Tasha from MWBE, Gincy and Canales Furniture

After going through an illness and fighting her own battle with depression, former Tarrant County probation officer, Ulrica LaTasha Kassar, decided she needed a permanent change. Kassar’s life-changing experience pushed her into creating Chosen Counseling and Coaching Services with the mission of healing and improving the mental health and wellness of African Americans.

Originally from Lubbock, the proud Arlington resident and business owner, started working in social services straight out of high school, before earning her degree and moving to Arlington in 2009. She started working as a probation officer for Tarrant County where she stayed for almost 10 years. Kassar worked in several different courts, including drug courts, high risk courts, substance abuse and many others.

“I loved working and helping the clientele. But I think the one thing that changed was I needed motivation. I wanted to work with people who wanted to change,” Kassar commented on what pushed her career shift. “I kept seeing these repeat offenders and I needed something different.”

In 2018, she followed her gut and went back to school to earn her PhD. However, the journey hit closer to home when she got sick in 2019. Sick for almost a year, she began fighting her own battle with mental illness but it was the inspiration she needed.

“On that journey of being sick, I decided it was time. I did not want to go back to working at the jail. So, I took the leap and started my own private practice,” Kassar reminisced.

Now Kassar is in the last semester of her PhD program. And after almost two years of hosting virtual sessions with her clients, Kassar opened her first physical office in Downtown Arlington in December 2021.

“I chose this location specifically because of the access for college students. And while there are a lot of African American therapists in the DFW area, for me, I live in Arlington, my child goes to school in Arlington, so I wanted to make sure women had access to me here in Arlington,” said Kassar. “When I was going through my own medical crisis, I had a hard time finding someone when I was looking.”

Chosen Counseling and Coaching Services offers individual therapy, Couple’s Counseling Sessions and Executive Coaching. There are also Chosen Groups clients can join, including a Substance Addiction Group. Adult Children of Addicts Group and a Trauma Group.  Chosen does accept some insurance.

To learn more about Chosen Counseling and Coaching Services you can visit their website https://chosencounselingservices.com. Or you can visit the One Start Development Center, on the second floor at City Hall, during ‘Small Business Promotion Week’, May 23, 2022 through May 27, 2022, where the iCARE Ambassador team of the Planning & Development Services Department will be promoting this business as the Small Business of the Week. The department is also hosting Customer Appreciation Week during the same time and will be providing refreshments and bottled water for the customers visiting the Small Business Promotion table.

The City of Arlington is highlighting minority-owned and/or women-owned small businesses throughout 2022. Canales Furniture, another Small Business of Arlington, who has grown substantially in the last few years, wants to give back to the community and is sponsoring this program with the Planning & Development Services Department for the year 2022. In their new headquarters at 102 E. I-20 Highway, they have dedicated a training room for their growing community, including free English-speaking classes, citizenship classes, and teaching small businesses on how to utilize social media as a marketing tool.