About Us
ABOUT FAMILY WELLNESS
For many years as community workers, educators, therapists and clergy we watched families struggle to solve their problems. We saw the need for simple, useful tools to help families work better. Taking from the best of social science and psychological research, we put together our ideas of the skills and patterns that consistently show up in healthy families. Our goal was to create a program that could be understood by families of various cultures, including those who might never seek family therapy. Family Wellness Associates is a minority owned partnership committed to providing skills and resources to individuals, couples, and families throughout the world.
Since 1980, Family Wellness has trained over 50,000 instructors who have presented the Family Wellness programs to more than 1,000,000 families worldwide. We have trained instructors all over the world, including in Australia, Singapore, Korea, Nigeria and Germany. We welcome you!
Family Wellness Associates is a minority owned – Latino and woman – partnership committed to providing skills and resources to individuals, couples, and families throughout the world. Founded in East San Jose and Santa Cruz California in 1980, our focus has been on low-income multi-cultural communities. Family Wellness has been effective across ethnic and socio-economic strata.
A number of refugee programs throughout the country have chosen Family Wellness as the model for their communities because of our cultural respect, adaptability for different cultures, and clear, common sense approach. Kurdish, Somali, Hmong, Latino, Serbian, Ugandan, and Russian Refugees are currently using our program and we can put you in touch with program directors and coordinators.
Who We Are
ANA MORANTE, LMFT, CFLE
Ana has been a partner since 2005 after a 12 year of association with Family Wellness as an Instructor and Trainer of instructors. Ana is a bilingual and bicultural exponent of Family Wellness.
As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, she maintains a private practice providing services to children, adolescents, and their families, dealing with issues such as child abuse or neglect, domestic violence, substance abuse, immigration and acculturation, etc. Ana has worked in numerous public and private settings including the Juvenile Dependency System and the Family Court System. Ana has also provided program and clinical supervision to trainees, interns and other mental health professionals. Ana has been married since 1994 and she is a mother and step-mother to three children. She is passionate about the Family Wellness principles and she uses them regularly in her personal and professional life. She enjoys helping people not just to survive but to thrive and enjoy their relationships. Something that she learned from her mentor and founder of the program, George Doub, is to see the strength in people and to reflect it back to them.
ERIN O. SIMILE, LMFT, LPC, CFLE
Erin has been a partner of Family Wellness Associates, LLC since 2005 after a 16-year association as a Certified Instructor and Trainer.
With a strong background in training, she currently works with Santa Clara County, CA and a team of experts to provide domestic violence prevention classes for mandated participants. In Wake County, NC she trains social workers to become Certified FW Instructors. With three generations of career military service in her family, and growing up in that unique environment, she is also dedicated to serving military families through the Army Strong Bonds Program, the Navy’s CREDO program, as well as the Air Force National Guard.
After more than 15 years as a practicum clinical supervisor and private practitioner, Erin and her husband since 1981 (Michael) relocated from the SF Bay Area to the Raleigh, NC area. Since that time, she has also developed a passion advocating for the needs of Relative Caregivers and the children they are raising.
NATE COTTLE, PH.D, LCSW
Nate Cottle is one of our new partners joining Family Wellness in 2017. Nate is an Assistant/Associate Professor of Family Studies at Utah Valley University. He holds a PhD in Family Studies from the University of Texas and is a Certified Family Life Educator from the National Council on Family Relations. Nate has been active in Marriage and Relationship Education, making over 100 community presentations, retreats, and trainings with the Twogether in Texas program, the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, Utah’s Governor’s Commission on Marriage, the Yellow Ribbon program of the National Guard, and the Strong Bonds program for the Army.He is also one of the three authors of Dad’s for Life: Fathering for Family Wellness. He currently certifies his Family Studies students in Family Wellness as part of their family life education methodology course.
KRISTIN ORPHAN, M.S., CFLE
Kristin became a partner in 2019 after a ten year association with Family Wellness. She is the founder and executive director of Finally Home, a non-profit that educates and supports foster, adoptive and kinship families. She has been married since 1992 and is the mother to four children. As a foster-adoptive parent, Kristin has found the Family Wellness skills to be an invaluable part of helping her family thrive. She has her Master of Science degree in Mental Health and Wellness with an emphasis on Family Dynamics.
In Loving Memory
GEORGE THOMAS DOUB, M.DIV., LMFT
In 2010, George died doing what he did throughout his entire life: helping someone in need.
His vision of working with family strengths, including entire family members to learn new skills, and his belief that all families can learn healthy skills and patterns as early as 1980 made him a pioneer in how effective family education is delivered today.
He was a mentor, cherished friend, clinical supervisor, author, priest, husband, and father. He had a way of making people laugh and feel comfortable immediately. If you never had the honor of having George touch your life in some way while he was alive, please know that he touches your life every time you teach Family Wellness curricula to families in need. You’re fulfilling his dream.
We’re grateful to George every day.
JOSEPH JOE L. HERNANDEZ, PH.D., LMFT 1949 - 2016
We were shocked and saddened by the sudden death of one of our ‘Family Wellness Family’ members during the NARME conference in Anaheim in 2016.
Joe was a constant source of creativity, enthusiasm, professionalism, wisdom, and dedication to Family Wellness Associates, the many people and families he served during his life as a clinical psychologist, treasured friends, and most especially, his immediate and extended family whom he loved so much!
We will miss him, always.