John Atkins is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder and CEO of the Pass The ASWB Exam Together. Since 2008, John and his team have helped 55,000+ therapists nation-wide pass their state licensing exams with confidence. Many report “learning more than they did in graduate school.” John graduated with honors from Dartmouth College where he majored in neuroscience and completed his senior thesis on the neuroscience of the learning process. He earned his Masters in Social Welfare at UCLA. The son of a high school biology and chemistry teacher, John was inspired by his father’s passion for teaching. Like his dad, John is a gifted instructor whose background includes teaching MFT and Social Work licensing exam preparation with Gerry Grossman Seminars, coaching for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and teaching Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and Dental Admission Test (DAT) for Kaplan Test Prep. Beyond a successful business, John has committed much of his life to public service. At Dartmouth, John was awarded the prestigious Richard Lombard Public Service Fellowship which funded a full year of community service. Fluent in Spanish, he first went to Central America, where he worked in the Costa Rica Women’s Prison and in a home for girls pregnant from incest. He spent the second half of the year in Washington DC, where he volunteered at Mary’s Center and was eventually hired as a case manager in their teen pregnancy prevention and parenting programs. Originally pre-med, John chose to turn down medical school to start a non-profit called Ophelia’s House that provided youth development activities, tutoring and pregnancy prevention to teen girls with an emphasis on girls aging out of foster care and teen moms. John individually tutored seven teen moms to success in passing their GED exams. During that time John also became a foster dad to a 13 year-old from El Salvador who lived with him for six months. Eventually his commitment to social justice guided him to become a social worker. He has served a wide range of populations, including abused children, people living on the streets, substance users, veterans, prostitutes, victims of domestic violence, rape victims, gang members, pregnant teens and the elderly. John has received a number of commendations for his work, including the Points of Light Award and the Washington Area Women’s Leadership Grant. He also served for two years on the Commission for Women in the City of Santa Monica, CA. John also maintained a successful part-time private practice in West Los Angeles, where he worked with adults, couples, and adolescents dealing with depression and anxiety. He also provided clinical consultation and individual coaching for therapists starting private practices. He is a certified Gestalt therapist and has completed twelve years of intensive post-graduate training with the Pacific Gestalt Institute. He is also certified in the Gottman Institute’s Bringing Baby Home model. John first conceived the idea of the Pass The ASWB Exam Together when he was studying for his clinical licensing exams. He reviewed two of the top programs in California; however, when he took the actual exams, he realized that the programs had done very little to prepare him. At the time, the passing rate for social workers in California was 50%. John realized quickly that there was a critical need for a program that provided the clinical review and test-taking strategies that reflected how the material was tested. John hired Bethany Vanderbilt, a fellow social worker, and purchased licensing test prep materials from 10+ companies to see if any of them were teaching the test-taking strategies and reasoning skills people needed to pass. They weren’t. So after he put his first born to bed, he started developing his own study systems. John lives in Santa Barbara with his two amazing daughters, Elana and Naomi, and their exceptionally cute dog named Mister Peanut Butter. When he’s not helping people pass their exams, he enjoys spending time with his family and friends, hiking out his back door, volunteering for causes he cares about, sitting on the floor of bookstores reading books, correcting people’s misuse of the word literally, and finding the humor and joy in everyday moments.