Mental Health and Wellness Leader
Laura Maria Isabel Dziekiewicz de Diaz
Age: 38
Title: Founder and Clinical Director
Name of Organization: Move Therapy and Wellness
Laura Maria Isabel Dziekiewicz de Diaz is a licensed clinical social worker and certified yoga instructor and the owner of Move Therapy and Wellness. Move is a mental health and wellness practice offering integrative clinical mental health counseling services in Chicago’s Lakeview and Roscoe Village neighborhoods. Move offers traditional mental health counseling and daily yoga and meditation classes that make psycho-education and practical therapeutic tools accessible through movement, breathing techniques, and meditation.
Dziekiewicz employs 25 clinical therapists and yoga teachers and recently opened a second wellness location that features a full yoga studio, a meditation space, clinical therapy offices and acupuncture services. Move provides therapy and wellness services to over 500 therapy clients and yoga students who are experiencing symptoms related to anxiety, trauma, depression, life transitions, chronic stress, familial conflict and relationship issues.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and a master’s degree in Social Work from Loyola University Chicago. She started her career in the Evanston Public Schools where she was a school social worker for 15 years, serving minority youth in elementary and middle schools.
She is of Puerto Rican, Argentinian, Polish and Italian descent and comes from a family of successful first-generation entrepreneurs. Her father was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and her mother is a Chicago-born Puerto Rican.
WORDS OF WISDOM: “It begins with a vision. Clarity develops with time.” -Victor Ignacio Dziekiewicz
