Dr. Gary Altheim
Dr. Gary Altheim is a New York State licensed Clinical Psychologist who has extensive experience working therapeutically with children that have emotional challenges, young adults, seniors, and families. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Growth and Development Services (GDS), a nonprofit organization that serves elders and youth. He also has extensive experience working with seniors and elders with dementia. After discovering the healing power of music in caregiving for his mom with Alzheimer’s Disease, he created an intergenerational music program namesake, Youth Engaging Seniors (YES), to bring life and connection to elders living with dementia and caregivers dealing with the pain of caring for a loved one who is often times suffering.
In 2018, Dr. Altheim was a finalist for Child Mind Institute’s Annual Change Maker Awards and was featured in Parents Magazine for his work addressing the burdens of family instability, violence, mental health, and learning disabilities. He has a plethora of experience in conducting workshops, consulting, and training corporations, nonprofits and assisted living facilities in creating effective environments and tools to work with clients, staff, and caregivers. He developed a leadership development model (The Reach Your Potential Model) to empower individuals and groups to team build, bond, and reach their full potential!
Dr. Gary’s nomination for CNN Hero
January 3, 2015
GDS Consultant, Felica Kobylanksi, nomination of Dr. Gary Altheim for a CNN Hero
Why does your nominee deserve recognition as a CNN Hero?
Dr. Gary R. Altheim, Licensed Clinical Psychologist, is the Founder of Growth and Development Services, Inc. (GDS), a non-profit organization that provides therapeutic, recreational and training services, which empower individuals to make unprecedented life transformations. For the past 20 years, Dr. Gary (as some call him) has provided individuals with the inspiration and means to discover and sustain purpose, pride, and hope, in themselves, their families and in the community. In 1995, Dr. Altheim founded Camp Excel and Camp Viva, the first summer camp ever in Westchester County for children and families infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. During 9/11, Dr. Gary was a First Responder on a team of mental health professionals providing comfort and support to families in need.
In 1996, Dr. Gary created GDS to help transform the lives of teens and families in desperate need of services not provided from the other agencies in the toughest neighborhoods of Upper Manhattan.
How have your nominee’s efforts made a difference for the better?
Dr. Gary has touched and improved upon the lives of over one thousand individuals. GDS “Reach Your Potential” model has increased school participation, graduation and college entry rates, improved behavior, and increased family harmony. In 2011, Dr. Gary received an award from the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health for his contribution in developing sound mental health with his Camp Excel Program. In 2012, The Washington Heights Inwood Youth Service Providers Collective Award was presented to Dr. Gary Altheim for GDS’ most needed counseling services.
Is there a specific incident or turning point that motivated your nominee to take action?
In working in the community, Dr. Gary realized that youth were not getting the supportive services they so desperately needed. As a result, Dr. Gary created Camp Excel and GDS to provide therapeutic services that included opening circle, play shops, one on one counselor time, group rap sessions, and family counseling time.
Is there anything else that makes your nominee exceptional or unique?
Dr. Gary is always concerned about the physical and emotional welfare of everyone he works with. When GDS’ youth are upset, he listens, provides compassion, and lifts the children’s spirits. When GDS’ youth counselors have concerns, Dr. Gary provides wisdom and empathy.
How will being recognized as a CNN Hero further your nominee’s cause?
Dr. Gary wants to continue his work empowering youth to Reach their Potential. He and GDS are partnering with the David Lynch Foundation to create the “Reach Your Potential Plus” program that will include “Quiet Time”. Combining the model a proven Behavioral modification approach that he developed with Transcendental Meditation (TM). With the proper support he believes this new model will advance the physical/mental health of GDS youth while bringing stress relief to schools and the community.
Early Career and Philosophy
1995-2003 – A Biography written about Gary Altheim- written by a Columbia Journalism Student. The assignment was to profile someone who has impacted youth and the community in a positive way.
by W. Clark, Columbia Journalism student, 2003
Gary Altheim loved nature from the day he was born, but it wasn’t until he was 16 that he learned about the wilderness inside.
At that age, he was captain of his high school soccer team, and dreamed of going professional. He lived in a well-off section of Woodmere, Long Island. He got along with his siblings. His father was a successful electrical contractor who made time for his children. His mother, a housewife, gave Altheim “materially” everything he wanted. To this day it pains him to remember his teenage years and the conflicts he had with his parents. He stayed out late, acted out and fought constantly with his parents. Eventually they gave him an ultimatum: it was boarding school, or a social worker. Altheim chose the latter. It is a decision that he credits with shaping his life, and, now, the lives of others. As executive director of GDS/Camp Excel, his Washington Heights-based non-profit, Altheim, 38, now spends his days counseling neighborhood teens through the same social, emotional, and behavior turmoil he once experienced.
“I saw someone from the outside could come and help when things were bad,” he recalled of his first therapist and role model, Vinnie. It was a relationship that lasted until Vinnie’s death last year (in 2002), but the lessons Altheim says, remain with him. “He was attuned to you, he was always available.”
With his role model in mind, Altheim started the non-profit behind Camp Excel, Growth and Development Services, Inc. (GDS) seven years ago. His former job as a Westchester Family Services psychologist exposed to him kids, but left his other passion, the outdoors, untapped. Remembering his positive childhood experiences at camp, Altheim founded Camp Viva, a wilderness retreat for families of AIDS sufferers. But Altheim says the camp was mismanaged, and it disturbed him to see his vision go awry.
Other stories of immoral acts by nonprofit leaders, corrupt human service agencies, and ineffectual delivery of services led Altheim to become an Activist. “I heard about one of the staff in a group home I was working at banged the kids head in the wall, I came to work the next day and saw the hole in the wall. I confronted the executive directors but nothing would change. I was seeing kids already damaged being made worse, and a part of it was about money.”
Two years out if graduate school out of frustration he quit the projects and decided to create his own agency, GDS. With his solid frame, gruff voice, denim clothes and closely-cropped hair, Altheim’s persistence isn’t surprising. He looks more like a potential replacement for Bruce Willis in the next Die Hard sequel than a licensed clinical psychologist, or for that matter a non-profit administrator. It isn’t hard to imagine him keeping tight control over the unruly band of teenagers he leads up to Westchester County for a week-long summer retreat, though, and if he doesn’t fit the stereotype of the soft-spoken, suited social worker, that may be precisely his secret: kids see him as an equal.
“He is an extremely gifted person in that he has an innate quality that makes him someone people can trust,” said Altheim’s brother, Marc, 40. “So he tends to have kids gravitate to him.”
It is difficult, however, for the kids Altheim works with to relate to anyone. A quarter have been arrested, three-quarters are depressed. The vast majority are either welfare recipients or from low-income families. One might wonder how the childless Altheim can connect so well with kids of another ethnicity, social class, whose problems are so extreme.
Altheim admits, “People say you are the most unlikely person [to do what you do].” He disagrees. His solution, he says, is to give back the commitment he received from his therapist. “I never stop thinking, ‘Is that kid okay?’” he said.
It is the only weakness Altheim admits to, but it is hard to find others. He is a workaholic, he says, and this seems like no idle description. Unmarried, Altheim confesses to missing out on having much of a personal life, which “tells you when to stop.” He admits wanting “a white picket fence, a wife and kids,” but for now, he says, he is too busy rearing an administration.
Now, outside work, the only passion Altheim allows himself is the woods themselves. There is no picket fence yet, but he lives on an 8-acre estate on a hawk preservation in Westchester County, where the problems of inner city youth are a world apart. Or would be, if he did not bring his work home with him.
“I think people are surprised that he has committed himself solely to the benefit of others,” said attorney Stuart Serota, a GDS board member. “If was to pick something for Gary to do, I would make this less administrative and more what he loves to do. I would send him to camp 365 days a year.”