Feature Speaker

Vanessa Iceton is a Registered Psychologist, Grief Recovery Specialist, Speaker, Author, and founder of Pearl Psychological, a private practice she built in Edmonton in 2021 with a mission of making mental health care accessible, compassionate, and deeply human.

Today, that solo venture has grown into a collaborative team of clinicians, administrators, and interns, supporting individuals, couples, and families across Alberta through trauma-informed, culturally responsive care. Before opening Pearl Psychological, Vanessa spent eight years as a child and youth care worker within Indigenous communities and four years as a Disability Case Manager while completing her Masters of Counselling Psychology at Athabasca University (2017).

What most people don’t know is that her own road to becoming a Registered Psychologist was far from a straight line, and it’s the experience she now credits with reshaping how she understands failure, identity, and what it actually takes to change the story you believe about yourself. She wrote about that road in her book, Mindset Coward: Lying Our Way to the Truth, a story chronicling her six-year journey through repeated failure and self-doubt, and the mindset shift that finally got her across the finish line.

For anyone in the room who wants the full story after the workshop, the book is where the rest of it lives. Vanessa specializes in supporting clients through anxiety, depression, ADHD, trauma, grief, self-esteem and confidence concerns, and relationship challenges, as well as leading Pearl Psychological’s Grief Recovery Support Group. She has spoken to audiences at the University of Alberta’s UPA Psych Connect, the Edmonton Business Association, the iConnect Leadership Party, Enoch Cree Nation, and community organizations across Edmonton, blending clinical insight with lived experience to help people rethink how they see setbacks and self-worth.

Pearl Psychological was named Best Psychologist in Edmonton by the Canadian Choice Awards in both 2024 and 2025. On stage, Vanessa brings the same honesty she brings to the therapy room: no plain old talk therapy, no easy answers, just a grounded, sometimes funny, always real look at what it takes to stop bracing for failure and start believing you belong. She’ll ask you to leave your comfort zone at the door, and to walk out with a tool you can actually use the next time that old story starts playing in your head.