Before becoming a therapist, I studied Philosophy and Creative Writing in undergrad, and then turned down a spot in an MFA program in Creative Writing on the east coast where I grew up.  Although I chose a career as a therapist rather than a writer, I am delighted to see how creative and, at times intuitive, my therapeutic work continues to be.  I still do creative writing and I enjoy looking closely at words and language to uncover nuances of meaning and to inspire flexibility and freedom in thinking, my own and my clients’.  
I began my therapeutic career working with youth and families in South Florida in 2005 right after Hurricane Katrina and in the middle of the less devastating but still gnarly hurricane Wilma which hit Southern Florida hard where I had just moved in.  This meant that my first week of my first social work job involved driving around amongst uprooted Mangrove trees and confused iguanas to deliver basic survival supplies to families who had no electricity.  I was there to work with middle and high school students teaching social-emotional skills through the nonprofit, ASPIRA of Florida. I looked forward to my one-on-one meetings with students most that year; those conversations were ultimately what sparked my desire to go to graduate school to become a therapist. 
After graduating from The Wright Institute in Berkeley in 2008, I did a year of training in family therapy at the Family Institute of Pinole during what may have been the final era of the one-way mirror used for training purposes with clients’ consent and video-recorded sessions that were later reviewed during clinical supervision.  Although I cringed as much as my cohorts did at hearing and seeing my green therapist self on screen, my growth and learning that year was paramount and I still credit much of my ability to assess and intervene within complex family dynamics to that year of clinical sampling and resampling.  I then went on to work for The Ann Martin Center in their school-based program for 6 years where I provided individual and group therapy for children and their families in English and Spanish at several Oakland public elementary schools.  I was licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 2013, opened a private practice in Oakland, and have had the privilege of loving my job ever since. 
For fun I like to write songs with my 6-year-old, watch documentaries, hike, talk to strangers, and travel internationally with as many strollers, car seats, pack ‘n plays, CPAP machines, and boppy pillows as the airlines will allow.