Graduate Student Spotlight | Kendra Spicher-Eisenstark

After undergrad at Reed College, where I majored in psychology, I took about 15 years off from academia. I loved learning and research but hated the idea of picking a narrowed focus of study.

Instead, I focused on career building, ending up in corporate and financial due diligence research. I spent some time building teams, doing quality assurance work and finding ways to fix problems. My favorite part was people management and helping people work together, especially across cultures. Working for large corporate clients was more difficult for my little social justice heart to manage.

During the pandemic, this existential conflict came to a head, and I realized that I wanted to be a death doula. A major left turn, but my personal background has included a lot of experience with death. That makes the topic less scary for me in general.

The problem with death doulas from my perspective (after years of researching legal and regulatory issues people have) was that the industry isn’t regulated. I didn’t like the idea of working so closely with people in vulnerable positions without training and oversight.

That led me to counseling, and to Hood in particular, because of the combination of the clinical mental health counseling master’s and the thanatology certificate. I knew that I wanted to help the Frederick community to manage dying and grieving better, so Hood was a perfect fit. Not only is the certificate pretty incredible, but the counseling program is stellar. 

The program and professors are well-established in the community. I’m grateful to be able to take advantage of that! My goals have been able to morph because of the program, and now my plan is to develop a center for death and grief education, planning and counseling.

Thanks! It was very nice to be nominated and to have someone read a list of my accomplishments. Having spent two and a half years in the program as a full-time student with multiple responsibilities, I had gotten very used to pushing forward without taking time to reflect on the progress. I spent much of grad school reminding myself (and my classmates) to slow down, but it is difficult to simply remove a learned action without replacing it with something else. This is what you replace it with: taking stock of all you’ve done. This goes for work, for self-improvement, for client progress and probably anything else. Don’t wait for someone to give you an award to be proud of your accomplishments.

Fun fact—once upon a time, I was a Trader Joe’s sign artist!

Inspired by Kendra’s story? Ready to #GOFURTHER in your career? Learn more about Hood College’s graduate programs, including the clinical mental health counseling, by clicking here.