I received my Ph.D. in Social Work and Social Research from Portland State University in 2019, and my masters degree in rehabilitation counseling from Portland State University in Portland, OR in 2008.

My career as a therapist started at a community mental health clinic in Vancouver, Washington. While working at this clinic I found that the talk therapy I had been trained in did little to help my clients move forward in their lives. Instead I found that therapy was more like a weekly pressure release for the people I was working with. I found this work to  be unsatisfactory for both myself and my clients.  I began researching different evidence-based practices to be trained in. I wanted to do a therapy that helped the people I was working with accept themselves and their lives, as well as be able to make changes that were necessary. I chose Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) as the treatment to pursue. (For more about DBT please visit the my client resources page).

I joined a full fidelity DBT program in Portland, Oregon where I worked until moving to Cincinnati in 2018. While at Portland DBT Institute I was a member of the substance abuse team and the training team. In addition to working as a DBT practitioner I have worked for multiple years as a DBT trainer and supervisor. I have led and co-led multiple trainings nationally and internationally. I have also been part of the training and consultation team for two state wide implementations of DBT in the juvenile justice systems in both New York and Connecticut.

I was supervised by Linda Dimeff, Ph.D. who along with DBT creator Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., ABPP created the DBT for substance use disorders adaptation. In addition to this I was trained by Kathryn Korslund, Ph.D., ABPP at the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics at the University of Washington as a DBT adherence coder. I have worked on multiple DBT research trials as an adherence coder. I currently volunteer for the DBT-Linehan Board of Certification as an adherence coder.

In addition to my work as a DBT therapist I am extremely interested in eco-psychology, particularly working with people to connect to nature and all systems of life. In my experience a key component of suffering is the disconnect people feel from themselves and their environments, both human and non-human. This often results in an experience of being isolated even when physically surrounded by others. I believe that helping people to connect to all forms of life and the planet is a critical element of healing.