For Martine Siegel, faith and career cannot be separated.
“My faith is the core of who I am, and there is no removing that,” she said in a recent interview. “I cannot separate myself from my faith, even in my positions.”
Siegel has served as director of counseling services and as victim assistance coordinator for the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Family and Life Ministries Office since 2013.
But the Louisville native has served the archdiocese for 26 years — first as a counselor at Holy Trinity School and then as pastoral associate of Holy Trinity Church, where she is a parishioner.
As director of counseling services, Siegel offers support to counselors serving in the archdiocese’s Catholic schools.
“My faith is the core of who I am and there is no removing that.”
— Martine Siegel, director of counseling services and victim assistance coordinator
She’s always available to assist them in their needs, no matter the time of day or night, she said.
The counselors know, “If they need to call me in the middle of the night, they are going to get an answer,” she said.
She also serves as a resource to pastors who may need assistance setting up counseling for parishioners with mental health challenges or marriage and family issues.
Within her role as victim assistance coordinator, Siegel teaches the archdiocese’s Safe Environment Training program and processes background checks, among other duties. Every diocese in the United States has a victim assistance coordinator available to assist victims in making a formal complaint of abuse to the diocese and to aid survivors in receiving support.
But Siegel doesn’t just have one career.
On evenings and weekends, Siegel also serves as the triage coordinator for psychiatric services in Norton Hospital’s emergency room, evaluating psychiatric emergencies. She’s spent more than 45 years in the psychiatry field — a career she began building as a nursing student at Spalding University following her graduation from the old Holy Rosary Academy.
At the heart of her dual careers in nursing and counseling is a love for people, she said.
“I love my patients. I love helping them and trying to help them navigate life,” she said. And she loves working with the Archdiocese of Louisville’s school counselors, who she called “top-notch.”
That doesn’t mean her jobs don’t have their challenges, she said, noting, “All of my jobs are difficult because you are seeing people hurting.”
The mental health field has “changed tremendously” during the course of her career, she said.
“Psychiatry has changed tremendously in the past 40 years — new medications, new treatments, new knowledge about psychiatric care.”
Additionally, societal changes have increased the anxiety in children and adolescents, especially, she noted.
“We’re dealing with a lot more stress in society,” she said. “There are a lot of changes” that “created a lot of anxiety,” such as the COVID 19 pandemic, changes in family dynamics and a rise of drug and alcohol abuse, she said.
“Kids take all that on,” she said. “We’re seeing so many anxiety disorders in children that we’ve never seen before.”
She loves her jobs, though, because she sees all of them as ministries that are “extremely fulfilling,” she said. “I have felt called to do both.”
Last month, Siegel was honored with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Lifetime Achievement Award at the alliance’s annual Spirit of Peace Awards Dinner.
The award “recognizes an individual who, over the course of their whole career or lifetime, has advanced the NAMI mission to build better lives for people living with mental illness and their families,” according to nami.org.
Siegel served on NAMI’s board of directors from 2019 to 2024 and continues to support the alliance’s programs in Louisville.
“They just do so much,” she said, from raising awareness of mental illness to offering support groups for children and adults to providing suicide prevention training. NAMI has more than 650 local affiliates and 49 state organizations, making the organization the “largest grassroots mental health organization” in the nation, according to nami.org.
The award is “a reflection of the value that Martine has brought” during her long career in the mental health field, said Nancy Brooks, executive director for NAMI Louisville, in an email.
“Martine Siegel’s work directly intersects with the work of NAMI Louisville, making her both an excellent resource and advocate,” she said, adding that Siegel has “one of the biggest hearts for those we serve that I have ever seen.”
