Taylor Ariel Pettway is the Executive Director of the Phoenix Clinic Chicago and a marriage and family therapist in private practice at the Chicago Center for Relationship Counseling. She has previously served as a diversity and inclusion consultant in the Child Welfare department at JCFS Chicago and is currently researching the impact of intergenerational trauma on African American couples and families, having been published in 2018 in the Encyclopedia for Couple and Family Therapy.

Taylor holds her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Creative Writing from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia as well as her Master of Science degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Uniquely, Taylor is also certified by the Alabama Department of Education in Secondary English Language Arts Education, grades six through 12 and seeks to utilize her unique set of skills, nestled in between teaching and therapy, in service of the world.

Through the lens of self-awareness and narrative telling, Taylor promotes the healing of diverse populations, such as children from infancy to 18, unmarried and married couples, co-parents, single-parent families, foster and adoptive children and families, and other extended families struggling through a myriad of life transitions. Specifically, her areas of clinical focus include parenting and family sculpting with blended and single-parent families, communities of color, intergenerational trauma, systemic racism and oppression, mindfulness body practices, relational conflict, and men and women’s issues.