Photo by Miranda Wipperfurth, MLW Photography LLC
Coltan J. Schoenike
MS, LMFT (WI), LAMFT (MN)
(They, Them, Theirs)
Hi y’all! My name is Coltan.
I’m a person of many hats including marriage and family therapist, educator/speaker, PhD student, and social justice advocate. I’m also a person who identifies as queer, transgender, nonbinary, polyamorous, neurodivergent, and fat; to name a few of the identities that inform my experience and my work.
I grew up in a small town (as in “thinking rural Menomonie of 15,000 people was huge when I moved here because it had a Walmart” small) in the Fox Valley area of Wisconsin. Growing up in a working class family where I’m the first person to go to college (let alone be now working on my doctorate) and also as one of the very few out queer kids in my school on top of being fat and effeminate, adversity was my childhood best friend.
As I got older, I noted the many experiences of struggle or challenge growing up in tandem with the positive contrasts like finding queer and trans community in my local theatre group as a preteen. I feel as though moments like these have been foundational in how I view the world and my role in it. I couldn’t possibly be the only person struggling with the various experiences I was facing, so how could I be a force for change for those who come after me?
I have always been vocal and outspoken, trying to have intentional conversation about what I feel matters. While it manifested in my very early years with things like in-depth proposals with slides and cost-benefit-analysis of why I would like a Nintendo DS for Christmas or practicing my flair for debate and cross-examination at the dinner table, my teenage years finessed this fire and I turned toward activism such as walkouts protesting our teachers’ loss of collective bargaining rights or trying to form a GSA in my high school.
I originally moved to Menomonie, WI in 2013 when I was beginning college at the University of Wisconsin-Stout intending to study Apparel Design and Development. Having worked food service throughout high school and wanting something a bit different as a college student, I was fortunate to get an on-campus job at The Qube, UW-Stout’s LGBTQIA+ resource center as a First-Year Assistant. Fostering my passion in this way showed me that this is what I wanted for the rest of my life in some sort of capacity. I often look back and chuckle at that “light bulb” moment because it apparently didn’t occur to me before then that I could have a job helping people while being actively in a job helping people. While I loved the work I was doing and the skills I was learning in Apparel Design, I switched my major to Human Development & Family Studies with a concentration in Gender & Sexuality Education.
Photo by Miranda Wipperfurth, MLW Photography LLC
Throughout the rest of my undergraduate career, advocacy and education were the foundational threads of my work, especially around the areas of gender and sexuality. Some of my involvement and work included membership and executive leadership (including Vice President and eventually President) of the Gender & Sexuality Alliance, working many years at the campus LGBTQIA+ resource center, and becoming involved in student government as a senator and eventually one of the first openly transgender Directors of the Stout Student Association and the inaugural Inclusivity Director for the University of Wisconsin System Student Representatives. I also published research nationally and presented at a conference where I discussed issues of transgender discrimination and poverty. This specific conference being one for the marriage and family therapy field was an instrumental moment in fine-tuning the direction of where I wanted to go with my career. Until then, I just knew I wanted to help but hadn’t landed on how.
In 2018 I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Human Development and Family Studies and then immediately began my Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and a graduate certificate in Sex Therapy. During my graduate studies, I was still involved heavily in advocacy. I eventually came full circle and became the Graduate Assistant for the resource center I had spent so many of my undergraduate years working at as well as another assistantship working with the Sex Therapy certificate and lecturing in the undergraduate human sexuality course. I received my Master’s and certificate in the Summer of 2020 (after the abrupt transition of learning telehealth in the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic) and took time to write a cupcake cookbook and assist in sex therapy training courses at the University of Guelph while I spent the time waiting for my training licensure to process with the state.
Once I was able to begin my post-graduation clinical work, I was incredibly blessed with the opportunity to join Edges Wellness Center under the supervision of Dr. Alex Iantaffi, of whom I’d already been fangirling over for many years. Largely based in Minneapolis, Alex saw potential in me and my work and I was able to join Edges with the intention of expanding their services virtually to Wisconsin, followed by a physical location offering services in-person in rural Menomonie, Wisconsin in the Fall of 2021.
Fast forward to now, I’ve been so privileged to do the clinical work I’ve been doing for some time now and continuing to work on my hours for full licensure in Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the late Summer of 2022, I also began exploring my desires of doctoral school and one serendipitous thing led to another with me ending up starting my doctorate a year earlier than planned and with merely a few weeks notice when I applied and was accepted to Antioch University New England’s PhD in Couple & Family Therapy program. As I dive into these studies, I’m excited to continue developing my skills in clinical practice, teaching, researching, and eventually work toward clinical supervision. Throughout my research, I’m thrilled to be exploring areas of gender-affirming care which is so sorely needed.