EXPERIENCE

I earned my Bachelor's degree in Social Work specializing in child welfare from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1988 and my Masters of Social Work from the Jane Adams School of Social Work specializing in school social work at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1989.

I began my career as a school social worker, focusing on children, families and their interactions within the school system. In 1990, I moved to California and continued this focus working in an outpatient psychiatric clinic. I received my license in 1993 and continued to focus on children and parents. I went on to work in schools for severely emotionally disturbed children and developed my skills in understanding and treating multiple psychiatric diagnoses in children and adults. I also furthered my interest in assessment and my experience with adults and the elderly by doing in home psychosocial assessments of the ill for the visiting nurses association. I was also able to add clinical supervision to my career experience while working as a therapist at the HELP Group. At this program, I was able to coordinate the social work intern program and supervise staff as well as interns.

In the mid 90s I moved to a new setting- an adult outpatient clinic at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, where I worked with top adult and geriatric psychiatrists. I still wanted the variety of working with children, so I started a private practice in Santa Monica and began doing assessments of severely disturbed children and teens for the County of L.A.

Eventually I transitioned to only doing private practice and received another wonderful opportunity. I was recruited to work as a consultant for an Employee Assistance Plan, providing assessments and short term therapy to a variety of kids and adults. These patients came from a variety of client companies and provided me with the opportunity to also do additional consultation at these companies regarding mental health issues. This eventually led to a position in 2006 as the on- site clinician for Fox Film and Television. I work on the lot 2 days a week providing evaluations, short term therapy, crisis intervention and consultation to management. I provide grief counseling when necessary and am able to teach seminars on various mental health topics, such as stress management, parenting and communication. I have been able to bring my experience in child development and parenting to the Fox Daycare Center. I continue to maintain my private practice in Santa Monica.