In the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the look and feel of the communication from ISSTD headquarters have changed for the better – from the social media graphics to conference proposal submission pages! Our Program Manager, Casey Richman, MPH, is responsible for that. In this interview, done in September 2025, hear in her words how she happened to join ISSTD, her roles here, and more!
What is your role at ISSTD?
The main area that I focus on is marketing and communications. So I create all of our graphics for all the marketing the ISSTD does, and I oversee our social media and drafting messaging for the communications. And we’ve been working on some website updates, which have been really exciting to get to oversee and be part of.
The next area that I focus on is education. I have been running our webinar program, working with the webinar committee to come up with the schedules and interact with all of the speakers, and managing the live webinars. I also just oversaw our Level 2 clinical hypnosis training, and I’m planning out Level 1 for next year, which has been really interesting and fun to be part of and helping to communicate. I have also been part of the planning for the Australia-New Zealand Regional Conference and will be on site for that which I am looking forward to.
I also oversee the Annual Awards process and am able to work with a wonderful team of members on the Annual Awards Committee. I also oversee some of our financial reporting. Through ISSTD, I have been able to work on a lot of different projects and expand my skillset which has been really cool.
What drew you to ISSTD?
I started my Master of Public Health degree in 2020 with an initial focus on policy, but I quickly developed a strong interest in health communications—particularly how people convey health messages. During that time, I worked as a COVID-19 contact interviewer for a local public health department, which underscored for me how critical communication is. The message itself may stay the same, but the way you deliver it—ensuring it’s culturally sensitive, supportive, and responsive to people’s backgrounds and circumstances—makes all the difference. That experience really sparked my interest in health communications from the start.
My undergraduate degree was in psychology, and through that experience I realized that, while I wasn’t drawn to working directly with clients, I was deeply interested in mental health—particularly in supporting behavioral health initiatives and improving access to services at the community level. That interest ultimately led me to pursue my MPH. During my graduate program, one of my major projects involved using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey to analyze how people accessed mental health services during COVID. As I completed my degree, I began actively looking for opportunities that combined my interests in health communications and improving access to behavioral health services
During my job search, I happened upon the position with ISSTD which brings together my two primary passion areas. The role felt like it was meant to be, and I was genuinely excited about the opportunity to support and learn from the mental health professionals within the ISSTD community.
What do you enjoy about working at ISSTD?
I started in June of 2023 at ISSTD. Before I worked for ISSTD, I was involved in the American Public Health Association on the volunteer side of things. So, I’ve really enjoyed being able to see what it is like on the staff member’s side, and being able to support our members in their endeavors within their professional community.
I enjoy the room for creativity. I love being able to come up with new ideas, based off of member feedback, seeing their thoughts on different things, and being able to use that to improve and add on to what we are currently offering. I like to be able to work with a lot of different programs, and I enjoy the opportunity to be able to do this with ISSTD. I’m always constantly learning from the material, the members, and my coworkers. I just really overall enjoy the opportunities to learn and grow within the organization.
What are some of the challenges you might face in your role?
I think that there’s more to every task than meets the eye. When it comes to a graphic, for example, it’s easy to request a graphic, but when it comes to creating an individual graphic, hours go into every single item that is created. I want to make sure that it’s representative of ISSTD, and that the colors, images used, text, size, and all other factors are cohesive to be able to support the messaging. I think that applies not just to graphics, but to everything that we do as staff members within ISSTD.
Diving into that, I think it’s important to recognize there’s just the three of us as full time staff. During the staff transitions that are happening now, I would say we just would appreciate grace during this time, as it might take a little bit of time for us to get used to things as they’re changing, but we also just appreciate all of our volunteers’ support, and the membership support because the volunteers doing their tasks helps a lot in limiting the amount of additional things that we have to do as staff. So it’s really appreciated, the work that the volunteers have done and will be continuing to do throughout the transition period.
What do you enjoy in your time off from work?
I love to hike. That’s one of my favorite things, being able to explore nature, and being outside in nature. I’ve always loved landscape photography. So being able to take photos of mountains and trees is something that I love to do. I have just started trying to learn how to crochet. It’s not going well yet. Eventually, hopefully, I’ll get there. And I also just started taking a creative writing course which has been fun. I love words.
I also have a cat now. His name is Babsy, and I just adopted him a couple weeks ago. He already thinks he’s the head of the house and is bringing me so much joy.
A quote that you’d like to share:
Jane Goodall is someone that I have always looked up to and admired a lot. One of my favorite quotes from her, although it’s hard to pick one, because she is just so wise, is, “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what type of difference you want to make”.
I think it’s just so important and helpful to keep in mind that you matter. And you’re able to support yourself and those around you through your actions and your words which is something really important to keep in mind and I like to think of every day. I will do my best to try to continue to honor her memory with her recent passing, through my words and actions.