From Solo Practice to Seven‑Figure Clinic: The Wise Self Story

In an exclusive interview with Black Business Magazine, Milly Feliz, Founder and Clinic Director of The Wise Self Psychotherapy Clinic, shares a powerful story of building beyond limitations to create care that truly reflects the communities it serves. What began in a moment of personal vulnerability has evolved into a growing, purpose-driven clinic challenging how mental health services are delivered across Canada.

Interview By Norman Musengimana

Milly Feliz is a trailblazing Afro-Latina entrepreneur, a passionate mental health advocate, and a leader in the field of psychotherapy. Originally from the Dominican Republic, she is a licensed psychologist in her home country and a Registered Psychotherapist in Canada, recognized by the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. With a decade of experience in Toronto, she has built a thriving career rooted in resilience, innovation, and a deep commitment to healing.

Leaving her home country with big dreams and relentless ambition, Milly became the first Dominican woman to be selected for prestigious programs in her field, paving the way for others in the mental health space. In 2011, she was awarded a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Barcelona, a defining moment that fueled her commitment to making mental health support accessible and transformative.

As the Founder and Clinic Director of The Wise Self Psychotherapy Clinic, Milly leads with heart and expertise, ensuring that every client receives the compassionate, evidence-based care they deserve. She specializes in evidence-based modalities of treatment such as Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and LENS Neurofeedback, always staying at the forefront of innovative therapeutic approaches.

Milly has made history as the first Dominican clinical supervisor for prestigious universities such as the University of Toronto, Yorkville University and Wilfrid Laurier University. In addition, Milly is the first Dominican to become a trainer and presenter at PESI Canada, the leading educational platform for training in mental health in North America.

She is also the first Dominican in Canada to be clinically trained and actively practice psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, contributing to groundbreaking clinical research studies approved by the Canadian Ministry of Health. Her work in this area is shaping the future of mental health clinical treatment, bridging science with transformative healing.

Milly’s impact and dedication to mental health have earned her and her clinic national recognition:

• First Dominican winner of the 2025 & 2026 Top Choice Award for Best Psychotherapy Clinic in Etobicoke, Toronto.
• Nominee for the 2024 Gems of Etobicoke Business Awards
• Recognized Women-led Business at The Forum
• Award winner of Premio Al Immigrant by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DR.

Her clinic, The Wise Self, is also a proud provider of the Interim Federal Health Program (Medavie Blue Cross), offering psychotherapy to refugees and underserved populations, while also extending pro bono services to those in need.

More than a therapist, entrepreneur, and educator, Milly is a mother, a dreamer, and an advocate for change. She believes that healing should be accessible, compassionate, and transformative, and she brings that belief to every aspect of her work.

You founded The Wise Self in 2021 while breastfeeding a newborn at 3 a.m., far from your family and support system. What gap in the mental health system did you see in that moment that made you decide, “I have to build this now,” and who did you build it for?

That 3 a.m. moment was both personal and professional. I was a new mother, isolated, navigating postpartum life without my family nearby, and a clinician who knew exactly what she needed but couldn’t access it. That gap between knowing and having, that was the wound I built from.

What I saw was a mental health system available in English, to people who could afford it, during business hours. That was never going to reach the mothers, the immigrants, the first-generation professionals carrying intergenerational trauma alongside their dreams of a better life.

I built The Wise Self for people who have spent their whole lives translating, not just their words, but their grief, their family dynamics, their cultural context, just to be understood in a therapy room. I wanted them to access care in their own language, with a clinician who already understands the world they come from. Someone who doesn’t need the backstory explained.

You shouldn’t have to shrink your story to fit the container. You shouldn’t have to translate your pain before someone takes it seriously.

I didn’t build it despite being in survival mode. I built it because of it. Sometimes the gap you fall into becomes the thing you build for everyone else.

As a Dominican‑born, racialized woman in a predominantly white profession, what did it take for you to be taken seriously as both a clinician and a seven‑figure clinic owner—and what were you absolutely unwilling to compromise on in that process?

I arrived in Canada with a master’s degree, clinical experience across three countries, and the kind of hunger that comes from building something from nothing. And I was still made to prove myself in rooms that applauded diversity on their websites while quietly closing doors to the people who actually embodied it. I worked in organizations that performed inclusion publicly and practiced exclusion privately. I learned early that being twice as qualified would still only get me half the recognition.

The mental health field is not exempt from the structures it claims to dismantle. As an Afro-Latina clinician, I was visible enough to be the diversity photo and invisible enough to be passed over for the opportunities that actually mattered.

When I applied for a master’s program here in Canada, I was rejected. Seven years later, that same university approached The Wise Self to become a practicum placement site — and asked me to serve as clinical supervisor for the very program that once said no.

I adapted in many ways. But I never became digestible to get here. I stayed true to my culture, my language, my community. I built something so undeniably real that the doors that once closed had no choice but to reopen.

That stubbornness wasn’t the obstacle. It was always the point.

The Wise Self has grown from a solo practice to a multilingual team of 10+ clinicians, surpassing $1 million in annual revenue and earning Top Choice Clinic recognition two years in a row. What was the key turning point in that growth, and what do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

The turning point wasn’t a strategy. It was a decision — to stop being the best-kept secret in Etobicoke and start building something that could exist without me at the center of every session.

For the first two years I was the clinic. Every client, every crisis, every administrative fire. Growth felt impossible because I was both the product and the infrastructure. The real turning point came when I started hiring not just for clinical competence but for alignment, people who understood that culturally responsive care isn’t a specialty, it’s a standard. When the team started reflecting the community we served, referrals stopped being something I chased and started being something that found us.

The revenue followed the reputation. The recognition followed the results.

What I wish I’d known earlier is that systems are not the enemy of heart. I spent too long resisting structure because I associated it with the cold, clinical institutions I was building an alternative to. But structure is what protects your clients, your team, and your own capacity to keep showing up.

I also wish someone had told me that being underestimated is information, not instruction. Every closed door, every rejection, every room that didn’t make space, none of it was feedback about my ceiling. It was just noise.

Build anyway. The numbers eventually speak for themselves.

Your clinic is intentionally culturally responsive, serving Latin American, Caribbean, Black, immigrant, and refugee communities in English, Spanish, and other languages. How do you integrate your cultural background and values into the way you run the business—not just into the therapy room?

Running The Wise Self was never just a clinical decision, it was a cultural one.

In the Dominican Republic, we have a word for how we show up for each other, not just when it’s convenient, but especially when it’s hard. You feed people. You make space. You don’t let someone sit alone in their struggle if you can help it. That’s not a therapy model. That’s how I was raised.

I brought that into every layer of how this clinic operates. The way our front door feels when someone walks in for the first time, uncertain, maybe ashamed, often carrying years of silence. The way our team is trained to receive people, not just assess them. The warmth is not incidental. It’s structural.

Dominican culture taught me that generosity is not a resource that runs out, it multiplies when you give it away. So we built a clinic that offers sliding scale options, bilingual services, and community programs not because it’s good marketing but because leaving people out was never an option I was willing to accept.

There were years this generosity was expensive. Years the books didn’t balance the way I needed them to. But the community we built because of it, the trust, the referrals, the reputation, that became the foundation nothing else could have bought.

The warmth was never the soft part of the business. It was always its back bone.

Looking five years ahead, what does success look like for The Wise Self—and what role do you hope your clinic will play in reshaping how mental health care is delivered to underserved communities across Canada?

Five years from now, The Wise Self is not just a clinic. It’s a model.

Success looks like a training institute that produces the next generation of culturally responsive clinicians, practitioners who don’t need to unlearn their culture to be taken seriously in this field. It looks like practicum partnerships with universities across Canada, a bilingual supervision stream, and a curriculum that treats cultural humility not as an elective but as a foundation.

It looks like a physical space in Etobicoke that a first-generation family can walk into and immediately feel that someone here understands the specific weight they are carrying. And it looks like that same model replicated in Montreal, in Vancouver, in the communities across this country where the mental health system has historically shown up late, underfunded, and culturally foreign.

I want The Wise Self to influence policy. I want to be in the rooms where decisions are made about how care is funded, what languages it’s delivered in, and whose expertise is considered credible. Because the communities we serve have been consulted about their trauma for decades without ever being handed the tools to heal it on their own terms.

The goal was never just to build a successful clinic. It was to make this kind of care so visible, so proven, and so undeniably effective that the system has no excuse left for not providing it.

We’re just getting started.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Black Business Magazine or its affiliates. The magazine is committed to supporting Black entrepreneurs and fostering conversations that promote inclusion and economic empowerment.