Dr. Marlene F. Watson is the Director of Training at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York and the former Chair and Associate Professor in the Couple and Family Therapy Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia.  A licensed couple and family therapist with a private practice, she was the first couple and family therapist ever to receive the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship. A former columnist for Heart & Soul Magazine, she was raised in the Philadelphia area, where she still lives. Marlene is a collector of African and African American art and she delights in mentoring African American and multi-racial young adults. She tries to live by the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr: “If I can help somebody as I pass along… then my living will not be in vain.”