I received my BA in Cultural Anthropology and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from New York University, my MSW from the Simmons University School of Social Work, and my Ph.D from the Smith College School for Social Work.  I also earned a post-graduate certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.  I am an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and a Lecturer in the Doctorate in Clinical Social Work program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice, where I am also Affiliated Faculty with the Program for Psychoanalytic Studies.  I previously held faculty appointments at the Smith College School for Social Work and Lesley University, and have taught at a number of different psychoanalytic institutes nationwide.  I am currently a Member-At-Large on the Board of Directors of APA Division 39 (Psychoanalysis & Psychoanalytic Psychology), Past President of APA Division 39 Section IX (Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility), and Associate Editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.

My work as a psychotherapist, academic, and teacher are all animated by a desire to explore and address things that wound, traumatize, and alienate people.  As a therapist, I specialize in working with people who have experienced profound trauma, often in their early lives, and usually related to various forms of abuse and neglect.  Some forms of abuse and neglect are perpetrated by people close to us, including our family members; other forms are related to different kinds of structural violence like racism, gender discrimination, poverty, and ableism.  Often, these kinds of abuse and neglect are interrelated.  All are crucial to address, in therapy and beyond.

This way of seeing the world is also the frame through which I approach my work as an academic and a teacher.  My scholarly work is focused on the ways in which White Supremacy does harm to everyone it touches, and on using psychoanalysis and qualitative research to understand White Supremacy and the forms of structural violence and trauma that follow from it.  As a teacher, I have worked with everyone from high school students to post-doctoral colleagues, across a number of different disciplines.  I bring an interdisciplinary approach to everything I do, including my practice as a therapist.