Growing up in a military career family, Craig eventually settled in Iowa graduating from Ankeny high school. With an interest in serving humanity and finding a natural comfort with empathizing with others, he went on to study psychology and sociology at Central College. Craig was most influenced by the work of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Fred Rogers for both their compassion and strength. He worked with emotionally challenged adolescents and was active with social justice issues related to nuclear arms reductions and peace in Central America through education and political action. Wishing to make more specific and concrete changes, he pursued clinical social work at the University of Iowa. Craig provided suicide crisis services, served the MR population and worked with high risk adolescent males. During his social work studies, he continued to be involved in social justice issues and was active as an organizer in the successful campaign for the University of Iowa to divest from South Africa. Craig also worked with the Southern African Coalition at American Friend’s Service Committee to assist through demonstrating and educating of Des Moines businesses as well as the city of Des Moines to continue the South African divestiture movement. Further, he worked with the homeless in the Des Moines area and provided therapy services to the general population.
Craig graduated from the University of Iowa and received honors for his final examination. He then began working in Ames, Iowa for the Central Iowa Mental Health Center. As a therapist, Craig worked with the general population providing individual, couple and family therapy. He also provided disability and suicide risk evaluation services and maintained a satellite office in Jefferson, Iowa. Coming from a military family and working at the mental health center his social work/therapy practice philosophy developed to one of courage, commitment and sacrifice. Craig’s clinical work evolved into a focus on specialty practice with complex DID, ritualistic abuse and complex trauma clients. During this time, he continued to receive trauma based training from Two Rivers Hospital.
Craig was a co-founder and owner of the Hope Clinic in Ames, Iowa. The clinic provided a full range of outpatient psychiatric and psychological services. This included medication management and psychiatric evaluations as well as psychological evaluations for a variety of conditions. The basic philosophy of the clinic was to provide a basis for all clientele to be served with competent and compassionate care. Intention was given to serve people on the basis of need rather than financial means. Craig continued to offer generalized practice with the specialization of working with complex and extremely high need clients that generally were not served by other providers. Unusually traumatic client situations, complex grief and personality disordered clients, including borderline clients, were treated. Further experiences included working with men around anger and rage, domestic abuse, guilt and shame, and also forgiveness work. Partnering was also an important part of Craig’s work with men.
He has always considered himself to be an ally and active legislative supporter to the LBGT community. Craig also was active in the fight against human trafficking and parental alienation.
His further interests include providing clinical services to men, military personnel, combat veterans and their families. Additionally, Craig has a general interest in substance abuse treatment that includes adolescents. He also plans to work toward earning a CDAC, certification in music therapy and a certification in EMDR.
