Dale Wisely, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist whose work over more than four decades has spanned clinical practice, public school administration, ministry, and nonprofit leadership. From 2018 to 2026 he served as Director of Parish Health at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Hoover, Alabama, where he established a Stephen Ministry program, provided programs on mental health, family life, and grief, marriage preparation, and adult faith formation.

Before Prince of Peace, he worked for twelve years as Director of Student Services and Community Education for Mountain Brook (Alabama) Schools. He practiced clinical psychology in Birmingham from 1983 to 2006, including fourteen years as senior psychologist at the Vaughan Clinic, now Children’s Behavioral Health at Children’s of Alabama.

Dr. Wisely has extensive experience in non-profit and regulatory governance. He co-founded All In Mountain Brook, a nonprofit devoted to protecting and enhancing the lives of young people, and later served as its executive director. He is a past president of the Alabama Psychological Association, which twice gave him its Distinguished Service to Professional Psychology award. Appointed by the Governor in 2022 to the Alabama Board of Examiners in Psychology, he served as chairman of that board in 2026. He serves on the board of Community Grief Support and has served on the boards of the Crisis Center, the Jefferson County Children’s Policy Cooperative, Alabama Children First, and the Alabama Child Death Review System.

He is also the founder of Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary publisher of poetry and devotional writing. He edits several literary journals, including Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, the haiku journal first frost, Unbroken, and The Scarred Tree: Poems on Moral Injury. His own poetry collections include A Book of Saturdays (Seed Bed Press, 2026).

He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from the University of Memphis and completed his clinical internship at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. He also holds a Master of Theological Studies from Spring Hill College. He was certified in moral injury by the Shay Moral Injury Training Center in 2023.

He teaches Psychopathology and Advanced Psychopathology at Samford University and periodically at Spring Hill. He has also taught at the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For more than twenty years he has maintained Parenting Teen Drivers, a free public-service website whose parent-teen driving contract is used by families across the country.

Dr. Wisely speaks and consults to a range of audiences and organizations on mental health, family life, and child and adolescent psychology. He has a long history of work with schools and worship communities.

Short version

Dale Wisely, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with more than four decades of experience in clinical practice, schools, and parish ministry. He served as Director of Parish Health at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Hoover, Alabama, and earlier as Director of Student Services for Mountain Brook Schools. He chairs the Alabama Board of Examiners in Psychology, is a past president of the Alabama Psychological Association, and co-founded the nonprofit All In Mountain Brook. He founded Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press, a nonprofit literary publisher, and edits several poetry journals. He teaches at Samford University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Memphis and an M.T.S. from Spring Hill College.