About WisdomPath Way Institute
Meet Dr. Messina
Dr. Kate Messina has over 35 years of experience in direct practice and community mental health working with children and families affected by early childhood trauma. She is an invited lecturer and keynote speaker at numerous conferences throughout California on the impact of trauma on the developing brain. She has been an adjunct professor at California State University, Sacramento, and the Wright Institute in Berkeley, and is currently an Instructor with UC Davis Resource Center for Family-Focused Practice.
Dr. Messina provides trainings to counties, as well as foster, mental health, and wraparound agencies on the WisdomPath Way Reparative Parenting Approach, which is a therapeutic parent-child coaching model she developed to respond to the needs of bio, resource, and adoptive parents who are parenting trauma-affected children. The WPW RP Approach can be found on the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse.
Dr. Messina currently serves as a consultant to CDSS with the ASIST program, lending her clinical expertise to ASIST counties seeking permanency for children still in congregate care. She is a member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, and the Society for Neuroscience.
Mission Statement
The WPW Institute and the WPW Reparative Parenting Approach are grounded in the humanistic perspective that within each of us there is an inborn drive toward self-actualization; to become the best version of ourselves and to create meaning and a purpose-driven life. Creativity, hope, and a desire for connection live within each of us.
​
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” — Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning