Sam Goldberg, LGBC

Sam officially joined the Diener team as a Professional School Counselor in 2024 after serving as Diener’s very first School Counseling intern the previous year. He is a Maryland Board Certified School Counselor, and a Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor in the state of Maryland. In addition to his more traditional titles, Sam holds a certification as a Therapeutic Game Master, and is trained in utilizing tabletop role-playing games as vehicles for delivering therapeutic interventions. Accordingly, he often incorporates imaginative play and low-stakes, gamified psychoeducation into his individual and group counseling to keep students engaged and excited about their own social-emotional development. Before joining UMD’s School Counseling Program, Sam served as a special education paraeducator in both public and private school settings for a total of three years, where he leveraged his background in philosophy to help students discover their own capacity to ask questions, make meaning, and engage in dialogue. He believes that all students deserve to be taken seriously as thinkers and citizens of the world, and is excited to support Diener’s students through moments of self-discovery and experiential synthesis.