Liz Brenner, LICSW

Brenner(She/Her) is the course director and primary instructor of the Intensive Program, TTB’s Couple and Family Therapy Certificate Program. Her work in child psychiatric inpatient, home based, residential, and outpatient settings inform her passion for working competently and compassionately with couples and families. She is the co-director of the CHA/Harvard Couples Conference and a teaching associate for Harvard Medical School providing training to staff at Cambridge Health Alliance in the Couple and Family Therapy Program. The foundation of her work rests on the training she received as a student in the Intensive Program at the Family Institute of Cambridge in 1991. She was on the faculty of the Family Institute of Cambridge from 2003 until 2009 when FIC closed and she developed TTB.

In 2017, Liz was the recipient of the award for the Greatest Contribution to Social Work Practice from the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. She has written two  book chapters on doing intensive home-based family therapy. She published a short article in the New England Journal For Relational and Systemic Therapy called Couple Therapy in the Absence of Presence: Translating Presence to the Screen. Her publication in the Family Process Journal is Development of the internal family systems model: Honoring contributions from family systems therapies with Richard Schwartz, PhD, and Carol Becker, PhD. She edited the recent book What Helps When Children and Families Struggle: An attachment-informed guide for families and clinicians written by John Stewart, PhD and Erin Belfort, MD.
Liz’s clinical work and teaching integrates socioculturally attuned family systems, mindfulness, trauma and recovery orientations. Her work and life is informed by the experience of growing up with a father affected by Bipolar Disorder.

​​Liz is Level 2 EMDR, Level 2 LifeForce Yoga and Level 3 trained Certified Internal Family Systems therapist in addition to being trained in Intimacy from the Inside Out and AEDP for Couples. In her office in Watertown, Liz sees adolescents and adults in individual, couple and family therapy. Liz also provides individual and group supervision, agency consultation and training. She has provided training for DCF and DMH staff in a variety of settings.