Learn about CTC’s History
About Us
We're Here For You
CTC's Mission
Chicago Therapy Collective (CTC) takes decisive action to improve LGBTQ+ mental health in Illinois through therapy, education, advocacy, and the arts.
Our Organization's History
From Community to Cornerstone
Est. 2018
Chicago Therapy Collective began our operations in 2018, transforming Founder Iggy Ladden’s passion for holistic, community-centered mental health interventions into a powerful pillar of service and action in Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community. Headquartered in the Andersonville neighborhood, CTC blends a deep investment in arts and advocacy, along with a passion for educating stakeholders from government agencies to small businesses on the importance of respecting and welcoming trans people. Our signature programs, Hire Trans Now and Trans Art Is, have reached hundreds across Chicago. While CTC has always provided a limited amount of direct mental health services since its founding, in 2026 the agency was fundamentally transformed, as we absorbed the clinical team of Practical Audacity, LLC, an LGBTQ-owned-and-focused behavioral health center in the Hermosa neighborhood. With this expansion, CTC became a clinical-first agency, and the largest nonprofit provider of LGBTQ+ mental health services in Illinois.
Rooted in Community
Our Philosophy
affirming, For Everyone
CTC’s mission is rooted in the intimate awareness apparent in therapy and other humanistic disciplines that the mental health struggles of LGBTQIA people, especially QTBIPOC (Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color), are the result of systemic, intersecting injustices that need attention beyond the therapy room and within the relationships, organizations and communities to which those QTBIPOC community members belong.
Complex systemic struggles such as the ones QTBIPOC community memebers experience require multi-faceted interdisciplinary interventions and widespread support. Through therapy, training, activism and the arts, CTC strives to provide a creative path forward for improving minority mental health.
Prioritizing Local Partnerships
LGBTQ+ Focused, Trans-Centered
Filling the Pool of Providers
The Land We're On
Chicago Therapy Collective is located on the the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe, or the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other Nations consider this area their traditional homeland, including the Myaamia, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox, and Peoria. Chicago Therapy Collective acknowledges the many vibrant indigenous communities that still call Chicago home and celebrates the many contributions of indigenous histories and present day cultures to City life for all Chicagoans.
Remembering Elise Malary
CTC is dedicated to honoring the memory of our beloved Elise Malary, who passed tragically in 2022. Elise, a Board Member (now Member Emeritus) of CTC and Co-Founder of our Hire Trans Now campaign, was extremely passionate about advancing social justice for the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC community, especially trans people of color. She understood on a personal level that the mental health needs of Trans community members is deeply connected to access to affirming jobs.
