Exploring Life & Business with Jordan Held of Relentless Pursuit Therapy & Consulting

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Held.

Hi Jordan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Originally from Boston, I spent the first 30 years of my life on the East Coast. I grew up highly competitive and deeply connected to athletics, eventually walking onto the Division I rowing team at the University of Connecticut while majoring in Kinesiology. Sports have always been central to who I am, I often say they saved my life. They gave me structure, purpose, community, and an outlet to push myself.

During college, I discovered my passion for service work. Alongside other student-athletes, I volunteered at the Hartford Catholic Worker House, spending time with local kids, playing sports, mentoring, and simply showing up for them. That experience was transformative. It combined two things I loved most: athletics and helping others.

Even while I was successful academically and athletically, I often felt a deep sense of incongruence within myself. Something never fully aligned. I couldn’t yet articulate it, but I knew I was living disconnected from who I truly was.
I later had the opportunity to intern with the Boston Celtics during their 2008 championship season in the community relations department, where I was able to further connect leadership, sports, and community engagement. Afterward, I worked in a traditional New England prep school as a teacher and coach, roles I genuinely loved. Still, despite the fulfillment I found professionally, I continued to feel like I was living slightly on the outside of myself.

I went on to earn my master’s degree in Sports Leadership from Northeastern University, where I completed an internship working with UNICEF and the Boston Public School system. During that period, I came to a pivotal realization: as much as I loved my work and the life I had built, I could no longer ignore my gender identity. I had known for years that I was a man, and I needed my external life to reflect that truth.

That realization ultimately brought me across the country to Los Angeles to begin both my medical transition and a completely new chapter of my life. It was one of the most terrifying decisions I have ever made. Starting over at 30 required an immense amount of fear, grief, vulnerability, and courage. I was leaving behind familiarity, stability, and the life people thought I was supposed to live. At the same time, I knew I could no longer fully self-actualize until I made the commitment to live authentically and transition. For me, there came a point where surviving was no longer enough, I wanted to fully live.
I began receiving gender-affirming care at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, an experience that profoundly changed me. At the same time, I recognized that I wanted to shift my career away from education and toward clinical social work- I wanted to be a therapist. As a 30-year-old beginning my transition, I understood firsthand the importance of support, affirmation, and access to care and I wanted to provide that for others.

A few years after completing my first master’s degree, back to school I went. I was accepted into the highly competitive UCLA Master of Social Welfare program. It was there that I truly began living authentically as myself. During that time, I also had the privilege of being mentored by Lorri Jean, former CEO of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, whose leadership and guidance had a lasting impact on both my professional and personal growth.

I began my clinical career at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the same place where I had first received my own care. Over time, I was invited to join the Board of Directors, where I still proudly serve today. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I spent years working at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and in adolescent residential treatment settings before eventually founding Relentless Pursuit Therapy & Consulting.

Over the course of my career, I have developed a reputation for working with highly complex individuals and family systems who have often spent years searching for identity, clarity, stability, and connection within chaotic relational dynamics. I am a highly collaborative clinician trained in complex trauma, and my work centers around helping people untangle longstanding patterns of pain, disconnection, addiction, shame, and survival. I deeply believe that healing does not happen in isolation, and much of my work focuses on helping entire family systems move toward accountability, honesty, repair, and unity.

My own life has reinforced this belief. Today, I am sober, living my truth outloud and finally free from many of the things I spent years hiding. Both personally and professionally, I have found that the moment we can become honest about our struggles is also the moment we can begin to honestly heal. That understanding fundamentally shapes the way I practice therapy. I show up authentically, collaboratively, and without judgment because I know how transformative it can be when someone feels truly seen and understood.

I love being a therapist more than anything. It is not just my profession, it is my calling. Whether I am working with adolescents, adults, families, executives, treatment teams, or clinicians, I bring deep compassion, directness, clinical expertise, and an unwavering commitment to growth and healing.

Today, in addition to my clinical work and consulting, I also supervise and mentor other clinicians, something I care deeply about. Much like the mentors who helped shape me throughout my own journey, I am passionate about helping therapists strengthen their clinical instincts, deepen their understanding of complex systems, and become more grounded, effective providers.

I remain deeply involved in the LGBTQ+ community and continue to use my leadership and platform to create meaningful change. Some of the most rewarding parts of my work involve consulting with treatment programs, schools, and organizations on best practices for supporting LGBTQ+ individuals while also helping people outside the community become stronger, more informed allies.

What I have learned throughout more than two decades of leadership, coaching, education, advocacy, and clinical work is simple: I love service. I love helping people grow. Whether through coaching, teaching, mentoring, therapy, or systems work, witnessing people step into honesty, accountability, and healing is one of the greatest privileges of my life.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been a smooth road at all.

For a long time, my life looked solid from the outside. I was doing well in school, competing at a high level in athletics, building a career in education and coaching. Sports gave me structure and a sense of identity, and in a lot of ways they kept me grounded. But internally, things felt very different. I carried this constant, low-level feeling that I was out of alignment with myself. I didn’t have the language for it at first, but I knew I was living slightly removed from who I actually was.

A big part of that was my gender identity. I had known for years that I was a man, but I wasn’t ready or didn’t feel able to fully face what that meant for my life. So I kept pushing forward, doing all the “right” things, building a life that made sense on paper while quietly dealing with the weight of not being fully honest with myself. That disconnect takes a toll over time. It showed up in different ways- emotionally, mentally, and in some of the choices I made.

By the time I turned 30, it got to a point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I had built a life that was stable and meaningful in many ways, but it wasn’t mine in the way it needed to be. Making the decision to transition meant blowing up that version of my life. I left the East Coast, my career, my community, and moved to Los Angeles without much of a safety net to start over. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. There was a lot of fear- fear of the unknown, fear of how my life would change, fear of losing relationships, and honestly, fear of whether I could rebuild at all.

At the same time, I had to confront parts of myself I had avoided for a long time. I struggled with things I kept hidden, and getting sober forced me to be honest in a way I never had been before. There’s no way around that process, it’s uncomfortable and, at times, brutal. You have to sit with the things you’ve been avoiding and take real accountability for your life. But that was also a turning point for me. It’s where things started to shift from just surviving to actually healing.
Professionally, I had to start over too. I went back to school, changed career paths, and stepped into a completely new field in my 30s. That came with its own challenges, being older than a lot of my peers, starting from scratch again, and having to prove myself in a different way. There were definitely moments of doubt.

None of it was linear, and none of it was easy. But those experiences forced me to grow up in a lot of ways and to get very honest about who I am. They shaped not only my life, but the way I show up in my work now. I understand what it means to feel stuck, disconnected, or overwhelmed by your own life and I also know what it takes to work through that.

Life hasn’t always been smooth. But every difficult part of the journey has been necessary to get me to a place where I’m actually living as myself and doing work that feels real and meaningful. I am also very lucky and privileged to be surrounded by so many people who have never stopped supporting me and my truth.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Relentless Pursuit Therapy & Consulting?
Relentless Pursuit Therapy is really an extension of who I am. It is not something separate from me. The brand, the way I work, the energy behind it…that’s all very real and very personal. Everything I’ve built comes from both my clinical training and my lived experience, and people feel that pretty quickly when they work with me.

At a foundational level, my work is about helping people move out of survival mode and into something more honest, connected, and sustainable. I work with adolescents, adults, and families, often in situations that are entangled with complex- trauma, addiction, identity, high-conflict relationships, or systems that have been stuck for a long time. A lot of the people I work with have already tried a lot of things and still feel like nothing has fully clicked.

What I’m known for is being direct and deeply engaged. I’m not passive in the room. I’m going to show up, I’m going to challenge patterns when needed, and I’m going to stay in it with people. At the same time, there’s a lot of care and collaboration in how I work. I want people to actually understand themselves and their relationships, not just talk about them so they can create real change.

A big part of what sets me apart is that I don’t just look at the individual in isolation. I’m always paying attention to the larger system. Family dynamics, communication patterns, where things break down, where accountability is missing. A lot of my work is helping people and families have the conversations they’ve been avoiding and move toward something more honest and connected.

And honestly, the heart of the brand is authenticity and a relentless drive toward joy and connection. That’s something I had to fight for in my own life. There was a long time where I felt disconnected from myself, and getting to a place where I could live fully and honestly didn’t come easily. Because of that, I don’t take this work lightly. I know what it costs to stay stuck, and I know what’s possible when people are willing to show up and do the work.

I think what I’m most proud of, brand-wise, is that nothing about it feels manufactured. What you see is what you get. The way I show up in sessions, in consultations, in mentorship- it’s consistent. People aren’t getting a version of me that’s filtered or overly clinical. They’re getting someone who is real, who cares deeply, and who is committed to helping them get to a place of more clarity, connection, and alignment in their lives.

At the end of the day, I want people to know that this is a space where you don’t have to pretend. You can be honest about what’s not working, even if it’s messy, and we can actually work through it. That’s where the real shift happens.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Sneakers, fashion and iced coffee! Joking aside, sneakers have been part of my happiness since I was a kid. Before I even had the language for my identity, that was one of the first ways I expressed myself. I still remember this pair of neon pink and green high top Nikes my mom got me- I was obsessed with them. That never really went away. Now it’s turned into a full collection… I’ve got a whole room for them. My wife definitely tolerates the obsession more than anything, but it’s something that genuinely brings me a lot of joy.

My wife, my friends, my chosen family, that’s really the core of it for me. Just being around people I love and being able to show up as myself with them.

I also care a lot about advocating for people who don’t always have a voice. That’s something that’s personal, and it’s a big part of what drives me, both in my work and outside of it.

Queer and trans joy makes me happy. Just seeing people feel safe enough to be themselves, to love openly, to exist without hiding. That’s something I don’t take for granted.

And honestly, just being able to be myself and not care what other people think anymore… that’s probably one of the biggest ones. It took me a long time to get there, so I really appreciate it now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rptherapyco.com
• Instagram: @relentlesspursuittherapy
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jordanheldlcsw

Image Credits
Zoe Bentyne Nicol
Kathryn Held