My life and my work have spanned the U.S. and beyond. Born into a bicultural family that moved frequently, I was raised in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and the Hudson Valley of NY. In college, I spent time in Washington D.C. and then Freiburg, Germany, and later spent a year in Berlin.

That experience cemented my love of language and the art of interpretation. I went on to pursue my first graduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a PhD in 20th Century German literature and film. That led me to my first career, as a tenured professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. If you’re curious about my academic writing, you can check it out here.

But as much as I loved teaching and research, I craved work that offered a deeper connection to others and that afforded more geographical and professional mobility. I made the difficult but joyful decision to leave behind my academic job, return to my beloved Bay Area, and embrace a new career in a field that had always called to me: counseling psychology.

I knew from firsthand experience that therapy could be life-changing, and I was committed to a vision of humanity as capable of great growth and transformation. For me, that meant taking the leap into a new profession supporting others along the path to greater insight and self-compassion.

Although people are sometimes surprised by my switch from academia to psychotherapy, I find the shift quite natural. Then as now, I embrace complexity and ambiguity, and I bring a love of close reading to everything I do. My fascination with metaphor and imagery shapes my work as a therapist, and I have a knack for gathering together the many complicated threads that comprise our individual and collective stories.

I believe that all people have an innate capacity to heal and change. This principle is illustrated by the images chosen for this website, which I have created myself over the years. They reflect my curiosity about the relationship between the surface and the depths, and my lifelong habit of seeking the beauty and wonder in unexpected places.