I am a social work student, writer, artist, and lifelong creative who brings together clinical, expressive, and relational ways of understanding people and the world. My experiences across mental health, writing, movement, and the arts have shaped my belief that people are more than the labels or circumstances that may be used to define them. I am especially interested in the ways identity, relationships, systems, and personal narratives shape how we understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
My professional interests include trauma-informed and relational clinical practice, children and families, school-based mental health, and approaches that integrate narrative, psychodynamic, somatic, and expressive practices. I am particularly interested in working with people whose experiences have been misunderstood or pathologized; helping clients develop greater agency, self-understanding, and improved connections with self and others. My background in writing and the arts continues to inform how I think about healing, identity, and the stories we tell about our lives.
Before coming to Smith, I worked across mental health, writing, editing, and the arts. In my clinical work, I have been drawn to creating space for approaches that recognize the whole person, including developing the first movement therapy group of its kind at a community mental health clinic in Chicago and later starting a poetry group on an acute inpatient psychiatric unit. These experiences continue to inform my interest in creative, embodied, and relational approaches to clinical practice, as well as my belief in expanding what is possible within traditional clinical environments to make care feel more human and accessible. Outside of school, I write, make art, and am happiest when I am creating something, learning something new, or spending time with the people and animals I love.
