Trillium Leadership
What is your role and primary responsibility within the organization?
I have worked for Trillium Family Services since 2003 and am the Co-Chief Medical Officer serving the Mid-Willamette Valley and Central Oregon Regions. I love working with interdisciplinary teams and teaching and believe, whether we are staff members or clients, that mostly we learn new things with a lot of deliberate practice.
Trauma is the fault line upon which so much of psychiatric work rests and I continue to be keenly interested in both addressing trauma that clients, families and communities have suffered and bringing to the forefront both apparent and undiscovered strength and resilience.
What is a passion or hobby outside of work that brings you joy?
I have a special interest in suicide and self-injury prevention and am extensively trained in Dialectic Behavior Therapy. I co-founded one of the earliest adolescent DBT programs in the country in 1998. Since then, I have consistently trained and led DBT teams and worked with seriously self-harming and suicidal teens. Recently, I have been fired up by the tools the Zero Suicide Project has offered for working at organizational and community levels to prevent suicide.
What motivated you to pursue a career in mental health?
I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for 30 years and am originally from rural Ohio near Cincinnati. I have been interested in working with children as a career since I was a child hanging out with my mother’s first grade students and her elementary teacher friends. I also was really interested in medicine and child and adolescent psychiatry has been a perfect fit! I am an alumnus of Purdue University, Wright State University and the University of Washington.
My husband and I and our two college-age children all love sci fi and chocolate. I also love hiking and cross-country skiing and aspire someday to have a poem published on a billboard or bus.
