School Counselor Consultant: Trish Hatch and the Career Beyond the Classroom
A school counselor consultant is an experienced school counseling professional who advises schools and districts on designing, implementing, and evaluating school counseling programs. They provide professional development, training, data analysis, and program evaluation, working from the outside to help school counseling teams deliver measurable results for students.
Trish Hatch, Ph.D., CEO of Hatching Results, Director of School Counseling at San Diego State University
Most school counselors spend their careers inside a single school. A consultant applies years of experience across multiple schools, districts, and sometimes entire state systems. It’s the same mission, just at a different scale.
Trish Hatch, Ph.D., is one of the most recognized figures in school counseling consulting. She co-authored the ASCA National Model, built a nationally known consulting and training firm, and has spent two decades helping schools prove that counseling programs drive real student outcomes. We spoke with her about what the work looks like and how she got there.
What Is a School Counselor Consultant?
Educational Resources
The term “consultant” gets used two ways in school counseling, and the distinction matters.
The first is internal consultation, something every school counselor already does. When a counselor sits down with a teacher to talk through a struggling student’s behavior, or meets with a parent to coordinate support, that’s consultation. It’s a core function of the role, not a separate career.
The second is external consulting, which is what Hatch does. An external school counselor consultant works independently or through a firm, contracting with schools, districts, or state departments of education to assess programs, train staff, and build counseling systems that produce documented results. This is a career path, not a job function.
What the Work Actually Looks Like
Ask Hatch what she does, and she doesn’t describe a desk job. She described a typical week to us while traveling from San Diego to San Marcos for a meeting with an elementary school.
The work varies widely depending on the client and engagement. One day might involve delivering a professional development workshop to a district’s entire counseling staff. The next might mean reviewing program data with a principal to identify where students are falling through the cracks. Longer engagements often include a full program audit — analyzing caseload data, reviewing counselor time use, and evaluating whether the counseling program is aligned to student achievement goals.
“We must emphasize that school counselors’ roles in schools are not just to be counselors to kids,” Hatch told us. “Because if we’re just counselors and we don’t align to student achievement and student success, then we will be perceived as just ancillary mental health workers — meaning seen as support staff rather than instructional leaders — instead of educators with specialized training in mental health issues.”
That philosophy drives her consulting work. The goal isn’t just to support students directly. It’s to help counselors build programs that administrators will defend — and fund — because the data shows they work.
How Trish Hatch Built a Career in School Counseling Consulting
Hatch’s path to consulting wasn’t a straight line. After earning her undergraduate degree from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, she started taking evening classes at California State University, San Bernardino, while raising two small children. She’d originally looked for a master’s program in clinical psychology but couldn’t find one that fit her schedule. School counseling was the practical choice. It turned into a career she never left.
She spent ten years as a school counselor in the Moreno Valley Unified School District in California before pursuing a second master’s in educational administration and eventually a Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Riverside. The combination of years in direct practice plus graduate-level research and administration positioned her to move into a broader role.
“I don’t really know where all my energy comes from,” she told us. “But I know that I’m a passionate advocate for school counseling, and maybe that’s part of it.”
In 2003, she worked with colleague Judy Bowers and the American School Counselor Association to co-author the ASCA National Model, the framework that underpins how school counseling programs are designed across the country. She has secured millions in federal grants to train school counselors nationwide and has contributed to national policy discussions on school counseling at the highest levels of government. She currently serves as Professor Emeritus and former director of the school counseling program at San Diego State University, and she is the owner of Hatching Results, LLC, a firm providing professional development, training, and program evaluation to school counselors and districts across the country.
She has also served as director of the Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCaL), and is the author of multiple books, including works on using data in school counseling and tiered intervention frameworks.
What It Takes to Move Into Consulting
Hatch’s path illustrates what the consulting career typically requires. It starts with credibility, and credibility comes from years in the field.
Most school counselor consultants have a master’s degree in school counseling at a minimum, and many have a doctorate. Beyond the degree, you need a track record: documented program outcomes, leadership experience, and a reputation that travels outside your building. Hatch credits the foundational research of scholars like Norman C. Gysbers, Clarence Johnson, Sharon Johnson, and Robert Myrick as the intellectual scaffolding beneath her own work. Knowing the field’s literature isn’t optional when you’re advising others on how to build programs.
The skills that matter most in consulting are different from those that matter most in daily counseling practice. Program evaluation, data analysis, curriculum design, public speaking, and facilitation move from background competencies to central ones. You’re not working one-on-one with students. You’re working with the adults responsible for thousands of students, and they need evidence before they’ll change anything.
“It’s tremendously fulfilling to know that the impact you make on the planet is larger than the immediate impact on your small circle,” Hatch said.
That’s a fair description of the trade-off. Consulting means stepping back from direct student contact. The reach gets broader. The daily work looks different.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need a doctorate to become a school counselor consultant?
Not necessarily, but it’s common among those who consult at the district, state, or national level. A master’s degree in school counseling is the baseline credential. What matters more than the specific degree level is demonstrated expertise — years of practice, program outcomes you can document, and ideally some published work, training experience, or leadership roles that establish your credibility before you start advising others.
What’s the difference between a school counselor and a school counselor consultant?
A school counselor works directly with students inside a school. A consultant works with schools, districts, or state systems from the outside, typically to design, evaluate, or improve counseling programs. The consultant role builds on years of direct practice. It’s generally a later-career path that requires both deep field experience and skills in areas like program evaluation, training design, and data analysis. You can learn more about the day-to-day school counselor career to understand the foundation most consultants build on.
How do school counselor consultants find clients?
Most consulting work comes through professional reputation, conference presence, and networks built over years of field work. Organizations like ASCA offer consulting services and sometimes partner with independent consultants. Publishing books or articles, presenting at state and national conferences, and building a visible track record of program outcomes are the most common paths to building a consulting practice.
- Consulting is a later-career path — most consultants spent a decade or more in direct practice before moving into advisory work.
- The focus shifts from students to systems — the goal is building programs that counselors and administrators can sustain and defend with data.
- Trish Hatch co-authored the ASCA National Model in 2003 — she has since trained school counselors nationwide through Hatching Results and her work with CESCaL.
- Different skills take center stage — program evaluation, data analysis, facilitation, and curriculum design matter more in consulting than in school-based practice.
Most school counselor consultants spent years inside a school before stepping into an advisory role. If you’re at the start of that journey, the right first step is a master’s degree aligned to your state’s licensing requirements.
