My initial interest and decision to become counselor stems from my involvement with the New Jersey foster care system. I have been a ward of the state since I was fifteen years old. Later on, I was allowed to live with a family as part of a kinship legal guardianship. While living in foster care, I encountered many systemic barriers that made it very difficult to succeed without very specific and important supports. I was lucky. If it hadn’t been for the right people acting as supports for me at exactly the right time, I wouldn’t have ended up graduating let alone becoming a counselor and I kept thinking how there was something very wrong and unjust about about the lack of meaningful support that most foster youth receive. I decided that I wanted to give to others what had been given to me in some capacity, thus I decided to pursue working towards licensure as a counselor.

I honestly work well with people from almost any background as a result of the socioeconomic environments I was raised and educated in. In the past, I've worked in urban mental health community clinics that have served a diverse set of clients from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as well as ages ranging from 6 to 90+. Because of my own age and personal history, I tend to work best with adolescents, young adults, and those navigating through life stages and transitions having to overcome systemic barriers out of their control. However, I love working with people in general and can be flexible to your specific needs.

I get excited to work with foster care youth and adolescents working through particularly rough life transitions in their teenage and young adult years. However, I get excited to work with anybody navigating a particularly rough life transition.

You know, I always think about how there's people who have viewed the glass as either half full or half empty. But in reality, the cup is always full. It's either full of air, or full of water, or a combination of different things. How you interpret and respond to things entirely depends on way you look at the cup. In reality, life is full of both good AND bad things. Without one, the other would not and could not have any meaning to us. Your version of "hard" is different from my version of "hard". But at the end of the day, everybody has a hard time every so often. It's not what happens to us or the struggles that we deal with, but how we respond to things that defines who we are. What happens to you is not always your fault, and it may be an explanation for things, but it's never an excuse for doing harm either to yourself or someone else. We all have a unique personal responsibility in that regard: As long as you try your best, and you're not hurting anyone else or yourself, you're perfect the way you are. That's what I wish all clients knew.

I chose to practice at Thriveworks because I thought it would provide me with a unique opportunity to develop my practice further by bringing me closer to a more private practice oriented model. I'm also interesting in meeting a wide variety of other professionals in a field that I love. I also chose Thriveworks to help me have ongoing opportunities to pursue professional development. In this field, it's so important for us to constantly strive for self improvement. We are no different from clients in that regard.

Seeing a client overcome an obstacle that they've been struggling with for a long time, big or small. The look and feelings they express as a result of their own hard work and progress genuinely motivates me.

You can expect to be heard and listened to and treated as a whole and genuine person. You can also expect to be well informed about what therapy with me is going to look and feel like, what your responsibilities as a client are, and what my responsibilities to you are.

My goals for the first session are always to inform the client of the expectations for how therapy ideally works as a process, to get to know you, and for you to get to know me. The most important thing in counseling is the nature of our professional relationship. So building that is always my priority from the very start. After the first session, you can also expect to have a good understanding of the process of therapy, the time-limited nature of our professional relationship, confidentiality (and the limits thereof), and your personal responsibilities towards yourself as a client. Additionally, we're going to talk about some tentative goals you might want to begin working on, which we will continue to discuss and specify during the following treatment planning session.

I care about you. Professionally, of course. We will not become personal friends nor acquaintances outside of therapy, but I am personally invested in your growth and wellbeing.

I like to play video games, go hiking, hanging out with friends on the weekends, surfing, reading, anime/manga, archery, playing piano, listening to music that you've probably never heard of, and generally just learning new things. I built my own computer and like to tinker around and teach myself new hobbies or skills. When I'm not doing any of those things, there's a solid 70% chance I'm napping.

It's cliché, but my defining personal characteristic is that I'm genuine. I hate the idea of wearing "masks" or being a different version of myself around different people. I like to wear my heart on my sleeve.