My name is John Smith, I have been in the field for over 14 years and started my career as a residential counselor at Leroy Haynes in La Verne. When I first started in residential, I really had no clue what I was doing, until I had a seasoned colleague take me under her wing to model and explain everything I needed to know about residential. It took time, energy, patience, trial, error and a few slaps and kicks from the residents, but I continued to grow a love for working in this field.

After a couple of years, I got promoted to a mid-management position and I had an amazing supervisor identify some strengths that I was not even aware of. She helped me grow those strengths and that’s when I realized I had a passion for training staff and creating teams. To really understand various leadership styles and techniques I decided to pursue my graduate degree and received a Master’s in Public Administration with the emphasis in Organizational Leadership in 2013. Since then, I have held various titles at large agencies in the Los Angeles area such as Supervisor, Program Administrator, Training Manager, Assistant Director and Director of Residential. I continue to work as an on-call counselor because I want to understand the trends and the population which is being served but also I want to be that person who takes staff under my wing and give to them the knowledge that I have learned during my career in social services.

That is the reason Fundamental Training Solutions was created.