Personal Learning & Development 

Paul L. Duffy, MEd, LPC   is licensed by the state of Texas to provide psychotherapeutic and personal development counseling.  To lean more about this professional licensure, go to: http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/counselor/lpc_scope.shtm.

Paul has also been certified as a Board Certified Christian Counselor (BCCC) through The American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC), (Joined as a Charter Member in January 1994), to provide counseling services that facilitate clients' integration of individual Christian faith development as they work through their personal developmental transitions. To learn more about the BCCC certification go to: http://ibcc.aacc.net/ . 

Paul's Professional Education and Experience

Paul has been providing educational, vocational and personal adjustment/development counseling services for nearly two decades to individuals from ages 18 to 80 as Counselor - Professor at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.   As a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a major in Sociology, he completed his professional education with a Master's of Education from Texas State University with a major in Counseling and Guidance and a Minor in Psychology.  He has completed an additional 45 post-Master's graduate-hours in Professional Counseling and Education.

Lola King is partnering with PLD founder Paul Duffy to bring her extensive front line customer service and staff management & leadership experience in business to the task of Intake Counselor, Co-Counselor and Volunteer Coordinator for PLD.  Additionally, Paul and Lola are formulating plans to start a non-profit initiative to empower single mothers into and through career transition following  loss of a parenting partner (divorce, death, abuse/neglect).  This non-profit project, Resources & Opportunities for Single-mother Empowerment (ROSE of Austin) will connect single-moms with mentoring, counseling, and referral to social services, training and career development resources as they work toward family independence.

 Lola's Professional Education and Experience

As a single mom to four daughters Lola highly valued her independence and home ownership.  Consequently she had neither the time nor the additional financial resources necessary to pursue the formal college education in the social sciences and helping professions for which she had longed since her adolescence.

In lieu of college she became a voracious reader in the subjects listed below and promised herself that she would start college once her youngest daughter reached adulthood.  Also, since 2001 Lola has been perusing the psychology, recovery, self-help, sociology, spirituality, women’s studies, humanities and visual arts books of Austin's new and used bookstores as a professional book buyer and bookseller thereby becoming self-educated as a bibliotherapist.  She continues to research what the publishing industry offers in these areas as she adroitly and passionately connects self-help readers with the books they need.

Now that her youngest daughter has reached adulthood Lola is keeping that promise she made to herself as she completes the course requirements for the Associate of Applied Science Degree in Human Services with a major in Addictions Counseling including licensure as a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) at Austin Community College.