Hands-on experience and continued support at La Salle helped Bridget Crespo, M.A. ‘25, transition to working in family therapy.
Bridget Crespo, M.A. ’25, built connections and transitioned into a social work career as part of La Salle’s Professional Clinical Counseling M.A. program.
Bridget Crespo, M.A. ‘25, had been out of school for six years and working in e-commerce and management consulting when she joined La Salle’s Professional Clinical Counseling M.A. program. Despite the challenge she had ahead of her, the hands-on learning style and support from peers and faculty in her program helped her get ahead in her new career.
“Starting back up with class, and it being a totally different field than I had worked in before, was definitely challenging, but I felt really supported by my peers and by my professors,” Crespo, who graduated in May 2025, said.
The in-person format of the course, as well as the chance to gain professional experience, were two of the things that helped her decide to become an Explorer.
“I loved the classes being in-person. That was actually one of the most important factors for me when I was looking at graduate programs,” she said. “I’m someone who came to Philadelphia not really knowing anyone. I was working fully remote at the time and so, for me, it was a way to build a network in this city, especially with people that were like-minded and had the same goals as me.”
The classroom format helped Crespo build connections, which she said is “one of the things I loved most,” as well as creating a collaborative environment for her to learn in.
While she thought she would be one of the oldest people in the classroom, she was happy to find that her cohort was made up of a range of people from different backgrounds and at different points in their lives.
“It actually turns out there’s a lot of people that have changed careers or don’t have experience in the field,” she said. “We were able to lean on each other and able to go through this process together.”
The learning environment meant that Crespo and her classmates could do a lot of things that helped them learn together. For example, they filmed themselves doing mock counseling sessions which they then reviewed as a class.
“That was something that was really scary at first but gave me a lot of useful feedback in how I show up in the room with a client,” she said. “Those are still things I carry with me as I’m seeing real life people.”
Another important part of her graduate experience was the chance to get hands-on experience. As part of the program, students had sessions with clients that were supervised and did internships.
“It’s really nice to have that experience of getting that supervision and all of the experience and then being able to go on after graduation and continue my work with my clients,” Crespo said. She has a post-graduation job in the family therapy field, at the same place where she interned for over a year before finishing her program.
La Salle has field placement coordinators, who Crespo said are “integral” for securing internships. Students meet with them before they begin applying and are helped to identify the type of placement they are looking for and with the application process.
Her internship ended up being the most important thing the program provided, both for experience and for helping her decide the path she wanted her career to take.
“I had no experience working with clients prior to my internship, so I was really open to wanting to work with all different types of populations and seeing what felt like a good fit,” Crespo said. “I realized I wanted to hone in on my work with adolescents and young adults. I saw that that was a place where I was able to make an impact.”
While her internship gave her the real-world experience she came to the program looking for, the faculty teaching her supported her as she studied and helped her look to the future.
Starting from her first day, she had a faculty academic advisor, like a point person in the program.
“I leaned on my academic advisor so many times,” she said.
For someone like Crespo who wants to have her own practice one day, the fact that many of the faculty did this while teaching both showed her that it’s possible and provided chances to learn in new and effective ways.
“A lot of the faculty are currently working in private practice, in the field, and that has been something that’s been really helpful to me,” Crespo said. “When they brought in real world examples when we were learning things in a lecture, having that example of something that they really experienced with a client in the counseling room really gave color to how I conceptualized some of the theories and the things I learnt in class.”
As she looks to the future, Crespo, who is excited to get more experience, take on more clients, build her practice and help people, continues to be grateful to the place she got her graduate education.
“La Salle’s Professional Clinical Counseling program prepared me to help other people with everyday struggles and more serious mental health struggles,” she said. “Having that environment to be supported as I stumbled along the way and made mistakes, being able to get that support kept me going when things got really hard.”
– Naomi Thomas
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