Our Agency Director's Story: 

Les & Laura were first inspired to start Strategic in 1994 from a few of Les' past experiences. While working in the group home, Les noticed that the teens behaviors seemed to improve while at the group home and yet their improvements didn’t last after entering back into their family home. He also noticed that no matter how difficult the home life was for these teens, they always loved their families and wanted to be back home with them. Les then worked for a public mental health agency on the first home-based team created in Lynchburg and eventually became the agency Director.  While working in the client’s homes with the entire family as a whole, it was there that he found the missing piece to many treatments that had high recidivism rates; the missing piece was the FAMILY! 

Shortly after that, Les began learning about family therapy and had the opportunity to attend an intensive training program at the Family Therapy Institute in Washington, D.C.,training with Cloe' Madanes.  He  also attended workshops and trainings by Jay Haley, Stephen Lankton, Jeff Zeig and Michael Yapko. After attending multiple famiy systems trainings, he was sold on the approach which influenced him in starting Strategic Therapy Associates in order to provide a place where clinicians could focus on learning the family systems theory and clients could receive family therapy services to reduce out-of-home placement. 

Les has presented the Strategic Therapy model at various conferences, including the Brief Therapy Conference, the International Erickson Foundation Conference, the Virginia Counselors Association Conference, the Virginia Alliance of Social Work Practitioners Conference, and the Medical College of Virginia's Annual Virginia Beach Conference.

Laura Blondino has a Master's in Business Administration and  Marketing. Her experience, knowledge, and keen eye to detail gave her the opportunity to successfully launch the business side while Les provided family systems therapy.   

Today, 29 years later, Les & Laura are both still actively involved in the agency. Les provides weekly Strategic Family Therapy training during clinical supervision with our residents and Laura oversees all the daily administrative functions.    

Strategic has grown from serving Central Virginia to now servicing Capital, Central, Southside, Southwest, Tidewater and Valley regions helping more families than ever before.