Arlene Istar Lev

Arlene Istar Lev CSW-R, CASAC is a social worker, educator, and activist with twenty years experience addressing the unique health care needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. She is the founder of Choices Counseling and Consulting in Albany, New York, providing family therapy for LGBT people. She is also on the adjunct faculties of S.U.N.Y. Albany, School of Social Welfare, and Vermont College of the Union Institute and University, where she teaches both in traditional classroom settings, as well as web-based education. Additionally, Arlene is the Project Manager for Rainbow Access Initiative, a training program on LGBT issues for therapists, funded through a NYS Department of Health Grant. Arlene has been working with transgendered, transsexual, and other gender variant people for the past 15 years.

Arlenes expertise is in issues related to sexual and gender identity issues, as well as trauma recovery, addictions, and parenting in alternative families. Arlene works within a feminist family systems and empowerment modality and is trained in numerous psychotherapeutic and psychospiritual arts. She has published numerous articles on issues of domestic violence and sexual assault in the LGBT community, and family therapy approaches to working with family members of those who are gender variant. She maintains a column on LGBT parenting issues at www.LesbiaNation.com, and a Dear Ari advice column at www.ProudParenting.com.

  Arlene is a member of the National Association of Social
  Workers, and the Harry Benjamin International Gender
  Dysphoria Association, as well as an advisory board member of
  the Lesbian and Gay Family Building Project. She is the
  former  Chair of the National Association of Social Workers
  [N.A.S.W.], New York State Chapter, Lesbian and Gay Issues
  Committee (1986-1994).

Additionally, Arlene has 5 articles coming out in queer journals, one chapter, and two books currently in press. one called Transgender Emergence: Counseling Gender Variant People and their Families, and the other called How Queer! LGBT Parenting.