Angela MacDonald is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the state of Washington and Idaho. She has worked for over ten years in the field of mental health. She graduated from the University of Idaho with a masters in Rehabilitation Counseling and Human Services. During Grad school she started working with her professor and colleague Dr. Susan Stuntzner in the area of resiliency, compassion and forgiveness. She continues to do facilitate groups based off the manual Stuntzner’s Forgiveness Intervention: Learning to Forgive Yourself and Others Following Disability.  Angela also fascinates a Resiliency and Coping group based off of Stuntzner & Hartley’s Life Enhancement Intervention: Developing Resiliency Skills Following Disability. She works part time in her private practice. Angela has worked on many boards helping assist and advocate for persons with disabilities including the Spokane Center for Independent Living (SCIL), a Center for Independent Living based out of Spokane, WA and served a six year commitment as both chair and vice chair for the State of Idaho’s Independent Living Counsel. She helped establish and create an advocacy committee to help with systemic change in region 1 of Northern Idaho. She currently holds licensure in both Idaho and Washington. She is also a designated Geriatric Mental Health Specialist in the state of Washington.

Angela has co-authored many articles pertaining to forgiveness, self-compassion and resiliency within the context of persons with disabilities. She has worked on trainings and cofacilitated trainings with her colleagues Dr. Susan Stuntzner and Dr. Jacki Dalton. The most recent articles that have been published are Cultivating forgiveness, resiliency and positive change: a resilience intervention pilot study among persons with disabilities published in UTRGV; Application of forgiveness in rehabilitation psychology: a positive position for change published by MedCrave; and The Therapeutic Triad of Disability published by Counseling Today.

Angela has focused on application of forgiveness and resiliency within the mental health field and how to apply it to various areas of disability focusing in mental, medical, emotional and physical disabilities. She is currently working on a proposal to further her research in these areas and gather more information to expand on her research.