Ep. #11: A Modern Renaissance of Culture w/ Dr. Vidoll Regisford (Ph.D., M.Ed., B.A., SSW., CC)

Underground Antics with Shane Pokroy

Dr. Regisford is a competent psychotherapy and counselling practitioner, who has worked in a variety of clinical settings, senior management, and executive roles. In this episode, Dr Vidoll and I discuss the current challenges and transformations in culture around the world. Through compassion, empathy, and the divinity of the human spirit, we strive to change the world for the better. In reviewing various historical movements and political changes, we discuss what it would mean for us as a society to move towards positive change in the world. A changing world needs leaders who move and act with wisdom and compassion. All too often, radical shifts in power end up recreating and repeating the same problems - albeit packaged in a different ideology. However, there is a way forward; a way to transcend the difficulties - and this way is through an increase in the consciousness of humanity. Every human being has a divine essence, and although this essence can be obscured and hidden away, ultimately there is hope for humanity. Good will always prevail.

Dr. Vidoll Regisford Dr. Regisford is a competent psychotherapy and counselling practitioner, who has worked in a variety of clinical settings, senior management and executive roles. He began his career working in the high-priority neighbourhoods of Toronto’s Jane-Finch and Regent Park neighbourhoods, delivering crisis and trauma counselling to a diversity of marginalized, racialized and immigrant youth, and their families, who were victims of gun-violence.

With a high orientation to working with complex cases, he has been contracted by ethno-specific and mainstream organizations to intervene in clinical matters, achieving successful solution-focused outcomes. He developed his cultural-competence in counselling, employing unique approaches to serving the mentally ill from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, relying on a collective approach to therapy, employing cultural interpreters, translators, and where necessary, developing corporate policies on diversity and inclusion in clinical care for organizations.

Dr. Regisford took his knowledge of people and went on to lead organizations in the healthcare, social housing and the education sector, training and developing teams of social workers, nurses, consultants and community development practitioners in building and strengthening communities within a social determinants of health framework. His clinical aptitude and innovation in community health-education, and those of his colleagues, teams, partners and collaborators, have been recognized by the Ontario Hospital Association as well as international bodies focused on innovation in preventative health, such as the International Society of Blacks in Health Sciences. His efforts to eradicate the barriers and stigma associated with mental health continue in the form of presentations, lectures, magazines and his radio program, Life Matters, to a variety of audiences.

Formerly the Vice-President of Human Resources & Missions Services for Goodwill Industries, Dr. Regisford worked with public, private and non-profit organizations to employ individuals desperately in need of work. He took these skills and networks to George Brown College as Director of its Partnership office to city-build alongside multiple organizations focused on the social and economic development of the city of Toronto.

Dr. Regisford began his studies in Social Service Work and Community Development followed by a Degree in Sociology at York University in Toronto. He then went on to complete a Masters Degree in Adult Education and Community development at the University of Toronto. He achieved his first doctorate in Counselling, and a post-doctorate Ph.D in Counselling-Psychology,