Empowering you to
live your best life.
Navigating life’s challenges together, helping you to create a new path and reach your full potential.
A Little More About Me
Clinical Experience
In addition to providing therapy in a private practice setting, my clinical experience includes working with young children in foster care, former gang members battling substance abuse and HIV, and elderly clients diagnosed with cancer.
Please see this specific experience below:
Tarzana Treatment Center
- Provided individual and family therapy in a residential alcohol and drug treatment program for adolescents and adults struggling with substance abuse/addiction and infected with HIV.
- Facilitated weekly communications,
self-esteem, and HIV psychoeducational therapy groups.
The Wellness Community
- Co-facilitated two weekly groups, which based on principles of psychoneuroimmunology, provided psychological and emotional support for cancer patients and their families.
- Provided grief and loss counseling and
short-term therapy for group members and their families.
Masada Homes Foster Family Agency
- Provided case management for
African-American and Hispanic children placed into foster care. - Launched and supervised a Clinical Therapy Program for foster children.
- Independently created and led a weekly Foster Parent Support Group.
- Taught Parenting classes to prospective foster parents.
- Trained foster parents in crisis management and provided help in how to work effectively with foster children’s emotional and behavioral issues.
Coaching
I’m also a certified professional coach. I often draw on this training, incorporating coaching concepts and techniques into my work as a therapist. This includes having you identify the values that are most important to you in the current and/or next phase of your life. For many people, this is the first time you’ve been asked to consciously list what is most important to you. This can be life changing because living out your stated values increases the chances of you experiencing more happiness and fulfillment in your professional and personal life.
Teaching Experience
In addition to my clinical and coaching experience, I taught elementary school for several years in the Los Angeles Unified School District, working primarily with underprivileged, Hispanic and African-American students. I also was a community college psychology instructor for over twenty years with the Los Angeles Community College District. During this time, I taught several courses including Introductory Psychology, Life-Span Psychology: From Infancy To Old Age, Social Psychology, and Principles of Group Dynamics. All of my classes were comprised of a culturally diverse group of students who came from different academic and socioeconomic backgrounds. There is no doubt that though I was their teacher, they also taught me. I learned so much from my students, as they brought me into their worlds in such personal and profound ways. This education provided me with a deeper understanding of those who are different from me. This understanding, along with increased cultural sensitivity, allows me to better meet the unique needs of my therapy clients.
Personal Experience
Then there is life itself. Life has been one of my most profound teachers. Losing my father when I was only nine years old. Being a middle child and raised by a single mother. Losing my younger brother to chronic mental illness. Struggling with my sexuality throughout my teen and young adult years and eventually celebrating my identity as a gay man. Having lived in three different countries on three different continents. Marrying the love of my life- a man of another race and from across the world in Africa. Adopting and raising my beautiful son, who is also of another race and from Africa. With the two most important people in my life being African-American, I personally see the challenges they face moving through life as black males. All these experiences and more have widened my perspective on people and life, and have shaped who I am as a person and as a therapist. My own struggles and life experience allow me to connect with my clients on a deeper level and to have greater compassion, empathy, and understanding for the challenges and experiences they face in their own lives.
