Our MESE Team
Kari Russo LMHC, LMFT
Kari Russo, as the Director of the First Orlando Counseling Center, is committed to delivering excellent mental health care through her individual sessions with clients and leadership of other mental health professionals. She is dually licensed as a Mental Health Counselor and Marriage and Family Therapist. With over 25 years of clinical experience, she is on the cutting edge in the counseling and psychotherapy field. Kari educates therapists in various successful modalities including Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) and Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) and is trained to use EMDR, RTM, tf-NLP as well as other integrative techniques.
Edward Maerkl, MS LMHC
Edward Maerkl is a veteran and has been serving the community for over 20 years. In addition to being a First Responder in the fire service; he is Licensed Mental Health Counselor and has actively worked in research in healing PTSD. As a Master Instructor and responder for the International Association of Fire Fighters, he has experience working with people in many difficult circumstances including trauma, mass casualty, suicide, and natural disasters.