Featured in the St. Albert Gazette · June 25, 2025
We were honoured to see our Director and Founder, Nicole Imgrund, recognized this spring with the 2025 Private Practitioner Award for Excellence — a national recognition presented by the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association’s (CCPA) Private Practitioners Chapter.
The award honours ethical leadership, clinical excellence, and meaningful contributions to the field of private practice in Canada. For us, it’s also a celebration of the values that have shaped Rivers Edge over the past 11 years: compassion, integrity, mentorship, and community care. It reflects Nicole’s leadership — and the collective heart of our centre.
As Nicole told the St. Albert Gazette, the recognition wasn’t really about her alone:
“This award is about excellence, and I really, truly believe that excellence is never something that happens in isolation. It has been important to me to be able to work as part of a team and develop that, and that’s a benefit to the clients that we serve, too, because their therapists are part of a strong, connected team where we can share our experience and wisdom with one another.”
That commitment to team — to building an environment where therapists support each other, and where excellence comes from connection rather than from individual effort — is part of what brought Nicole to this recognition. So is the work she has put into mentoring the next generation of therapists. The practicum training program she built at Rivers Edge takes on five graduate students each year, and over 50 students have completed their training here.
“I had just incredible mentors as a young therapist, who invested in my growth and my development as a therapist. So, it has been an opportunity for me to pay that forward as a teacher and as a supervisor and a mentor. They’re all successfully out providing mental health services in their own communities. So there’s a ripple effect there that I know is really meaningful to our whole team to be a part of that.”
Together, we’re committed to supporting clients, mentoring future therapists, advocating for accessible mental health care, and nurturing strong connections in our community. Seeing this work recognized at a national level, in our home province, in front of our peers, meant a great deal.
We’re grateful to the CCPA for its ongoing support of private practitioners across the country.