“I applied for ADAA’s diversity membership scholarship opportunity to help me develop personally and professionally in an evidence-based, interconnected, and diverse organization committed to supporting clinicians and researchers to care for minoritized communities. Through the membership opportunity, I hoped to hone my leadership skills, establish long-term relationships with mentors, collaborators, and peers, and develop the clinical and research skills to be a culturally humble, sensitive, and competent clinician-researcher in the treatment of anxiety-related disorders.”
“One thing that I enjoyed the most about my ADAA membership was contributing to the ADAA 2021 Clinical Practice Symposium: The Nuts and Bolts of Working with PTSD, Depression, and Micro-Aggressions with Minority Clients Through the Lenses of CBT, ACT & FAP. It was a meaningful endeavor to underscore cultural considerations in clinical practice and disseminate applicable, culturally sensitive, and evidence-based interventions for trauma and OCD in diverse individuals. I am eager to continue working with ADAA as my values and goals align with the organization.”
“As an ADAA member, I am grateful to access the extraordinary annual conference, special interest groups, exclusive webinars, and robust journal articles, bolstering my educational and professional growth. I am also able to refer community members to ADAA’s resources on specialized topics, including the model minority myth, gender identity and OCD, and antiracism. Additionally, I have a platform to share my clinical research and learn about the most cutting-edge research on anxiety-related disorders in a supportive community.”
“Recently, I have been working on my first, first-authored manuscript on treatment outcomes in ethnoracial and non-Hispanic white individuals in a CBT and DBT-based partial hospital program under the mentorship of Dr. Courtney Beard. This has been a personally valuable opportunity to examine treatment outcomes in racially and ethnically diverse communities. I also will be starting clinical practicum at the OCD Institute at McLean Hospital, and I am eager and humbled to learn and grow as a student!”
I am clinical psychology doctoral student at William James College (WJC) in the Department of Clinical Psychology. I have primarily worked in community mental health and outpatient treatment settings. As a student research assistant in Dr. Courtney Beard’s Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) lab at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, I am assisting in examining culturally sensitive approaches to identify interpretation bias in anxiety and mood-related disorders among diverse populations. Additionally, I am examining the efficacy of CBT and DBT in ethnically and racially diverse populations in a partial hospital program. My research and clinical interests include developing and implementing affirmative, evidence-based treatments for anxiety-related disorders and trauma-related disorders in culturally diverse communities, including marginalized subgroups within ethnoracial communities (e.g., LGBTQ+ populations). In addition, I am interested in the traumatic sequalae of racism and ways in which systemic oppression relate to the development and maintenance of anxiety and trauma-related conditions.
