I decided to go to grad school and become a therapist. I moved to Chicago, and began my clinical training supporting unstably housed adults and families (in my first year), and pregnant and parenting youth in Chicago Public Schools (in my second year). I completed my Master’s in Social Work in 2015, specializing in trauma responsive social work and violence prevention.

After graduating, I moved back to the East Bay, where I grew up, and worked for over 6 years in community mental health settings – focusing on supporting survivors of sexual violence, human trafficking and exploitation, interpersonal violence, and intergenerational trauma. First, I worked with transition aged youth in foster care and probation, as a community-based therapist. I then took a position as a school based therapist in an East Oakland public school, and was promoted to Lead Clinician of our multi-school program within a year. In 2019, I accepted a new role within the City of Berkeley, providing drop-in counseling, crisis intervention, and other therapeutic services at the Berkeley High School Health Center. Before the pandemic, I saw hundreds of students for short term care – meeting young people on their hardest days, building quick connections, and figuring out how to connect them to what they needed. When Covid hit, I helped to develop brand new service-delivery strategies; we learned how to provide in-person essential services alongside telehealth for the first time. I also began to return to what I love the most – longer term, deeper therapeutic work.

I started my private practice in 2021, and opened my Oakland office in Spring 2024. My practice focuses on providing an affirming, dynamic, and generative space where we can explore the experiences and feelings that need to come to the surface. I view therapy as another way of storytelling, an interconnected conversation where we can imagine, create, wonder, challenge, and notice the details of our experiences. I know that processing trauma looks different for each person, so I integrate diverse approaches to help each client heal and connect with their mind, body, emotions, and values. I have advanced training in a wide range of evidence-based therapeutic modalities, including Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), play therapy, expressive arts-based therapy, narrative therapy, and relational, attachment-focused psychodynamic therapy.

As a a white, Jewish, queer cis woman, I am committed to providing high quality, attuned, culturally humble, and affirming treatment. I honor the multiple and intersecting identities of my clients, and hold a lens on our work that recognizes and integrates strengths and values as well as structural and intergenerational trauma and systemic oppression. As a trauma therapist, I believe we can better understand interpersonal harm through examining social and institutional restraints that enact and re-enact power and control in our relationships. When we explore these harms with empathy and care, we can uncover truths that liberate and transform ourselves and our communities. This values-driven approach brought me to counseling over ten years ago, and keeps my work grounded in the complexity and interconnectedness of all our stories.