Three years ago, a woman named Chelsie Walker sat in one of our Atlanta workshops and learned about the MindSet approach to crisis intervention. She became a certified trainer, and, like so many who’ve gone through our program, she took the model back to her work, committing to putting intentional connection over control into practice. What I didn’t know then was how far that commitment would reach.

Chelsie is a leader at UNTOLD, an organization doing transformative work with communities impacted by HIV/AIDS throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Their integrated care model addresses physical, emotional, spiritual, and economic health – helping people live flourishing lives beyond stigma. Over the past three years, Chelsie has been traveling to Nairobi, bringing MindSet foundations to UNTOLD staff and adapting our approach to the cultural context of their community counseling work. She didn’t just teach the model—she lived it, learned from it, and discovered how the principles of acknowledgment, acceptance, validation, and empowerment translate across contexts and cultures.

That work led to something remarkable. This year, UNTOLD and MindSet Safety Management entered into a formal partnership to provide de-escalation instructor certification training for their community counseling teams. This wasn’t about exporting an American model to Kenya. It was about honoring what Chelsie had already built, supporting the needs UNTOLD identified, and creating something together that served the communities they work with every day.

Our team got to work immediately, translating our training curriculum into the cultural context of Kenya and the specific realities of community counseling with individuals and families impacted by HIV/AIDS. We weren’t starting from scratch—we had Chelsie’s years of experience to guide us. We had her understanding of what worked, what needed adjustment, and how trauma-responsive crisis intervention shows up differently when you’re working with communities navigating medical challenges, grief, stigma, and isolation. The cultural nuances mattered. The context mattered. And we were committed to getting it right.

In November, we reached a milestone I’m incredibly proud of: our first in-country instructor certification training in Nairobi. Heysha Rodrigues, Kimberly Hodges, and Jackie Holland traveled to Kenya with Chelsie to conduct the training with UNTOLD’s leadership group. What happened there was everything MindSet stands for. The UNTOLD team didn’t just receive the training—they embraced our trainers as fully as they embraced the material itself. It became a celebration of kindness and appreciation, a mutual recognition of shared values and shared mission.

Our team came home changed by the experience. They saw firsthand how universal the need for connection-based approaches really is, and they witnessed what happens when you honor both the integrity of a model and the dignity of the people and context you’re serving. The UNTOLD leadership now has certified instructors who can train counselors throughout their organization to use trauma-responsive, relationship-centered crisis intervention with the communities they serve across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa.

This partnership represents something important about how MindSet is growing. We’re not expanding through marketing strategies or business plans. We’re growing through authentic relationships with people who share our belief—that every person deserves to be met with dignity in their most challenging moments, that connection is more powerful than control, and that the way we respond to crisis can either compound trauma or open pathways to healing.

Chelsie Walker sat in an Atlanta workshop three years ago. Today, community counselors working with HIV-impacted communities throughout Sub-Saharan Africa are learning approaches rooted in acknowledgment, acceptance, validation, and empowerment. That’s the kind of ripple effect that reminds me why we do this work. It started with one person finding value in the model, taking it into her world, and letting it grow into something even more meaningful than what we imagined.

I’m grateful to UNTOLD for their partnership, to Chelsie for her vision and dedication, and to Heysha, Kimberly, and Jackie for representing MindSet with such integrity and heart. This is just the beginning of what I hope will be a long and fruitful collaboration, one that continues to teach us as much as we offer.

To everyone in the MindSet family reading this: your work matters beyond what you can see. The teachers, counselors, administrators, behavioral health practitioners, and healthcare workers you train carry these principles into countless lives. And sometimes, as we’ve seen with Chelsie, they carry them across oceans.

-Steve McMahon
CEO
MindSet Safety Management