Valerie Viscosi received her M.A. and Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in counseling psychology at Tufts University in 1991. Valerie holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering, and soon into her engineering career shifted her analytical and problem-solving skills to the field of education. She was a Kindergarten teacher at the International School of Stockholm, before matriculating into her graduate studies leading to licensure as a school psychologist, mental health counselor, and school counselor. She completed internships in the Arlington and Belmont Public Schools, where she focused on providing assessment and intervention to students in preschool through middle school. She has served as a school psychologist and counselor at elementary, middle, and high schools in the Hamilton-Wenham, Framingham, Belmont and Methuen school districts, before becoming a director in 2007. She is currently in her eleventh year as the Lexington Public Schools Director of Counseling, providing leadership to the counseling and social work staff serving the 10 schools in the district.

Valerie has predominantly focused on developing programs and supervising staff to support universal prevention as well as responsive counseling services. Within the Lexington Public Schools, she has collaborated with the Assistant Directors of Counseling, counseling staff and others to create sustainable structures for identifying and responding to the mental health needs of our students. She has provided leadership in support of social emotional learning, school-wide culture building, consultation, community provider coordination, parent programming, child protection practices, Section 504 coordination, McKinney Vento Homeless Education protections, professional learning, and other programs. She has a deep commitment to diversity, belonging, equity, and inclusion, embracing the LPS core value of creating conditions so that “we all belong”, through supporting programming such as curriculum, restorative justice, and recruitment and hiring of diverse staff to reflect our students and families within the LPS. Valerie has served as a delegate to the College Board, chairperson of the Massachusetts School Counselors Association (MASCA), and was awarded MASCA’s Administrator of the Year for her outstanding and significant contributions to the counseling movement, development and implementation of innovative programming, and initiation of improvements of school counseling services.