Heather Rebmann, MSW
Trauma-Informed Organizational Consultant
What I Do
I help leaders, helpers, and mission-driven organizations navigate the places where work stops making sense.
Not by fixing people.But by addressing the structural conditions that create overwhelm, burnout, and dysfunction.
Why This Work Found Me
This work found me long before I had language for it. In every role, I navigated overwhelmed staff, unclear communication systems, and teams oscillating between overfunctioning and underfunctioning. We treated this as the norm in nonprofit work—chronic underfunding, constant overextending, and the burnout that inevitably followed.
Early promotions taught me the pressure of stepping into leadership roles with the hope your skills would evolve fast enough to meet extraordinary demands. Sitting beside staff in crisis, I watched good people internalize the failures of overloaded systems—and found myself doing constant relational damage control just to keep the work moving.
This work found me because I know there is a better way. It’s time to move out of crisis response and address the systemic patterns that recreate traumatizing work conditions across every sector.
Professional Background
After earning my MSW from Boston University in 2006, I began my career working with homeless teen parents in under-resourced youth development programs. Promoted early on potential — a common reality in nonprofits — I became the director of a home-visiting program, where I saw how programs buckle under trauma, scarcity, and chronic overwhelm.
I went on to build a clinical practice, work in adolescent residential care, and support teens involved in commercial sexual exploitation. I later directed a domestic violence shelter and led a municipal domestic violence program, guiding staff through high-stakes crises and the emotional strain faced by frontline teams.
Across every environment, the same pattern emerged: “toxic work environments” were almost always good people working within underfunded, unclear, overloaded systems never designed to hold that level of pressure.
The issue is never the people; it is the system.
My Throughline
After years of managing crises inside unstable systems, I’m no longer interested in band-aids.
My work now focuses on addressing the structural conditions—roles, communication, workload, capacity—that generate burnout and dysfunction.
When the system is steady, people can finally do their jobs without being harmed by the work.
Next Step
Ready to fix your foundation?