Leslie A. Cooley

Leslie A. Cooley is a licensed clinical psychologist in California and former school psychologist who worked in public schools for approximately 20 years, beginning in 1978 with a focus on facilitating student counseling groups. She later earned a Ph.D. and transitioned in the 1990s to teaching graduate-level school psychology at California State University, Sacramento, where she trains school psychologists in group counseling and solution-focused approaches.

Cooley is the author of The Power of Groups: Solution-Focused Group Counseling in Schools, a practice-oriented guide that adapts solution-focused brief counseling for student groups across topics, curricula, and grade levels. Her work emphasizes strengths-based, solution-focused group counseling in school settings, and she has taught group counseling to school psychologists for over a decade while maintaining a limited psychotherapy practice focused on families.