The counselors at Emmaus Family Counseling Center are dedicated to assisting clients toward personal wholeness, interpersonal competence, mental stability, and spiritual maturity.
Chris Cole, MA, LPC, NCC
Chris is the founder of Emmaus Family Counseling Center in Sterling, Virginia. He also has served for 14 years as the Director of Counseling and more recently as the Director of Congregational Care at Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn, Virginia. He has been a network counselor with New Life since 2002.
Mr. Cole utilizes a Biblical framework to think through the issues that people seek help with. He brings many years of pastoral experience and counseling together to effectively bring healing and restoration to people in relationships. Areas of experience include working with men in recovery from addiction, couples counseling, and group work including Making Peace with Your Past. He has trained lay facilitators and implemented support and recovery programs in a local church setting. He lives in Ashburn, Virginia with his wife Helen and their four children.
Melissa Medley, MA, RN, Resident Counselor 
Melissa Medley, MACP, RN received her Master’s in Counseling at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, WA where she trained under Dan Allender. While in Seattle, she also completed a post-graduate certificate in Medical Family Therapy at Seattle Pacific University combining her medical background with counseling.
Presently, Ms. Medley is a resident counselor in Virginia under the supervision of Chris Cole, MA, LPC. Her training is in a broad range of areas, but she concentrates on the following: sexual trauma, abuse, depression, anxiety, identity development, life transitions and grief work. She has experience working with relationship problems and questions surrounding faith and existence. She is also looking to collaborate with the medical community in helping acute and chronically ill patients adjust to their diagnoses. Her theoretical framework is multifaceted, working from primarily a dynamic, family systems and relational approach. Her experience has focused on work with individual adult clients.
Ms. Medley believes body, mind and soul are connected, and when one part of you suffers, all areas in your life are affected.
Laurie Mowry-Hesler
Laurie Mowry-Hesler is a Resident Marriage and Family Therapist in Virginia as well as a Registered Board Certified Art Therapist. Mrs. Hesler received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Elementary and Secondary Art Education from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, in 1981 and her Masters of Art Therapy from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. in 1985. She also is a Licensed MFT in California.
Her clinical focus is working with children with developmental concerns as well as families and marriages. She has extensive experience working with children diagnosed with a wide variety of difficulties in both therapeutic and educational settings. She utilizes her background in Art Therapy when working with children who have been non-responsive to more traditional verbal therapy. Many of the children fall within the spectrum of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Delays. These children often struggle with profound to moderate speech and language issues and learning disabilities.
Mrs. Hesler has also worked with “at risk” emotionally disturbed children and adolescents and early intervention programs for preschoolers. Mrs. Hesler additionally has served as a Site Supervisor for George Washington University Art Therapy Graduate Students as well as currently supervising a John’s Hopkins graduate counseling student. She is also an independent contractor for The Expressive Therapy Center in Rockville, MD and McLean, Va.
Mrs. Hesler has been married for 24 years, is a mother of four (one internationally adopted specials needs child), served on the mission field for 8 years, is a pastor’s wife, and worked with children, families, single adults, and young married couples struggling with life’s challenges.
Melissa McGee, MA, Resident Counselor
Received a Master’s of Art degree from Columbia International University in Counseling and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Presently, Mrs. McGee is a resident counselor under the supervision of Chris Cole, MA, LPC, NCC. Her counseling style is eclectic, teaming the psychodynamic perspective along with cognitive-behavioral and family systems therapy, to bring clients to greater understanding of how to walk through their pain. She has experience treating trauma, abuse, depression, OCD, anxiety, PTSD, females with same-sex attraction, eating disorders, and addiction disorders.
Mrs. McGee has almost 10 years of experience working with teens on both a volunteer and a professional basis. Mrs. McGee has received advanced training in the treatment of eating disorders and wishes to continue focusing on treating these individuals in her practice. Melissa lives with her husband and two children in Ashburn.