I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Master’s Degree in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.  My clinical background includes several years of facilitating therapeutic and social skills groups, completing mental health assessments, and providing therapy to children, adolescents, adults and their families. I have worked in clinical, community mental health, and public school settings.  My areas of interest and specialty include working with behavioral problems, depression, anxiety, trauma including PTSD, phobias, social skills deficits, life transitions, and relationship problems.

My experience within the school system includes coordinating services between families and school staff members, facilitating social skills and cultural identity groups, advocating for the needs of students in special education, and developing literacy programs for English Language Learner (ELL) families.  Additionally, I have facilitated therapeutic groups and provided crisis management to a classroom of students qualifying as Emotionally and Behaviorally Disordered.  My clinical and school experiences have provided me with opportunities to work in multidisciplinary teams, which has broadened my counseling skills and strengthened my collaborative approach.

I come from a lineage of women dedicated to the field of social service.  From the time I was a small child, service was in my blood.  My great grandmother, grandmother and mother all had careers in helping professions, and social justice was a core value in my family.  Although I knew from a young age that I wanted to work in the fields of social work and the arts, it took me some time to determine how this would manifest itself.

My decision to become a therapist was cemented by my experience as a case manager, when I was working with families from New Orleans who had been traumatized by Hurricane Katrina, and then further traumatized by their subsequent relocation to Texas.   It was an honor to experience the resilience of a community that had been left behind after enduring unimaginable loss.  In response to these experiences, I witnessed people rebuild their lives from the ground up, start businesses, create new community away from home, and develop alliances in order to advocate for their needs.   This was a pivotal and profound period in my life.  It taught me how to join with families, and together discover ways to manage stress and integrate new coping strategies.