Biography
I am a core faculty member of the Mental Health Counseling & Behavioral Medicine Program and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Graduate Medical Sciences at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. From 1998 to 2011, I was on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. I worked during this period as a clinical and research psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital (2008-2011) and McLean Hospital (1998-2008). Although my general area of expertise is behavioral health disorders of childhood and adolescence, I have a strong interest in the neurobiological and psychosocial consequences of developmental adversity as well as effective, science-based interventions for such sequelae. To that end, I was an investigator on several NIH grant-funded projects focused on understanding the neurobehavioral effects of childhood maltreatment (e.g., sexual and physical abuse, verbal abuse, witnessing domestic violence, and other adverse childhood experiences [ACEs]). I also served as a researcher on a SAMHSA-funded center devoted to developing, adapting, evaluating, and disseminating effective treatment approaches for traumatized children and youth, such as Trauma Systems Therapy (TST). I am a former investigator and clinical research supervisor at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute. Clinically, I use a scientist-practitioner framework and provide science-based behavioral healthcare interventions. Specifically, I conduct applied behavior analysis, behavior therapy, and cognitive behavior therapy from both a developmental psychopathology and contextual/cultural perspective. My overarching mission is to improve the lives of children and adolescents who are either at risk for or already have impairing and/or distressing behavioral health problems.
I received my B.S. in Psychobiology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and my M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Binghamton University (SUNY) in Binghamton, NY.