I was guided to a career of listening and of helping others as a result of my own life experiences. I paired my life experience with a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Santa Clara University in 2000.

For 10 years, I’ve counseled Bay Area clients ranging in age from 3 to 74

who represent families and individuals from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Therapy covered a wide range of topics key to creating healthy, more functional families:

• PTSD, Bi-Polar, and ADHD children
• child and teen anger management
• anxiety and depression
• adjustment to change
• attachment and separation anxiety
• domestic violence and child abuse
• family mental health problems
• foster care-to-adoption
• blended families/multi-generational families

My treatment methods focus on what works for specific issues and include age and issue-appropriate techniques such as:

• talk therapy
• play therapy
• family systems therapy
• cognitive behavioral to sensory-motor therapy
• biofeedback
• attachment therapies

While I take my clients’ problems seriously, I often use humor in my

therapies since I’ve found that laughing can be as great a release as crying.

A focus for me is adoption and attachment work with parents who are either in transition of adopting a child or who have already adopted. I have a strong appreciation for the hard work that is necessary for parents to promote healthy attachment in their new family member! I am myself a transnational adoptee, so I not only empathize with the challenges these children face, but can help guide both the adoptee and the new parent as they work through the issues that arise during adjustment.