Scheduling Your Simulated Client Session
Click on the button below to schedule a half-hour telephone session with one of our trained simulated client actors.
You will be able to search the calendar for available dates and times that work with your schedule.
You can also filter by team member if you have found a rapport with a simulated client and would like to schedule another session with them.
Our Simulated Client Team
Kym Dakin
Kym Dakin, M.Ed, has been working as a Simulated Client with HETI since 2015. She develops a variety of customized cases for MI practice so that the practitioner has a productive, highly engaged and realistic practice session. Additionally, Kym has been a part of the Standardized Patient program at Maine Medical Center, a collaborative effort through Tufts and Maine Med, for four years, teaching medical residents to partner more effectively, and communicate more productively with patients. She is the Founding Director of Voice Into Learning, LLC., specializing in team experience design, as well as a founding member of the true story improvisational theatre company - Portland Playback.
Robin Craver
Robin Craver, MPA, retired after 20 years as a municipal manager and for the last 3 years she has been training in psychic sciences including mystic mysteries, intuition, meditation, healing energy and mediumship at Arthur Findlay College and with renowned teachers such as Janet Nohavic, Suzanne Giesemann, Tony Stockwell and Colin Bates. She opened The Lakehouse Retreat Center in 2022 and has been a co-director and staff for an adult camp which began as Recovery Camp, now Kindred Spirits providing leadership, personal growth workshops, and community support for over 30 years. Robin has been a member of Co-counseling International (CCI) for 30 years and holds a teaching certificate since 2010. Co-counseling International is a peer to peer form of counseling. She lives on Webster Lake in Massachusetts with her loving husband Bob and is enjoying a new role as grandmother.
Ashley Blanchard
Ashley Blanchard, LCPC-c. Completed her masters degree at the University of Maine in Orono. Has been diligently learning and incorporating MI into her counseling practice. Completed HETI Maine's certificate program in Motivational Interviewing and has first hand experience being the practitioner. This has prepared her to help others through sim work. In addition, she has worked in many different kinds of counseling settings, including Acadia hospital, group homes, and in schools giving her a well rounded experience with different clientele you may interact with in your own practice allowing her to pull from that knowledge to give you a realistic practice session. At this time Ashley continues her work with MI through collaboration with Agape, building her own private practice with hopes of continuing to strengthen those skills she has already begun to develop. Currently lives in Maine, with her husband, two beautiful children, and a couple of fur babies.
Rob Neal
Rob Neal worked as an OD Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer, Facilitator, and Writer for over thirty five years. Prior to that he worked as a Family Therapist for twelve years. He has extensive experience in the business and non-profit sectors and has specialized in developing leaders and helping individuals and teams reach their highest level of potential and ability throughout his career. He retired in 2023 from this career and now works part time doing customer service in a large teaching hospital, Maine Medical Center, and still coaches a few individual business leaders.
He has published over twenty articles and opinion pieces, one book of humor, and has made numerous presentations on a variety of business, community, and family issues. He also works per diem in the Standardized Patient training program with Tufts Medical School's Med Students and Resident Doctors, and at the University of Southern Maine with both undergraduate and graduate level Nursing students. These programs are designed to help Nurses and Doctors develop better communication skills with their patients.
He earned a Masters degree in Counseling from Georgia State University in 1981, and a Bachelor's degree in Counseling and Youth Services from SUNY Empire State College in 1974.
A native of Atlanta, he has lived in Maine since 1988 and has three adult children, and four grandsons. His wife Kym is an actor, voice artist, trainer, facilitator and writer who prefers gardening over everything else. Rob enjoys playing the piano and guitar, singing loudly when no one else is home, and golfing, biking, hiking, and Qigong yoga for exercise.
Mariann Bischoff
Mariann Bischoff MS, MSW, LCSW grew up belonging to a lake-and-woods ecosystem where humans, water, and woods nourished and cared for one another. This was an early visceral lesson in reciprocity and interconnection. She deepened her awareness of humanity's innate interconnection with Earth while researching water, its use, and gender relations alongside indigenous Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Since 2001, Mariann has pursued contemplative practices that support oneness. She now contributes to healing as an ordained member of the Order of Interbeing, the engaged Buddhist mindfulness tradition founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. The formal analytical disciplines of systems, root cause, and risk analysis, honed across previous careers in engineering and international agriculture, now inform her social work practice and teaching. She is an assistant professor of teaching and the management and policy practicum learning coordinator at Rutgers School of Social Work. Mariann also supports healing from trauma, addiction, and severed belonging through her private practice, Mindfulness Therapy, LLC. She specializes in helping medical professionals, clergy, corporate and community leaders, first responders, military members, and international workers identify and share their unique gifts. She is joyfully preparing to launch a nationwide therapeutic peer support group that fosters empathy and connection through motivational interviewing skills.