Tonika Boston

Tonika Boston, LCSW is a first generation Guyanese American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. As a young girl, Tonika always had a deep love to help others and a passionate desire for people to actualize their better selves. She first started her career in social work at Planned Parenthood of NYC, where she saw first hand the significant impact that a listening ear could have on someone’s life and empower them with the autonomy of their choice to make decisions best for them. Over the next 12 years of her social work career, she eventually transitioned from medical social work to working in schools. As her roles evolved within that field, the mission was always the same; providing brave spaces for students to feel empowered to be their most authentic selves within a school counseling setting. She has worked with every developmental age from K-12. Tonika is a fierce advocate for equity and liberatory spaces in schools and providing more equitable, high quality mental health care within Black/Brown communities. She has previously sat on the planning committee and presented at Columbia University School of Social Work’s Annual School Social Work Conference on racial trauma and the impact that it has on educational settings. As a previous Field Instructor with Fordham University, Tonika has been instrumental in working with Black social work students to create brave spaces for them to incorporate their intersectionalities and experiences into relatable social work practice and illustrating the need for ethnocentric lens to social work theories when working with Black and Brown clients.

She earned her Bachelor of Arts at Le Moyne College of Syracuse, NY majoring in Psychology with dual minors in History and Gender and Women’s Studies. She graduated from NYU with her MSW concentrating in forensics and clinical practice.

Currently, she operates her own private practice where she provides individual psychotherapy and couples therapy to primarily BIPOC clients. In addition, she works as a consultant with the New York City Department of Probation and other agencies designing and facilitating varying workshops in a “train the trainer” approach.