Joanne Steen, MS, NCC

Board-certified counselor with morethan twenty-five years of experience as an author and trainer on grief, loss,and resilience with a specialty in line-of-duty loss.

Joanne Steen is the founder of Grief Solutions, a training company thatprovides practical training and resources on grief to professional assistanceproviders who work with the bereaved.

She has worked with more than forty diverseorganizations. Her clients have included the U.S. Department of Defense; theCanadian Military Forces; the Association of Death Education and Counseling;the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, and a host of federal, state,non-profit and corporate organizations.

Joanne is the author of WeRegret To Inform You. A Survival Guide for Gold Star Parents and Those WhoSupport Them. (Central Recovery Press, 2019).With Regina Asaro, she coauthored the award-winning MilitaryWidow: A Survival Guide (Naval Institute Press,2006). She is also a contributing author to numerous works ontraumatic grief and military loss.

Joanne possesses an insider’s understanding of themilitary. She has twenty-five years of experience as a militaryinstructor, the latter fifteen in the area of traumatic grief and casualtyassistance. Joanne is also the Gold Star widow of LT Ken Steen, USN, a navalaviator who was killed in line of duty during her tenure as a senior militaryinstructor with the Department of the Navy. In her first career, she spent tenyears in engineering with Johnson & Johnson and General Motors.

Joanne holds an MSEd in counseling from Old DominionUniversity and a BS in engineering from Rutgers University. Honors and awardsinclude the 2010 Chairman’s Award, Military Officers Association of America;2009 Alumni Fellow, Old Dominion University, Darden College of Education &Professional Studies, and 2007 Distinguished Author of the Year, United StatesNaval Institute.