Get To Know Me

I wanted to be two things when I was young: an actor and a therapist.

Both draw on my fascination with people. Acting got there first.

I trained at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, but my own life was also becoming considerably more complicated. I grew up with a lot of challenges, and as a young adult I struggled with anger and substance use. Recovery required me to look pretty directly at parts of myself and my history I wasn't proud of—and eventually to figure out how to use those experiences rather than simply wish they hadn't happened.

That became an important part of how I understood helping people. I had been helped. I had also learned that some of the experiences that caused me the most difficulty could become sources of insight, empathy, and strength.

I went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where I majored in Social Welfare and minored in Acting—which, in retrospect, may be the most concise summary of me anyone has ever come up with.

Work, people, systems

While at Berkeley, I began what became a six-year career at Jewish Vocational Service in San Francisco, eventually working across six roles in employment services, program coordination, and instruction.

Much of that work was in underserved communities and with immigrants navigating the strange reality of having skills, experience, and sometimes entire careers that didn't transfer neatly into a new country because of licensing, policy, or other systemic barriers.

I later moved to City College of San Francisco, working in apprenticeships, vocational training, and entrepreneurship.

I loved teaching and training, but I kept becoming interested in what was happening underneath the problem someone had ostensibly come in to solve. Eventually I wanted to work closer to the core of people's suffering, rather than only with its manifestations.

So in 2020, I moved to New York to attend Columbia and become a psychotherapist.

Acting never really left.

Neither did singing, movement, or the need to make things.

For nearly three years, I sang with the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus, including touring and competing in the UK. Then, at 36, I discovered I was apparently a real dancer. I went on to perform with New Ground Dance Theatre and later helped found Mogli’s Movers, a small dance collective.

Discovering dance in my thirties was exhilarating and slightly rude. It would have been useful information to have earlier.

I don’t thrive for very long without some kind of creative pursuit in my life. And over time I’ve stopped seeing my creative, educational, and clinical work as particularly separate. Acting and psychotherapy, especially, ask some of the same things of me: curiosity, attention, emotional availability, responsiveness, and a willingness to use myself in the work.

Still figuring things out

I'm 45, and I'm only now really honing in on how my own neurodivergent brain works—what it needs, what it does beautifully, what makes it absolutely refuse to cooperate, and how to work with it rather than constantly trying to force it into somebody else's operating system.

And it is a blast.

That experience has deepened my professional curiosity about neurodivergence, trauma, emotional regulation, identity, and the explanations we construct for our own experience. It's also made me increasingly suspicious of the idea that understanding ourselves is something we're supposed to have finished by a certain age.

I'm queer, which has shaped how I think about identity, sexuality, relationships, belonging, and all the supposedly obvious rules about how a life is meant to be organized.

I also get deeply shy in rooms full of queer people. Especially queer men.

Make of that what you will.

A few other things seem relevant.

I care enormously about aesthetics. Color, clothing, space, movement, typography, music, light—they affect me physically and emotionally. I don't think aesthetics are separate from communication; they're one of the ways we communicate.

My apartment regularly contains a cacophony of sounds, voices, accents, songs, and characters. They are all coming from me.

I'm a pretty weird person. And I love it.

I share my home with an 11-year-old toy poodle who is routinely mistaken for a puppy. He is the best. He also drives me absolutely wild on a daily basis.

Humans fascinate me. Myself, especially, quite often. The mystery continues to unfold. I follow and shape it.

Connect With Our Team

Submit an inquiry to explore collaborative opportunities and receive expert guidance tailored to your mental health goals.