In 1990 I earned my doctoral degree from the University of Michigan.  During the course of my graduate training, I completed internships at both the University of Michigan’s Child and Adolescent Hospital and Chelsea Hospital’s departments of Substance Abuse and Psychiatry.  I then became a staff psychologist at Chelsea Hospital working with patients in the substance abuse and mental health clinic as well as a supervising psychology interns.  Subsequently I became a supervising psychologist for St. Joseph’s Priority Health assessment and treatment clinic where I was in charge of developing and overseeing the program for children and families as well as supervising the child and adolescent clinical staff.  Since 1997, I have worked full-time in my own practice.

Throughout my career, I’ve pursued my passion, first developed as a teacher, for working with children in their natural environment, their schools.  For over twenty-five years I have worked for and consulted with school districts where I helped develop and implement a school-based group intervention for children from divorced families, affective education, anti-bullying and social skills programs within classrooms.  Consulting with many parents, administrators and teachers in both regular and special education settings, I have successfully shared many of my clinical skills with the adults who work with children everyday.

I continue to integrate my wide breadth of professional experiences into  my private practice.  I enjoy working with people of all ages who are facing many different challenges in their lives.  To this end, I work with children and their parents on behavioral, school and peer-related problems, I provide therapy for adults with work, family, emotional and substance-abuse problems and also help couples in marital and other committed relationships.  Additionally I am experienced in working with the LGBT community.  I have also continued to provide supervision and consultation to other therapists.

Over many years of clinical practice, I’ve learned to integrate training and experience in psycho-dynamic, family systems and cognitive behavioral therapy. I seek ways to collaborate with each client to decide the best approach for effecting positive changes for their unique set of problems. Recently, a client who had been working with me for some time asked, “What school of psychology do you practice?” When I asked the client what school did he think that I practiced, the client answered, “The practical school”. I experienced this as high praise since it reflected many years of trying to learn to help my clients make changes in specific and concrete ways.