Contemporary Sexuality - November 2008 - (Page 3) Member Spotlight Kelly Ace (Wilmington, Del.) Member Spotlight is a monthly column offering an opportunity for AASECT members to get to know more about each other. Each month, a different member’s story will be introduced. If you would like to recommend someone to be interviewed for this column, please contact Hani Miletski, PhD, MSW, Membership Steering Committee chair, at Hani@DrMiletski.com. K elly Ace began her career in the sexuality field when she volunteered at Planned Parenthood as her high school Honor Society project. She also went through a Rape Crisis Counselor training program during her senior year of high school. “When I first headed off to college,” Ace recalls, “I quickly switched to Psych and Women’s Studies after taking a Women’s Health Issues class and writing a report on feminist therapy and its application to anorgasmia in women. I ended up taking several different sexualityrelated classes as an undergraduate while working at Planned Parenthood.” Over the next few years, she became interested in issues related to child sexual abuse and its sequelae. By 1990, Ace had a master’s degree in Counseling and Psychology from Troy State University in Dothan, Ala., and was working as a research assistant on an National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored study about the longterm effects of child abuse. Later that year, she began studying at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHS) in San Francisco, and then moved to Colorado, with the idea of joining another IASHS student’s private practice and focusing on unusual sexual behavior. “Life in Colorado did not go as expected,” she says. “At 23, I really didn’t have the skills and life experience to make a successful go of private practice. I had to drop out of the Institute because I ran out of money. I continued learning about child sexual abuse and began working in Alabama for an attorney on a couple of child custody cases involving allegations of sexual abuse. Ultimately, this led me to Kids First, in Elizabeth City, N.C. — a child advocacy center.” After working as a therapist at Kids First for two years, Ace moved again — this time, to start law school at Widener University in Wilmington, Del. She supported herself by working full-time as a sexuality consultant in Philadelphia’s mental health/mental retardation system. There, she worked with a wide range of sexuality-related issues, including sexuality education, relationship counseling, disabilities, gender identity, HIV/AIDS, compulsive sexual behavior, sexual trauma, sexual abuse and much more. During her last year of law school, Ace decided to re-enroll at IASHS and completed her dissertation. She finished her PhD in human sexuality and her law degree in December 2000. After passing the Pennsylvania bar exam, Ace served as executive director of a Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program in Pennsylvania for a couple of years. In 2004, she joined Mitch Tepper and Annette Owens at The Sexual Health Network to work on the electronic Health and Relationship Tool (eHART), an NIH-funded project, to help online users to receive sexual health information via the Internet. In 2005, Ace became chief operating officer at The Sexual Health Network. She continues to spearhead the ongoing development of eHART. Ace wrote two chapters for Tepper and Owens’ 2007 Sexual Health publication: “Mental health, mental illness & sexuality,” and “The direct and indirect impact of abuse & neglect on sexuality.” Previous publications by Ace include two books published by Temple University Institute on Disabilities in 2002: Persons with Disabilities Can Speak Out: Supporting Victims Who Want to Tell Their Stories and Assisting Victims and Witnesses with Disabilities in the Criminal Justice System: A Curriculum for Lawyers. In 2003, Ace published an article for the Poland-based journal Abused Child Theory, Research and Practice, which was translated into Polish. A licensed professional counselor in Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina, Ace is an AASECT-certified sexuality educator, a national certified counselor, a diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Counselors and an attorney. She is involved in several projects, including serving on the Center of Excellence for Sexual Health’s Disabilities Initiative and Military Initiative Panels. She teaches a variety of social science courses at Delaware County Community College, where she hopes to create and teach a Human Sexuality course in the next year. Ace also teaches online psychology courses for Argosy University, including human sexuality. At last year’s 50th annual SSSS conference, she was honored as being among a group of “Blossoming Professionals” in our field. “It’s been the clients I’ve worked with who really made all the difference in the world to me,” Ace says. “Time and time again, I’ve been humbled by the strength, determination, pain, sadness, honesty, fear and inner beauty of the children and adults I’ve tried my best to serve. They’ve made me want to know more, to become better-skilled, and to be a better advocate.” — Hani Miletski “It’s been the clients I’ve worked with who really made all the difference in the world to me. … They’ve made me want to know more, to become betterskilled, and to be a better advocate.” — Kelly Ace November 2008 Vol. 42, No. 11 | www.aasect.org Contemporary Sexuality 3 http://www.aasect.org
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