Propelled By Loss, Delphine Gervais Builds a Thriving Mental Health Group Private Practice

Jan 14, 2025 | Certification

The experience of losing a parent or loved one can be life-altering—for better or worse. For Delphine Gervais, the loss of her mom in 2014 is what ultimately propelled her onto the path of entrepreneurial success.

You see, her mom was an entrepreneur at heart. “She was the ‘Haitian Amazon’ of her time,” Delphine describes. Her mom, who was also a nanny, knew she lived on an island that people couldn’t afford to leave. She used a composition book to trace foot sizes and write down personal tastes, then hopped on a plane to shop for them. “She took their money and sight unseen, because there were no cell phones back then, purchased things to bring back.”

After Delphine’s mom passed away, she often thought about this part of her mom’s story. In typical eldest sibling fashion, she always felt a strong sense of responsibility to make her parents proud. Because of this, she erred on the side of taking what were considered “stable jobs,” which led her to work as a school social worker for 10 years for the nation’s 3rd largest public school and then as the Founding Dean of School Culture and Climate with the state of Florida’s first public college preparatory boarding school.

“The ideal thing was getting a job with a good pension and retiring with that,” Delphine shares. “But I remember my mom in her hospice years saying to me, ‘You work too much.’ I took that to heart to mean that I needed to do something for myself.”

Starts, Pivots and Growth

In 2016, Delphine founded Breakthrough Care and Resource Center, Inc. as a solo private practice mental health practitioner in Miami, Florida. At first, business was slow to grow because people didn’t quite understand this new version of her. She had spent her career working with youth, but wanted to pivot to do individual counseling with parents and decision makers.

“It’s still a journey, but early on I also knew I wanted to work with Black women,” explains Delphine. “That’s become my target group, specifically those who suffer from imposter syndrome, those who have been in similar spaces as me.”

When the pandemic hit in 2020, most of the world shut down, but as Delphine describes, her business “shot up.” She went from doing in-person counseling locally as a solopreneur to leveraging virtual platforms and team members to extend her offerings across what is currently seven states, including Florida, California, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, Georgia and Colorado.

Delphine first entertained the idea of taking on student interns and brought on a psychiatric nurse intern in the fall of 2019. She also leased and fully furnished an office space that November and reached out to a former colleague about working together.

During COVID, when there was such a tremendous need for mental health support, her business went from an in-person solo practice to a virtual group practice. Today, seven clinicians (two licensed and others pursuing their licenses) work for Breakthrough Care and Resource Center. Over the past three years, she has also supervised interns from various universities, including Columbia University, Florida International University, University of West Florida and Walden University. Some have stayed on after their internships while others remain invested in the growth of Breakthrough Care even as they’ve moved on to other endeavors. Delphine decided earlier on that she would think outside of the box with her business’ boundaries. She has clinicians that live in Washington, DC and Texas, while her operations manager resides in South Carolina.

“Having the ability to connect with colleagues and offer a space that’s flexible geographically has been important to me,” she says. “Many already have a 9-5, but want to do something else that’s meaningful. I also like the fact that we’ve been able to cross state lines and afford clients the clinical support they need.”

Entrepreneurial Inspiration

As Delphine continues to expand her business, her mom’s entrepreneurial spirit is a constant reminder of what more she might do. “If she could do what she did in Haiti and then St. Maarten, what more can I do—can we all do —that can translate into our success as Black women entrepreneurs?”

NAWBO has played a part in this continued growth. Delphine came into the NAWBO community in 2020 through the NAWBO Institute’s Established and Ready to Grow (ERG) program sponsored by AARP. It aimed to engage small cohorts of women business owners of color, aged 45 plus, who are in the early stages of business ownership and seeks to give them the framework to scale.

Delphine was building out her business and realized that she knew how to be a therapist, but not how to run and grow a successful business. “ERG was one of those initial spaces where I was able to get the barebone basics on running my business and taking the work I’m doing with clients and making sure it is translating to profit.”

Another perk of the program is the other “phenomenal” women with whom she was able to connect. “Having those very real conversations from colleague to colleague helped me, and I took what I learned back to my colleagues and friends to help them as well.”

After completing the ERG program, Delphine received a complimentary one-year NAWBO membership. It was 2021 and everything was still virtual, but Delphine quickly plugged into educational programs to learn everything from how to leverage social media to how to work with her accountant and run profit and loss statements.

“That part of the business used to terrify me,” she says. “NAWBO gave me the comfort and freedom to have those important conversations.”

Moving back into an in-person environment, NAWBO gave Delphine the courage to ask for what she needs. She’s connected with other women business owners who work in her same space as well as in different industries. She also successfully applied for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program.

“Being brave enough to make that ask…that’s what NAWBO has given me,” she emphasizes. “I also love that I’m in a space where I’m not the smartest in the room. I enjoy coming in and learning something new every time.”

A New Venture and Certification

After really exploring her purpose and mission through 10,000 Small Businesses, Delphine founded a non-profit, Center for Equitable Access and Treatment of Trauma, with three colleagues in the spring of 2023. Its mission is to offer reduced and no-cost trauma-informed counseling services to the uninsured, underinsured and underserved in her community.

Now, she’s focused on applying for grants to help fund projects she wants to do through both her for-profit and non-profit ventures. “I’ve gotten more comfortable with the idea that grant writing can be something I can do on behalf of both my for-profit and non-profit ventures—that wasn’t the case a year ago,” she says.

Delphine was also one of the first 100 to take advantage of another opportunity that the NAWBO Institute launched in 2022: Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) Certification. She didn’t know exactly what she would do with it, but knew it would pay off. “I was one of the first in my line of work locally who did it and probably in my chapter,” she shares.

Delphine says the process was self-explanatory and easy, especially since she’s worked closely with an accountant to stay honest and organized the past few years. And now, she’s using what she learned to apply for a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) certification through the Florida State Minority Supplier Development Council. “It’s because of my initial certification with NAWBO that I knew what it would be like to pull and submit that information,” she says.

Delphine is now stepping back more from some of her one-on-one clinician commitments to look down the road at where she wants to be as an entrepreneur. She realizes she has something really special and would like to sell her business one day.

“I recognize that having a homegrown business is still where it’s at,” she says. “I’ve done all the insurance credentialing and created the workplace culture, policies, standard operating procedures and workflows. Most people in my field shy away from these things, but as an entrepreneur, it was important for me to know this for myself.”

Looking ahead, Delphine would also like to leverage her certifications to offer highly personalized wellness programs for businesses. Many went from offering “the world” to employees to a more bare-bones approach in recent years. Her certifications give her the confidence to walk through these new doors.

She is already having conversations with some of her NAWBO colleagues about what it would look like to offer employee assistance and wellness programs in small businesses. “A lot of things are still unknown, but I know that NAWBO will definitely hold me accountable for what I’ve said I’m going to do,” she says.

So what’s her advice for other women business owners considering certification? “Do it even if you are like me. I didn’t know what the purpose would be for it. I decided to do it now and ask questions later. You never know if you’ll have the opportunity to come back to it again.”

 


 

Kick Off the Year With Certification 

Consider how one- or two-year Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) or Minority Women’s Business Enterprise (MWBE) certification through the NAWBO Institute can validate your business in the new year and then help you to leverage it to scale and grow. Learn more and get started on your certification journey here.

 


 

Join the New ERG Cohort for 2025

NAWBO’s Established and Ready to Grow (ERG) program is back for 2025 and looking for 40 women business owners who are in the early stages of business ownership in the food and beverage industry and looking to scale. This opportunity is presented through the NAWBO Institute at no-cost to cohort participants thanks to our sponsors. Watch NAWBO communications for applications to open soon!

Skip to content