Education & Licensure

• Licensed Psychologist, California (#34391) and Massachusetts (#11449)

• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard University Department of Psychology

• Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, UCLA (2019)

• Predoctoral Internship, UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services

• B.A., Psychology, Harvard University (2012)

I discovered my passion for clinical psychology and interest in research when I was an undergrad student at Harvard. My first real research study was my honors thesis that studied how adolescents respond to stress. I continued working in this area of research as a study coordinator in Dr. Kate McLaughlin's Stress & Development Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. It was in this role that I also realized my specific research interest in mental health interventions, after I had the opportunity to co-develop a stress reduction curriculum for Boston Public Schools. I went on to complete my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at UCLA, working with Dr. Denise Chavira and Dr. Bruce Chorpita, and completed my predoctoral internship at UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services. My dissertation was an opportunity to develop a digital mental health intervention — StriveWeekly — for preventing anxiety and depression in university students. I did so by conducting a series of studies, including: (1) a systematic review to inform skills modules and prevention program design; (2) a multi-site marketing study at UCLA and Yale to inform the program branding and recruitment strategies; (3) an open trial at UCLA to test the feasibility and acceptability of a prototype; and (4) an RCT at UCLA to test the clinical effectiveness of the first StriveWeekly platform. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard with Dr. Kate McLaughlin and Dr. John Weisz, I co-led development of a primary care screening and early intervention program for adversity-exposed adolescents, as informed by existing neuroscience and physiological research about target mechanisms (e.g., heightened emotional reactivity, social information processing biases).

Across this journey, I also discovered my passion for teaching and mentoring. I started as a teaching assistant for courses on: the Science of Stress, Introductory Abnormal Psychology, Psychology of Addiction, and Clinical Psychology of Childhood & Adolescence. Since then, I've taught as a lecturer at UCLA and Harvard, including courses on: Introductory Clinical Psychology, Psychology Research Methods, and the History of Psychology. My role as a teacher is to build an engaging, accessible, and inclusive learning environment that inspires students to take the skills and knowledge they build in the classroom and go out into the world with a passion for making a positive impact on society and their fellow humans. I have also dedicated myself to mentoring and advising through a range of roles, such as serving as a Resident Dean at Harvard College, or as a supervisor of undergraduate research assistants and honors thesis students. My mentees are co-authors on many of my publications and presentations.