Consultation, Teaching & Training, and Facilitation

I enjoy engaging with other mental health professionals in thinking deeply about the people they serve, the work they do, and the settings they work within (both symbolic and real). I approach the work from a social, psychodynamic, relational lens. 

Over the past nine years, I have been fortunate enough to offer diverse learning experiences to various types of providers and professionals across the nation. These range from small classes within an institute to lectures at the university to state-sponsored online training for public sector workers. I enjoy it all because I love working with ideas and groups. Some examples include:

• (2024) Sue Fairbanks Lecture - Who is Free to Free Associate: Psychoanalysis and Social Ethics   
• (2023) Decolonial Practice(s): Expanding Modes of Living, Thinking, and Being
• (2022) (Dis)Ability in Our Practice, Theory, and Cultural Discourse
• (2020) Working While White: Grappling with Whiteness in Psychoanalytic Theory and the Clinical Setting  
• (2018-2024) It Is Not What You Look at But What Your See: Commercial Sexual Exploitaiton of Minors
• (2017) On Both Sides: Conscious and Unconscious Enactments of Race(ism) in the U.S. from a Psychoanalytic Lens
• (2015) Sexual Exploitation of Children and Unthinkable Horrors: How Social Workers Respond 
• (2015) What We Talk About When We Talk About Safety: Cross Cultural Issues and Privilege
• (2015-2020) Understanding and Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth 

Group work is powerful, challenging, undeniable, and very rewarding. Regardless of whether we are aware of it, we are often managing  groups, group process, and related dynamics. My group facilitation comes out of an interest in creating meaningful moments in which people can take up difficult work together, enhance understanding, and support growth. In particular, I have focused on group facilitation around the dynamics of power and harm that often emerge in groups due to inequity and/or limited information.