Staff

Manzanita Counseling Center Clinical Director

Ashley Martin-Cuellar, PhD, LMFT

Ashley Martin-Cuellar is a Senior Lecturer in the Family and Child Studies Program at the University of New Mexico, where she also serves as Clinical Director of the Manzanita Counseling Center and Program Coordinator for the Counselor Education Program. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 15 years of experience and is an AAMFT Approved Supervisor. Dr. Martin-Cuellar’s clinical work centers on cultivating relational, systems-based training environments for counselors-in-training. Her leadership integrates clinical practice, supervision, and program development to support both student growth and client care within the counselor education program and our university training clinic.

Graduate Assistants

Yehoon Jeong, MS

Yehoon Jeong, MS, is a doctoral student in Counselor Education. His research centers on college student mental health, suicidal ideation, crisis intervention, and mental health literacy. Drawing from both clinical and research experiences, he aims to develop evidence-based interventions that strengthen counselor training and promote community well-being. His work integrates research, education, and practice to advance culturally responsive mental health services.

Ali Cissey Usman, MA

Ali Cissey Usman is a doctoral student in Counselor Education and supervision whose clinical, teaching, and research interests center on emotional processes shaping counselor development. Scholarship examines the role of shame in social justice pedagogy and how unprocessed shame manifests in counselor education as defensiveness, withdrawal, anger, or moral injury. Practices clinically from a person-centered orientation, emphasizing empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard. Conceptualizes shame as an adaptive relational signal that emerges when identity, belonging, or moral self-concept feels threatened. Has facilitated graduate discussions on race, privilege, oppression, and cultural identity as a doctoral student and clinical supervisor, observing that many difficult classroom dynamics are affective responses rooted in shame rather than cognitive disagreements.

Lindsey Bell, LPC (MO), LMHC (NM)

Lindsey Bell is a doctoral candidate in Counselor Education and has six years of clinical experience, is trained in EMDR, and specializes in working with LGBTQ+ populations and trauma survivors. As an educator, she is particularly interested in raising awareness of and sensitivity to our relational responsibilities as counselor educators and supervisors. Her research interests include counselor trainees' self-awareness development, humanistic and relational-cultural pedagogy and supervision, LGBTQ+ issues, and substance use and harm reduction.

Michael Lavato, MA, LMHC, NCC, CMCC

Michael Lovato, MA, LMHC, NCC, CMCC is a doctoral candidate in Counselor Education at The University of New Mexico (UNM). He brings over seven years of higher education experience including veterans affairs coordination, student success services, and campus crisis intervention as a Campus Advocate serving survivors of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and hate crimes. Michael currently works part-time as a Mental Health Counselor and serves as a Graduate Assistant at UNM's Manzanita Counseling Center, where he provides clinical supervision to master's-level counselors-in-training. He approaches his clinical work from a humanistic lens, drawing primarily from Gestalt therapy while integrating affirmative, trauma-informed, and social justice frameworks. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, he brings both lived experience and professional expertise to his advocacy and clinical work. His research focuses on multicultural counselor education, supervision influence on professional counselor identity development, LGBTQIA+ military/veteran mental health issues, and LGBTQIA+ BIPOC issues in counseling.

Haejin Jung, MED

Haejin Jung is a first-year Ph.D. student in Counselor Education at the University of New Mexico. She holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from a college of education and a school counseling license in South Korea. Her scholarship centers on multicultural and social justice–oriented counseling, feminist identities, and quantitative measurement. Her current work focuses on developing and validating the Korean Radical Feminism Acceptance Scale (KRFAS) to support culturally grounded counseling research and practice. She is interested in culturally responsive assessment and how sociopolitical contexts shape identity development and counseling outcomes.