The Youth Counseling Connection Impact Award
Youth Counseling Connection is committed to honoring individuals with the Youth Counseling Connection Impact Award. This award recognizes a community member or organization who demonstrates a sustained commitment to youth mental wellness through their direct work and/or advocacy efforts. Register for our newsletter to stay up to date on this event!
Meet Our Award Recepients
Laurie Atwater -2024
Laurie grew up in Bangor, Maine. She graduated from Colby College, a small liberal arts school in Waterville, Maine. After graduating from Colby, Laurie moved to Massachusetts to accept a position job at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Alumni Relations office. She met her husband, Jim Shaw, while he was attending UMass. When Jim finished at UMass, they relocated to Jim’s hometown of Lexington.
Early in her career, she worked on both the creative and marketing sides of the direct marketing and advertising industry, serving a broad range of national clients.
She eventually focused her career on qualitative market research for a small boutique firm serving national financial services companies like Fidelity Investments. After Jim left his position as spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), they decided to establish a monthly full-color feature publication which has evolved into the Lexington Times Magazine. Laurie put her market research career on hold and joined the start-up as editor. She has served as editor ever since.
Laurie and Jim have spent 29 years building the Lexington Times Magazine, growing their readership, and cultivating strong community bonds through articles that highlight the organizations and people that make Lexington such a special place. They were fortunate to raise their son in this wonderful, caring community and grow their business over the years.
Laurie and Jim live in Lexington, where they raised one son, Devin. Laurie, as part of the Lexington Times, is proud to be a small business owner and a member of the Lexington community.
First Parish of Lexington - 2025
In February 2008, concerned residents, alarmed by the high number of Lexington High School students reporting feelings of depression and suicidal thoughts, recognized the urgent need for accessible mental health support for youth in Lexington. A small working group persisted and eventually approached First Parish Church to house their newly formed nonprofit. In 2011, First Parish generously donated space to help turn this vision into a reality.
At that time, First Parish’s Board approved the free use of a space that was renovated into a private counseling office and waiting area with its own entrance from the outside. After ten years of rent-free occupancy, growing demand led to the addition of a larger room for a nominal rent. This expansion has allowed YCC to hold teen support groups, board meetings, youth board meetings, as well as clinical sessions in separate, private spaces.
First Parish’s mission is “to create a loving, spiritual community that practices together a free, responsible, inclusive, liberatory, and covenantal faith, empowering them to act within our congregation, town, and larger world.” One of the ways this is accomplished is through its partnerships with organizations like the Association of Black Citizens of Lexington, LexPride, and other local cultural groups, as well as its celebrations of Diwali, Eid, and the Lunar New Year.
An “incubator”; for YCC, First Parish also supports youth through several longstanding programs, including regular high and middle school group gatherings. In Youth Group, students come together with supportive staff in a safe environment to engage in activities and conversations that promote self-development. This experience helps them build the confidence and skills to go out into the world and put their ideas into practice. Additionally, First Parish co-facilitates Our Whole Lives, a highly regarded health and sexuality education program for grades 7 and 8. “OWL” helps participants make informed, responsible decisions about their relationships and sexual health.
YCC is proud to honor First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Lexington for its unwavering support of our efforts since our inception in 2011.
Valerie Viscosi -2023
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.