University Counseling Center

Hey y’all! I’m Dr. Courtney Williams, a North Carolina native and Georgia Bulldog (Go Dawgs!).  I am a licensed psychologist at the UCC and have worked at Vanderbilt University since 2019.  In my role, my deepest passion lies in community healing.  I aim to honor our BIPOC and Indigenous communities’ collectivistic approaches to wellness.  Much of my work at the UCC is anchored in prevention and community engagement via workshops, groups, presentations, trainings, tabling events, and informal conversation.  If you can’t find me at the UCC, I’m somewhere on campus doing outreach.

I earned my doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of Georgia. Before joining the team as a staff psychologist at Vanderbilt University Counseling Center (VUCC), I completed my post-doctoral fellowship in Health Service Psychology at VUCC, and my pre-doctoral internship in the Student Health and Counseling Services department at the University of Memphis. I earned my master’s degree from North Carolina Central University and my bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, both in psychology.

As a counseling psychologist, I help people hone their coping skills for managing anxiety; enhance interpersonal skills for navigating relational challenges; and navigate the intersectionality of their identity while being a student at Vandy.  I utilize a strengths-based approach to therapy, grounded in relational, multicultural, and feminist theories. In working with me, you’ll notice that I incorporate Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) to help students build skills in mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. As an EMDR-trained therapist, I also utilize components of this modality to come alongside clients as they are [re]processing their experiences of trauma.  Moreover, I take an interpersonal process in therapy leaning, so you can expect that I will emphasize the course of our work as much (if not more) as the content.  You’ll hear me refer to the interpersonal dynamics of our relationship as a main driver of goal setting and wellness planning.

My self-care looks like enjoying time with loved ones, traveling, shopping, being a dog mom to Georgia, and watching “reality” tv.