My approach to therapy is trauma-informed, liberatory, systemic, and collaborative. I believe that my role as a therapist is to use my skills and tools to hold space for you to find the answers, changes, and/or solutions you might be looking for.

While I am client-centered, I’m also not afraid to be direct, challenge you, or provide clear direction in our work together. My experience is that change happens in between sessions, if and when we are willing to try and do things differently. I like to meet you where you’re at with compassion, care, presence, and focus.

As a multiply marginalized person, I know that therapy is political, just like every other aspect of our lives, and I’m not afraid of addressing systemic issues in our work together.

How effective therapy might be for you depends on a few main factors, such as appropriate fit between therapist and client(s), as amply documented in the literature, and openness to the discomfort of change, which is why I offer a free 20-minute consultation.

If you’re interested in working with me, don’t hesitate to book a 20-minute online consult.

My training and professional background reflect my main special interest, that is humans and all the ways in which we connect with ourselves and one another! My first degree is in Linguistics and was completed in 1993 in Rome, Italy, at the Universita’ degli Studi Roma Tre. I also studied two years of Religious Studies at the Gregoriana University in Rome. In 1994, I achieved a Postgraduate diploma in Deaf Studies and Sign Language Communication from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, on a 6-months long scholarship from the European Union in 1993. 

After working for a non-profit focusing on Deaf people and technology, I was awarded a full teaching scholarship at the University of Reading to complete a PhD in 1999 in what would now be called Gender Studies. My focus was on the intersection of Disability, Gender, and Education, but I also gained invaluable experience teaching in Higher Education during this time, especially around areas of health inequities and gender. After some time teaching mostly non-traditional students in Higher Education, I chose to become a therapist and completed my Master of Sciences in Systemic Therapy at the University of Bedfordshire (UK) in 2006. 

When I moved to the so-called United States in 2008, I completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota. I am certified in Narrative Therapy, Sex Therapy, and Somatic ExperiencingⓇ. I am also trained (but not certified) in Dance and Movement Therapy. I am a Clinical Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and an Approved Supervisor and Supervisor Mentor for both family therapy (AAMFT) and sex therapy (AASECT), and WPATH certified gender specialist and mental health mentor. I have published several books, chapter contributions to edited books and anthologies, and peer-reviewed papers on gender, disability, Deaf education, sexuality, spirituality, relationships, mental health, and HIV. I have also been a Principal Investigator for the National Institutes of Health. 

For over two decades now, I have worked in a broad range of therapeutic services, including within schools, at home, in larger health services contexts, and in private practice. I have also trained, spoken, and presented to clinical and scholarly audiences in North America, Australia, Africa, and throughout Europe, both in person and online. 

All my work is rooted in liberation approaches across theology, pedagogy, mental health, philosophy, and public health. My work and approach is interdisciplinary in nature and is deeply influenced by decolonial, feminist, Indigenous, and womanist thinking. Much of what I know, I have learned from Indigenous, Black, Brown, Immigrant, Trans, Deaf, and Disabled scholars, community organizers, philosophers, writers, and artists. I am grateful to have been brought up with ancestral practices and a sense of belonging to place, language, and culture even though I chose to emigrate due to a combination of class status, socioeconomic reasons, lack of opportunities, and being who I am at a time when it seemed impossible to be authentically myself where I grew up. I believe that healing cannot occur in isolation or within the mind alone since we are embodied, relational beings, and I practice accordingly.