Our Team

Through learning to author our own stories and frame our lived experiences in ways that best serve us, we maximize our potential for agency. In reclaiming the spaces around us we can begin to build a more equitable world and lay a stronger foundation for navigating our own healing journeys. I believe that as a therapist, I fundamentally do two things: support people in understanding and developing a working framework for telling their stories, as well as provide an honest, multifaceted, brave space for mutual collaboration and relationship development to solidify self-compassion, empathy, and the strength of the collective. To do this work, I insist that it is not my place to discern right from wrong, but to assist a client in evaluating aspects of their lives based on pragmatism (how well does this serve you), and values-aligned living (living in accordance with/adherent to the ideas, beliefs, and concepts that are important to you).

As a ceramic artist I have invested many years into the development of specific visual, verbal, and written language to give life to the immovable power of my own personal narrative. As an art educator I believe that representation, mentorship, and compassion are imperative to our ability to dream and imagine expansive futures that transcend the limitations of our present reality. Seeing people who look like we do reaffirms our belonging, reassures our humanity, and is a testament to how much we’ll matter in a space.

I believe in the transformative power of the collective. Community is a necessity of human life and the more we can collaboratively cultivate community, the more fulfilling, healthy, and value-aligned lives we will be able to lead. Trauma-informed care, acceptance, mindfulness, holding, emotional attunement, various critical social theories, and values exploration shape my clinical perspective and the work I do with clients in the therapy space.

I see the world through a lens of being a Black, pansexual, cisgender man who grew up on Chicago’s southside in a community afflicted with structural and community violence, disinvestment/systemic poverty, and father absenteeism. I bring the insight of those experiences to every session. I intend to be a full human in the therapy space as a way of practicing and promoting the process of authenticity for myself and for clients. I am also exploring dimensions to cultivating therapeutic love as a tool for secure attachment in named, well-boundaried, and continually reassessed ways.