Atara Ziffer, LCSW-C is the co-founder of The Naomi Center and the Director of the Psychotherapy Department. Atara is a Clinical Social Worker and Social Work Supervisor with 20+ years of experience working in the Baltimore Jewish Community.  She graduated from the University of Maryland School of Social Work in 2004, earning her Masters of Social Work with a specialization in Families and Children. In 2005, Atara began her professional career at Jewish Community Services, where she worked as a social worker in both the Special Needs and Families and Children Departments. In 2014, Atara founded Empowerment Therapy Services of Maryland, LLC (ETSMD), a private practice providing mental health services modeled to meet the needs of the Baltimore Jewish Community. In this role, Atara worked extensively with children, adults, couples, and families and developed close working relationships with many of the local day schools. At ETSMD, Atara provided individual therapy, group therapy, supervision, consultation services, and helped develop and implement targeted mental health programming. 

Through her work, Atara recognized the growing need in the community for culturally sensitive services that would be covered by insurance. Atara was driven to expand the service delivery of high quality mental health care to meet the unique and diverse needs of the growing community in an accessible and cost effective manner.  In 2021, Atara partnered with Racheli Neuberger to actualize this vision and open the current Naomi Center. As Director of Psychotherapy Services at The Naomi Center, Atara leverages a variety of therapeutic techniques and clinical strategies in training her staff, tailoring the approach to the unique needs of each client.  Atara trains her staff to pull from an array of modalities, including Play therapy, Instinctual Trauma Response, Internal Family Systems, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, and more.