Joyce Divinyi is a national expert on human behavior and the author of Good Kids, Difficult Behavior: A Guide to What Works and What Doesn't. As both a licensed professional counselor and a national certified counselor, she has over 20 years of experience in the field.

She has taught thousands of educators, mental health professionals and parents from New York to California how to...

• Identify the hidden signs of the potentially violent student.
• Work with discipline-resistant and non-responsive children.
• Communicate and work with the potentially violent student.
• Teach children to make good decisions and think through their actions.
• Prevent and respond to violence in schools and at home.
• Identify those educators who are likely targets for potentially violent students.
• Create safe environments.

Ms. Divinyi has extensive experience working with troubled children and teens. She understands why improved security measures and discipline systems will not stop violence and the steps needed to create positive change. Ms. Divinyi has worked in a variety of mental health settings, including in-patient psychiatric facilities and private practice counseling. She also served as the executive director in an Atlanta residential treatment program for severely abused adolescent girls.

Ms. Divinyi has an Atlanta-based private practice in individual and family therapy and is the owner of The Human Connection, a company dedicated to understanding and changing human behavior. In addition to training parents and professionals in behavior management and strategies for communicating with troubled children, she has trained employees of Fortune 500 companies in the areas of defusing hostile customers, stress management and self-motivation. She has appeared on television and radio and in a variety of publications discussing issues such as school safety, potentially violent children and children in trauma.

Ms. Divinyi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in speech communications from Columbus College and a Master of Science degree in community counseling from Georgia State University. She has two grown daughters and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.