About Me

I believe in the potential for healing and wholeness, and I know the transformative power of both psychotherapy and mindfulness pathways. I believe we all have an essential radiance that we can rediscover by learning to offer steady presence and compassion to ourselves as we explore the obstacles and strengths within us. I seek to work with those who want to heal or grow and are ready to look deeply and honestly at what gets in the way.

I approach all of my work using an integrative orientation that is based in mindfulness teachings and practices and informed by humanistic/existential, psychodynamic, systems, feminist, and constructivist/narrative perspectives. I collaborate with each client or student to identify individual needs and goals, and our work together may take the form of longer term exploration that involves looking into the ways personal history influences the present, or it may involve a here-and-now focus on a specific issue calling for attention in the present.

Training & Credentials

I hold a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Georgia State University. I completed a predoctoral internship at the Palo Alto Veteran's Administration Health System in Palo Alto, California, and a postdoctoral fellowship at a community based agency in the Atlanta area. Prior to beginning private practice, I worked as full-time faculty at Emory University School of Medicine, serving as Clinical Director for the Adult Day Treatment Program at Grady Health System. I currently retain affiliation with Emory as Adjunct Associate Professor, maintaining involvement in clinical and research training and consultation. I have been in private practice since 2000 and have more than 30 years of clinical experience in public and private settings. I am licensed in the practice of psychology in the state of Georgia.

I have long been a member of the American Psychological Association and was named a Fellow of the Georgia Psychological Association, where I have also served as Chair of the Division of Women Psychologists. I've served on the Editorial Board, as a Consulting Editor, of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, a journal of the American Psychological Association. I currently serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, and I serve as an ad-hoc reviewer for several other professional peer-review journals. I have published peer-reviewed articles, and presented locally and nationally, on a range of topics related to psychotherapy, trauma, traumatic memory, suicidality, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, I have written a book on traumatic memory, Memory of Childhood Trauma: A Clinician's Guide to the Literature , published by Guilford Press.

I have studied mindfulness/meditation practices for more than 30 years. I have studied and practiced intensively for many of those years, learning from multiple teachers in the Insight tradition (Dori Langevin, Tara Brach & the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia & Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Thanissara & Kittisaro & Sacred Mountain Sangha, Mindful Schools, & the Awareness Training Institute) through one-on-one, silent retreat, group study, and study course formats. 

In addition, I am a graduate of the initial cohort of the 2-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP), an intensive training program led by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and certified through the Awareness Training Institute and University of California Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. I now serve on the MMTCP mentor faculty, mentoring mindfulness meditation teacher trainees.  I also serve on the mentor team for the Power of Awareness mindfulness meditation course taught by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield (offered through Sounds True), and I serve on the mentor team for Tara Brach's courses offered through NICABM.

With the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, I served as a mentor and facilitated IMCW's first online meditation group. In 2012, I co-founded the Atlanta Insight Meditation Community where I teach regularly (atlinsight.org).  In addition, I work individually with meditation students locally and internationally.  

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