Ariel VanDoren on Serving DC’s Most Underserved
A Conversation with Ariel VanDoren, Assistant Clinical Director
Ariel VanDoren, LPC has spent her career working with people the system has been least equipped to help; first as a therapist with at-risk youth and families, and now as McClendon Center’s Assistant Clinical Director, where she oversees clinical quality and supervises the team delivering the Center’s community support services.
She came to McClendon in March 2017 as a Clinical Manager, and the nearly decade she’s spent here since, growing into one of the organization’s key leaders, has given her a rare vantage point on how the Center has evolved and what it takes to serve people well.
We sat down with her recently to talk about what drew her to this field, what’s changed at McClendon over the years she’s been here, and what she’s seeing from the people the McClendon Center serves right now.
You grew up in California and trained out there too. How did you wind up here in DC?
I did my master’s in counseling psychology at Santa Clara and finished in 2011. During my practicums and internships, I worked mostly with at-risk teens and families, a lot of them through court diversion programs. When I moved to DC, I found a role doing in-home therapy with a similar population — basically a community-based, higher level of care, similar to ACT but designed for adolescents. I had my own caseload and was out in the community doing that work directly.
After I got licensed, I moved into supervision. At some point I realized I was ready to transition to working with an adult population. I’d also worked as a therapist in high schools, including in Palo Alto, and it was great foundational work, but something shifted as I got older. I wanted something different.
Green Door, a well-regarded DC mental health nonprofit, had a strong reputation, and when that organization eventually had to merge, a supervisor who had ties to McClendon reached out and said they were looking for a clinical manager. I came on board in March of 2017.
Was there something specific that pointed you toward becoming a therapist in the first place?
As soon as I understood that being a therapist was a job, I wanted to do it. I think growing up, I found myself in a caretaking role early on. We had our own experiences with mental illness in my family, and I was naturally drawn to understanding what that meant. I was psychologically minded, genuinely curious about human behavior, and I had a mentor at Santa Clara who helped me see the path.
I considered a PhD, but ultimately decided that if I wanted to work closely with clients, therapy made more sense. And that instinct has held up. Even now, in a role that’s more behind the scenes — supervision, compliance, making sure the clinical work is well-supported — it all traces back to that original pull. Recognizing people as whole humans. Understanding that people fall on hard times and want to get better. Holding onto that thread of hope.
You’ve been at McClendon since 2017. What changes stand out to you over that time?
The agency functions very differently than it did when I started. The leadership is different, and I think the approach to managing people has become a lot more holistic. There’s a much greater recognition that the people doing direct care are carrying real weight, and that they need support – not just direction. Little things matter: celebrating birthdays, checking in on people, acknowledging that staff are whole people too.
I think there’s also been real growth in how we approach clinical quality — trying to be consistent, making sure the work is done well even when the system creates obstacles. That’s not always easy, but I think it matters a great deal to the people we serve.
How has the population McClendon serves changed in recent years?
We’ve seen a significant increase in younger clients — late adolescence into early adulthood. A decade ago, the people we served were more likely to be long-established in the mental health system, whether due to serious mental illness, intellectual disability, or other factors. That has changed. We’re working with a lot more people who are navigating what I’d call failure to launch — young adults who came through the pandemic as teenagers or in college, and are now in their mid-twenties having never fully launched into independent life.
Housing is a major issue. Many of them are living with family — sometimes supportive, sometimes not. Some are dealing with a first episode of mental illness, which is its own kind of disorientation, especially at a stage of life when peers are moving forward. How we serve that population well is something we’re actively thinking about.
Your role has evolved here at McClendon Center. A lot of what you do now isn’t directly client-facing. What does that work involve?
A lot of it is supervision — which is both a clinical requirement and genuinely one of my favorite parts of the work. I supervise our community support managers, and I care a lot about doing that well.
Beyond that, there’s a significant compliance and documentation piece: making sure paperwork is completed correctly, things are signed when they need to be, that we’re meeting the standards the system requires. It’s not glamorous, but it’s what allows the clinical work to happen.
And from time to time, if a client needs to speak with a manager or there’s something that requires my involvement directly, I’m still in it. I haven’t fully left the client-facing side, I’ve just moved further upstream.
What does this work mean to you?
I’ve always been drawn to working with people who are navigating serious, persistent challenges — not because it’s easy, but because it matters. The people we serve are often the ones the system has been least equipped to help, and I think McClendon does something real for them. That’s worth showing up for.
And honestly, the team here, the people I work alongside every day, that has a lot to do with it too.
