Dr. Kristy Burton.

Dr. Kristy Burton has spent more than fifteen years inside the work, courts, schools, clinics, addiction programs, supervision rooms, and the in-between spaces where mental health and substance use don't politely separate. She built Arkansas Counseling and Wellness Services in 2015 as Central Arkansas Group Counseling, PLLC, and grew it into a three-office practice serving Arkansas in person and through HIPAA-compliant telehealth across Arkansas and Missouri.

Hope Builders is the teaching arm of that practice. It's where she trains the counselors, supervisees, and addiction professionals who come to her not for theoretical CE, but for the kind of training that holds up on Monday morning when a client lands in your office in actual crisis.

Academic posts

Director of Clinical Training at Ouachita Baptist University. Faculty at John Brown University's graduate counseling program. President-Elect of the Arkansas Counseling Association. Board member of the Arkansas Substance Abuse Certification Board. Past presidency of the Arkansas Association of Counselor Education and Supervision. Member of MINT, the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers.

Why teach?

"Most CE I sat through felt like an apology, 'sorry we have to make you do this.' I built Hope Builders to be the opposite. Adult learners deserve trainers who respect their time, their intelligence, and the messy reality of clinical practice. That's the bar."