I am a trauma informed, client centered and research-oriented practitioner. I meet clients where they are in the life course and facilitate a safe, nurturing and expansive treatment space. I strongly believe in the stabilizing, healing and empowering force of a highly skilled psychotherapist in effectuating tangible and positive change. While I am an eclectic clinician, I employ a number of diverse approaches including somatic, internal family systems, Jungian, attachment, brief psychoanalytic and psychodynamic orientations. When indicated behavioral and ancillary skills-based psychotherapies such as the Unified Protocol, DBT, CBT (I), REBT, etc are utilized in limited application.
I was born in the Sonoran Desert borderlands and educated primarily in South Africa, New York City and California. I became a master’s psychotherapist in 2017 and later trained as a doctoral psychologist re-specialization candidate and in public health at Columbia University in the City of New York. I undertook extensive field training in anthropology at Wits University, South Africa, which included more than three years of ethnographic study in Southern Africa and North America. While I have worn many hats in life, I enjoy facilitating high quality research oriented and impactful mental health treatment. I’ve seen the enormous positive and life changing impacts of therapy as a patient and provider.
I find joy channeling my inner child and playing outside with my beautiful four year old son Leif. I love stretching sore muscles after long runs, creating visual art, immersing in wilderness, cycling, deep conversation and present listening, exploring new languages and a very good book.
Professional Background
I am a psychotherapist, researcher, anthropologist, public health activist and multiform practitioner, currently affiliated with Columbia University in New York City and University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Previously, I have been a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar at Yale University and an Amgen Scholar at Stanford University.
I have written a number of publications on a range of topics including ADD/ADHD: The Field Guide to ADHD, on relationships and couples therapy including the book entitled, You Can Be Happy Too: How to Stop Conflict, Feel Closer and Reclaim Happiness in Your Relationship and in the fields of artificial intelligence, global health, anthropology and public policy.
Specialized Training
I hold expertise and training in therapies such as DBT (C), CBT (I), EFT, Psychodynamic, Intersubjective Psychoanalysis, Jungian, MDFT, Acceptance and Mindfulness (MBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Gottman, PCIT, play therapies (floor play/DIR), Triple P Parenting, REBT, narrative, somatic/trauma-informed, arts and sensory and movement therapy, schema-focused therapy, STEPPS, and short term, humanistic, integrative and client-focused therapies. I have received additional training from the UCLA Semal Center for Neuroscience, Weill Cornell Medicine/New York-Presbyterian, Spirit Rock Insight Institute, the Ojai Foundation, Columbia University Spirituality Mind Body Institute, UC Davis Children’s Hospital, Stanford Children’s Hospital and Yale University School of Medicine, among others.
In addition to individual client work, I enjoy facilitating inclusive group therapy, micro-schools, workshops, seminars, intensive retreats, and consulting on special topics such as boundaries in intimate relationships, psychedelic integration treatment, mindful intentionality in organizational leadership, and coping effectively with critical life transitions.
Training History
I first began psychotherapeutic practice in the United Kingdom in 2017 upon graduating with a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and Counseling from Columbia University in New York City, USA. I had not planned to practice clinically as a therapist (rather I had planned to attend an NIH MSTP MD/PhD program) but thought I could greatly contribute and positively influence people’s lives now while pursuing doctoral school and other work. I had also decided that many approaches to the commercialization and privatization of Western medicine broadly had often made people sicker not healthier. I was first joined as a psychologist with the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners in 2017 and as a family, we later moved to Copenhagen, Denmark where my son Leif (now 4) was born. As in many countries, psychologists, counselors, and psychotherapists do not obtain licensing or regulatory approval except in some cases to work with vulnerable populations.
In Denmark and the United Kingdom as in many countries in the world, the practice of counseling, psychology and therapy broadly is not a regulated endeavor as was the case until 2009 in California for counseling psychology. However, many practitioners do voluntarily join regulatory bodies as an ethical choice as I have selected to do early on. Many practitioners often complete certificate short courses of 12 weeks or a part-time year course and then start practicing. In fact, there are many other forms of notable training and education approaches such as at Jungian or psychoanalytic institutes which while offering short continuing education courses that I have participated in often require many years (4-6 years or more) and are regulated in North America in California and New York as psychological professions.
Many psychologists (including at points myself) practice at the master’s level given that until the 1980s and 1990s this was largely the norm and continues to be the dominant global standard. The US States like Vermont, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico continue this practice of master’s level regulation and training/education requirements today. Many psychologists can now become medical psychologists and practice psychiatric medicine in the United States and additionally in a limited sense in other countries such as the Netherlands. This is an area of interest given my biomedical and neurosciences background and because of the grave shortage of prescribing psychiatric providers in the United States. Given such, I have sought further training, education, and CE in psychiatric prescribing medicine and interrelated areas.
I speak to my clients/patients and others about the great diversity of types of education, training, and ways to arrive at the same types of practice as a psychotherapeutic practitioner under a large alphabet soup of titles and overlapping practices both in the United States and globally. Patients/clients must have a clear and ethical understanding of the many types, presentations, and diversities of psychotherapeutic treatment as part of the informed consent and treatment processes. In fact on such note, regulatory bodies and researchers have found that the public can autonomously make informed decisions, be protected, risk can be adequately managed and better care is often provided when governmental bodies do not attempt to regulate or over-regulate the licensing of psychotherapeutic treatment.
In 2021 (applied 2019) during the SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic and when returning to the United States, I later received my first clinical training license in the US state of Washington. I have been practicing in a part-time manner where I can be most impactful since this licensure. I later applied for and received further training licensure in states like Colorado and Michigan and I have expanded where I can practice in the United States. I further underwent a comprehensive assessment of my education, training, and experience, which has been assessed as being equivalent to a six-year Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC) accredited sequence of study in clinical psychology in the training of psychologists completed in Australia.
I was an Amgen fellow at Stanford University in the Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics department lab at Stanford Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California, which was located next to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the hospital (NICU). I enjoyed living on the Stanford campus (often called “The Farm”) in the large stately Mars House for a time. I brought my basic sciences and neuroscience background from Berkeley to assist on projects focusing on the testing and development of early reading fluency intervention in e/m health. We also focused on piloting and studying life course treatments and interventions for developmental delay with a focus on neonatal intensive care (NICU) infant populations. During this time I developed and presented a project in the fields of clinical psychology and neuroscience which was a briefly piloted application using a custom-developed Android tablet with the ODK framework, entitled “Investigation of a Novel mHealth Behavioral Intervention Technology (BIT) for Improving Attention in Young Children.” The early fellowship in addition to the Yale University Robert Wood Johnson award laid the pathway for the publishing of my first book and further education, training, and experience in clinical psychology and counseling.
In this further training in addition to my South African work in Anthropology, I focused my doctoral dissertation research entitled Three Essays on Health Inequality at Columbia University in the Department of Health and Applied Educational Psychology on the development of a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) language model and Python application that integrates a developed psychological therapeutic approach. This therapeutic AI app-based approach encourages the paradigm of positive health self-efficacy-seeking behaviors based on Albert Bandura’s and others’ work on the critical importance of highly developed self-efficacy as a very high-impact construct modulative of positive health. The core further contribution of this work developed in three essay format is a focus on last mile and highly scarce populations with a methodological contribution to the scholarly understanding of health inequality as chiefly a form of intentional coloniality.
I am very excited to continue my training, education, and research and to embody a deep openness and curiosity for it all in the pursuit of positively contributing to society and others — wherever this may take me!
On Licensing and Telehealth Practice
Psychotherapy, counseling, and psychological practice are highly regulated and complicated in the United States which is unlike most countries in the world. It may or may not be legal for me to deliver services where you live. Please contact me to discuss. I am variously credentialed and able to deliver treatment in the United States and the countries of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the wider European Union (EU) under certain circumstances. There are further jurisdictions where I can practice or otherwise facilitate services. Kindly contact me to discuss this further.
I offer services via telehealth predominantly. I am however presently offering limited services in person in compliance with applicable policies, laws, rules, and/or regulations. I am currently under supervision and/or liaison consultation where necessary. The jurisdiction, location and type of services dictate what services can be legally delivered and under what titles. Psychological and counseling services focus on emotional concerns with diagnostic labels whereas coaching focuses on moving individuals effectively towards behavioral change and facilitating education, skills training and support. This includes titles utilized whether as a “Counselor,” “Psychologist,” “Psychotherapist,” “Psychologist Candidate” or “Coach” for example, and whether treatment, services, or coaching are more oriented to psychological, counseling, behavioral health, coaching, education, etc.
In North American jurisdictions psychological and counseling services are delivered under supervision where necessary and titles such as Psychological Candidate or Counselor are used where legally necessary to communicate the training nature of the practice if applicable and the sometimes limited and/or supervised nature of services. This American Psychological Association (APA) ethics article provides a brief discussion of the enormous complexity and appropriateness of psychotherapeutic treatment titling in the United States.
This above explanation is not legal advice nor a comprehensive review of rules, laws, policies, etc applicable globally or within North America as jurisdictional law, policies, and rules for professional practice vary significantly. Other related services such as consulting, psycho-education, health education, and/or coaching are not regulated nor licensed and do not fall under the practice limitation for certified/licensed out-of-state or out-of-country practitioners.