Kaffie McCullough

coord., comm. collab., Juvenile Justice Fund

Kaffie McCullough received her masters degree in Community Counseling in 1986 and launched a successful 10-year career as a licensed professional counselor, focusing her work on female clients and issues of self-esteem. Through her experience in her own private therapy practice, in which she saw a number of middle school age clients, McCullough identified that age as the pivotal time when the decline in self-esteem begins. Drawing on experience gained volunteering in a week-long outdoor leadership camp for young girls at Wells, Kaffie McCullough founded the not-for-profit organization, Girls Opportunities for Adventure and Leadership (GOAL). Started as a week-long summer camp, GOAL now offers a number of programs primarily for girls in grades 6 through 9. The mission of GOAL is to promote self-esteem, self-awareness and a respect for individual differences in girls and young women, resulting in an enhanced capacity for leadership. Along with her entrepreneurial successes, McCullough serves the Atlanta community as a speaker, resource, and advisor for other groups working on programs for girls and young women. Over the last year, she has worked to develop a consortium of nonprofit consultants to support new groups and organizations that are preparing to move to the next stage of their development. She is now working with the Juvenile Justice Fund, overseeing a program aimed at combating the criminal sexual exploitation of children.