George Ballew

George began working at Heritage in 2006 to find out if he wanted to specialize in treating teens and families as a therapist. He says the answer was a resounding yes! He finished his bachelor’s of psychology with a minor in business management and went on to get a master’s in social work. In the years since leaving Heritage to enter graduate school, he facilitated child visitation between divorced parents, developed an outpatient group therapy program for Salt Lake City’s mental health center, worked for Child Protective Services, and ended up at the Wyoming State Hospital as clinical director of its group therapy program and developed a substance abuse track. He says he got a call from Heritage about a position for a therapist to focus on staff training. Given his experience with program development, broad experience with families and past experience at Heritage, he thought he had a unique background to help staff learn how to build stronger relationships with youth at his favorite company of all time. “It was a no brainer!” he exclaims. George says he always wanted to work at Heritage because he feels so comfortable with the relationship-based way of helping the students. There are a lot of treatment centers out there, but none of them felt like Heritage to him. Being a non-profit means everything Heritage does goes directly toward helping the kids. “It’s a really warm culture to have on our campus and I love being a part of it,” he says. “My wife says she always knew I would end up back here because I would talk about Heritage all the time.” George was born and raised in the country between Mexico and America called Texas. In his master’s program he met a fiery redhead in research class and they graduated together as husband and wife. They now have three handsome little boys that keep them busy and happy. In his free time he says he likes to read psychology books (which he says his wife thinks is boring), go bird watching, play piano, go shooting, visit family.