About Me

I grew up on the West Coast, in both Washington State and California. I went to Humboldt State in Northern California for undergrad and majored in Psychology. After undergrad, I worked in low-income areas of the East San Francisco Bay Area doing paraprofessional counseling with middle schoolers and LGBTQ teens. After three years, I decided to pursue my doctorate in Clinical Psychology and I got my Psy.D. at the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology. During a full-time internship at Kaiser Permanente during my final year in my graduate program, I fell in love with the work and patients here.

About my practice

Populations: Adult, Group, Seniors, Spanish-speakers. Specialties: Anxiety, Bipolar, Depression, Grief and Loss, LGBTQ, Mood Disorders, OCD, PTSD, Trauma, and other chronic conditions. Interventions: CBT, DBT, and ERP. I use a variety of approaches including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, among others, and I use mindfulness where appropriate. Stylistically, I am warm and gentle but also direct. I also use a lot of humor. I am bilingual (English/Spanish) and have worked with patients from a wide variety of backgrounds (i.e. ethnic, religious, LGBTQ, etc). I work as a team with our specialists, pharmacists and others to coordinate my patients' care. My goal is to provide the most appropriate care for my patients, so they aren't spending extra time or money to get the care they deserve.

How I thrive

I enjoy spending time with my family and friends. I love being active, especially hiking and lifting weights, but relaxation—reading, taking walks, meditation, movies, playing pool, listening to music—is also important to me.