After working with children as a babysitter, camp counselor, and nanny, Gabby Wiktkin was compelled to take up a career helping students feel less stressed and more comfortable in life.

When it comes to maintaining a healthy mindset, Gabby firmly believes in a counseling strategy based on individuality as well as preventing and alleviating students’ mental stress. 

When asked about her philosophy, she states, “Just to meet with students individually, I find particularly helpful, and helping students navigate anything from daily stressors to some of the heavy hitters of what students are dealing with.”

Gabby has her eyes on the future. According to her, it is just as important to teach students how to deal with future pressures, as it is to provide solutions for existing stress. 

Gabby hopes to create more proactive guidance based programming to help the students at Friends Select: “We as school counselors have to push into classrooms and create preventative programming to help give students the tools to cope with foreseeable stressors.” If there is anything about Friends Select counseling she would like to change, it would be this.

Sustainable long term approaches to handling students’ mental health issues is something she considers her hallmark. She credits her education in mental health, counseling, and psychopathology, among other things, at the University of Pennsylvania for this perspective. 

With valuable experience in therapy at the Renfrew Center, Special People in the Northeast (SPIN), and various schools in her hometown of Philadelphia, Gabrielle Witkin is ready to bring her expertise to Friends Select School.