Background

Learning from experience

Postgraduate education and advanced clinical training

I graduated from Loyola School of Social Work in 2020, having completed a field placement in South Side Chicago Public Schools through the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.

I dedicated a combined 15 years to advanced clinical training, between the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, a UK-based disability psychotherapy training program for independent practitioners led by Dr. Pat Frankish, the Infant and Young Child Observation program at the International Psychotherapy Institute, Introduction to Counseling and Psychotherapy through the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Introductory Lectures with the British Institute of Psychoanalysis, and fellowships held at the New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center (2013-2014), and the Baltimore-Washington Center for Psychoanalysis (2023-2024).

Reflective practice roots, disability psychotherapy, and advocacy work

My practice began as a participant-observer reflecting on everyday life, group dynamics, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans. I continued this role in residential settings for people with disabilities in the Midwest, witnessing the effects of group homes on the mental wellbeing of individuals in care who did not have access to psychotherapy that could do justice to their inner worlds.

From historically significant therapeutic schools, to Baltimore City Public Schools, and international education policy research

I went on to work at historically significant therapeutic schools including the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago (the legacy of Bruno Bettelheim), and the Hanna Perkins Center in Cleveland, Ohio (affiliated with Anna Freud), where I served as a consultant to a daycare at a Central Cleveland housing project.

I continue to do outreach work in Baltimore City Public Schools, reflecting on Donald Meltzer’s psychoanalytic model of the person-in-environment, the focus of an independent research project I began at the archives of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, just before the pandemic.

Innovative work, and ongoing contributions to the field

My approach is informed by international perspectives on child psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. This foundation has led me to do innovative work incorporating affinities like Minecraft into sessions with children on the autism spectrum. I have presented my work nationally and internationally, and have served on the faculty of the International Psychotherapy Institute, where I taught Infant Observation.