 30 years of experience in developing and delivering programs to youth and families struggling with complex mental, emotional and behavioral health challenges. With skillful expertise, Mary has developed specialized programming for youth who often present with combined complexities of anxiety, depression, OCD, mood disorders, ADHD, and executive functioning disorder.  This programming deals with the reality that these complexities create significant difficulty across a broad spectrum in their lives, parent relationships and overall functioning.  Utilizing her extensive background in developing and running residential treatment and wilderness therapy programs, she has successfully implemented intensive programming that allows these youth to remain in their home environment. 

Mary is a national trainer, speaker and clinical program evaluator. She speaks and trains on topics that include the following: Sexual Safety for Children; Developing Competent, Confident Children; How to Raise Responsible Teens; The Dangers of Using Rewards and Consequence Behavior Modification Systems. Additionally, Mary has been featured on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and ABC’s Nightline for her work with military youth and families experiencing significant challenges as a result of their parent’s multiple military deployments.

As managing partner and Chief Clinical Officer, Eileen provides oversight of all clinical/program services and processes, ensuring the highest standard of care is utilized to attain sustainable client outcomes.  She believes that each family comes to Equinox with their own story to tell, unique strengths and complex challenges, that deserve a compassionate and skilled approach to their clinical care. As CCO, Eileen oversees a system of care focused on integrating all aspects of Equinox therapeutic programming into the client's home, community, and day-to-day relationships. Most importantly, each professional interaction, clinical intervention, and treatment decision occurs with integrity and from evidence-based practice.

Eileen received a Bachelor of Science degree in Child Development from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She then received a Master of Arts degree in clinical psychology, with specialization in marriage, family, and child counseling from Pepperdine University. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in the states of Colorado and California, and has provided therapeutic services to individuals, couples, families, high-risk adolescents, and youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder for the past 30 years.

Eileen worked as a family therapist with family systems impacted by trauma, behavioral disorders, mental health issues, and chronic stressors that significantly disrupted family relationships. As a Parent Coach with Equinox, Eileen utilizes her skills and knowledge of complex family systems to work closely with parents who have faced unpredictable and difficult challenges raising adolescents and helping their young adults launch into independence.  Eileen teaches parents that they are an essential catalyst for the change they are wanting to see in their family, and even more importantly she provides the necessary guidance to get there. Parent Leadership Principles integrated within the Equinox System of Care is a sequenced learning method that develops skills for effective parent leadership while enhancing the connection between the parent(s)/child that is commonly disrupted as a result of the chronic distress.  

Eileen’s expertise includes guiding parents of young adults to effectively support the transition to independent living despite existing challenges that contribute to a failure to launch.  She understands the unique dynamics that exist in this stage of development within the parent/child relationship and common barriers that impact our young adults in this process.  She enjoys both the individual coaching process and the weekly parent group that combines psycho-education and therapeutic support. 

Eileen loves traveling with her husband and teenage son, has three beloved dogs, and relaxes through gardening, time outdoors, and cooking.

“You are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything.”
Oprah Winfrey

Tim is a Partner and the System of Care Officer at Equinox.   Working in this role is a natural fit for Tim after spending 25 years working in a variety of environments with an array of populations and families. He is passionate about the seamless integration of clinical, milieu, community, wilderness and parent coaching to produce the results families need and deserve.

Tim grew up in Western New York and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences from Niagara University. His passion for the outdoors brought him to Colorado in 1996 and he’s been combining the outdoors and behavioral healthcare ever since. He began his work with at-risk-teens in residential treatment and leading wilderness therapy trips as a field guide for 6-years before bridging experiential modalities with therapeutic milieu and community-based treatment in 2002.

Since the inception of Equinox in 2009, Tim has developed a passion for, as well as an intimate understanding of, the unique system of care that exists at Equinox. His primary role is to ensure that the Equinox treatment teams have the skills, knowledge and operational understanding of how to effectively deliver services under our distinctive system of care. Tim’s expertise in milieu management, combined with his experience guiding the efforts of multi-disciplinary and clinical teams, make him a uniquely qualified leader, mentor and trainer at Equinox.

Tim is also a valued member of the parent coaching team. He has a particular interest in, and talent for, helping parents emerge as nurturing leaders in their family while assisting them in bridging the gaps that often exist in the parent–child relationship. Tim takes a principally based approach to leading his weekly parent coaching workshops as well as providing individual coaching. It’s no surprise that Tim has created Equinox’s “In Home Family Retreats” where he draws heavily from his experiential roots to facilitate a 3-day experience focused heavily on parent leadership in the home.

Tim also overseas all of the adventure and wilderness programming at Equinox and enjoys the training and mentoring aspects of his job. While Tim is growing up a new generation of outdoor behavioral health professionals at Equinox, he still loves his time in the field. Team spends countless hours in the field with his guides and when time allows, he still loves leading groups and families on therapeutic adventures. Tim enjoys the continuing education and maintains professional certifications including American Mountain Guide Association–Certified Single-Pitch Instructor, Association for Challenge Course Technology–Level II facilitator, The Climbing Wall Association-Lead Climbing Wall Instructor, American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education–Pro-1; and Wilderness Medicine Institute–Wilderness First Responder.

When not working, Tim enjoys rock and ice climbing, skiing, fly fishing, mountain biking and traveling adventures with his wife, Tanya, in their little camper.

Follow your PASSION, It knows where you should go.