I arrived at this work by an indirect route. I started college intending to become an aerospace engineer, and it took a few years to admit that wasn't actually mine. With no one in my family able to help me choose a different direction, I finally did what I now regularly ask my own clients to do: I asked for help. My first real introduction to therapy was as a client, seeking career counseling. The therapist was a Black woman, and she helped me safely explore what I actually wanted, rather than what I thought I was supposed to want. That work is what pointed me toward psychology in the first place. It is also why career work has stayed at the center of what I do.

These experiences did more than shape who I am. They pointed me toward this work, and they still shape how I think about it now: individual healing and organizational health are not really two different subjects. Both are about what happens when a system, whether that system is one person's inner life or an entire team, has never had the chance to be truly understood.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., in a single parent household, living a mostly middle class life. Living in D.C. exposed me to people from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and racial and gender identities. Compassion, helping others, and being charitable were part of who I was from childhood.

I never went without food, clothing, or shelter growing up, but I did experience bullying, low self-esteem, emotional deprivation, and exposure to violence. My family struggled to be emotionally available with each other, and as a result, I learned early to be self-reliant. It took until young adulthood before I developed the capacity to trust and rely on others the way I now encourage my clients to.