Erica Suarez

I graduated with my Master's in Rehabilitation Counseling in 2012 and have dedicated my career to working with individuals with disabilities and injuries. When I first started, I was the operations coordinator at a company for people with disabilities, where I did job coaching and job placement. I took some time off to raise my five children, and when I came back about four years ago, I worked in mental health counseling before moving into my current role as a case manager. Now I specialize in life care planning, where we obtain claimant information, do detailed medical records summaries, sit in on evaluations with experts, set up and conduct doctor conferences to get recommendations for future care, and then work with our research department to cost out all the procedures, medications, and therapies. We put together comprehensive reports that help in litigation and are presented to juries. There's also a vocational component where we do vocational testing and scoring, look for available jobs, and provide career coaching for people who want to change or start careers. I'm a certified rehabilitation counselor and am currently pursuing my licensed professional counselor certification as a provisionally licensed professional counselor. I'm also a licensed rehabilitation counselor supervisee with just two more quarters until I'm fully licensed. On January 17th, I will graduate with my PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from University of Holy Cross in New Orleans. My ultimate goal is to become an expert witness in my field. Last January, I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer and went through the entire journey of chemo, radiation, and a double mastectomy while continuing to work, attend school, and raise my kids. I'm now in the reconstruction phase with my hair growing back, and we made it through.