About
My first career was in art history. After earning a BA and MA from Williams College and a PhD from the University of Chicago, I secured a tenure-track position, the milestone I had long worked toward. Yet in reaching that goal, I recognized a deeper truth: external success does not guarantee internal fulfillment. That realization led me to examine not just my career path, but the frameworks that shaped my sense of self. It also made clear how easily a life can look coherent from the outside while no longer feeling fully aligned from within.
Shifting from academia to psychotherapy (MSW, NYU) was a reinvention, not a rejection. I carried forward what mattered most from my academic life: curiosity, analytical rigor, and an appreciation of complexity. I had long been drawn to what lies beneath the surface — how patterns and meanings shape a person’s experience — and psychotherapy gave me a way to work directly with those deeper currents in real time and in relationship. That background continues to shape the way I listen: with attention to nuance, structure, and the often-unexamined logic behind how a person has come to live as they do.
These sensibilities now shape my clinical work and guide how I help clients move toward lives that feel more authentic and sustainable, particularly when they are contending with pressures, expectations, or identities that no longer fit as they once did.
How I Work
I have more than a decade of experience helping clients navigate anxiety, burnout, depression, and major life transitions. Many of my clients are thoughtful and accomplished yet struggle with longstanding pressures and expectations that no longer fit. Often, they are functioning well on the surface while feeling inwardly constrained by old standards, inherited roles, or ways of living that no longer feel fully their own. My approach is grounded in psychodynamic and relational theory and supported by mindfulness practices that build resilience and tolerance for the stress that often accompanies change.
Much of my work involves helping clients understand and gradually shift the internal frameworks that shape how they see themselves and make decisions. Untangling means recognizing patterns that have gone unexamined and understanding the logic behind them. But insight isn’t the finish line; it’s where the work begins. The task is to turn awareness into action: to live, not just think, differently.
What I Believe
Therapy should not be an endless cycle of sessions without movement. Coping skills and insight are not enough on their own. Therapy is an investment of time, effort, and money, and I take seriously the responsibility of helping clients develop a steadier, clearer sense of self — one that feels internally aligned, not just outwardly accomplished, and able to act with insight and choice rather than force of habit.
When outward accomplishment no longer feels like enough, therapy can help you understand why — and what comes next.
