Called to Counseling
Grounded in decades of human-centered experience.
Overview
I’m a professional counselor in training, preparing for clinical practice after 26 years in business ownership, leadership, design, teaching, ministry, and advisory work.
Across those settings, the throughline has always been people:
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Listening closely
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Understanding needs that aren’t always easy to articulate
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Helping individuals develop and make consequential decisions
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Helping groups build clarity and shared direction
Counseling feels less like a departure from this work and more like a move closer to its center. I’m now preparing to bring that experience into clinical practice while developing the clinical knowledge, skills, and judgment the profession requires.
Preparation
I’m currently completing my M.A. in Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling at George Fox University, with an anticipated graduation in 2028. My training is helping me build the clinical knowledge, skills, and judgment needed to work responsibly with people whose lives are far more complex than any single theory or technique can capture.
How I’m Learning to Practice
My developing orientation is primarily existential and person-centered, supported by Gestalt, solution-focused, and multicultural approaches.
I’m especially drawn to work that combines:
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Deep listening and grounded presence
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Present-moment awareness
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Recognition of patterns, needs, and tensions
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Thoughtful challenge without taking agency away from the client
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Practical movement toward meaningful change
Who I Hope to Serve
My primary interest is working with adults and couples, particularly around relationships, conflict, identity, meaning, attachment, life transitions, and consequential decisions.
I’m also pursuing additional certifcation in spiritual integration, with an interest in helping clients engage questions of faith, values, meaning, and spirituality when those are important to them.
Preparing for Practicum
I anticipate beginning practicum in May 2027. I’m looking for a setting that offers strong supervision, meaningful client contact, and the opportunity to deepen my work with adults and couples while gaining experience across a broad range of presenting concerns.
Experience
For more than two decades, I’ve worked with people trying to understand where they are, what matters, what may be getting in the way, and how to move forward. Sometimes that work happened with one person. Sometimes with teams. Sometimes inside organizations trying to navigate significant change.
Individuals
I’ve coached, mentored, advised, taught, and supported people through development, difficult decisions, changing roles, and consequential moments.
I individually coached more than 200 design leaders and practitioners, helping them understand their current capabilities, identify where they wanted to grow, and gain perspective on their work and careers.
Groups
Much of my work has involved helping people make sense of things together.
I’ve facilitated conversations and workshops with teams, executives, students, and community groups, helping surface different perspectives, clarify what matters, build shared understanding, and move toward decisions and direction people could genuinely participate in.
Systems
I’ve spent my career understanding the environments around people: relationships, structures, expectations, incentives, and assumptions all influence how people experience their work and each other.
That experience has taught me to remain curious not only about what a person is doing, but also about what may be happening around them.
A Life of Work, Learning and Service
My path to counseling has been shaped by three long-running threads: a professional life centered on understanding people and helping them navigate complexity, an ongoing commitment to education and development, and more than two decades of teaching, mentoring, leadership, and care through volunteer ministry. These streams have developed alongside one another for years and are now converging in a more direct commitment to helping people understand themselves, their relationships, and the lives they’re trying to build.
Below, I've visualized my journey and important formative moments. It is best viewed on a large screen.
Thinking
I learn by listening, asking questions, making connections, and trying to turn it all into something useful. This is a small selection of writing, frameworks, presentations, and coursework that reflects some of that thinking in progress, shaped both by my experience and by what I’m now learning as a counselor in training.
Counselor Formation: My Emerging Clinical Orientation
While my approach to counseling is still forming, these theories are beginning to shape how I understand people, change, relationships, and the role of the counselor.
Case Study: Attachment, Spirituality & Clinical Integration
An attachment-based case conceptualization exploring how early relational experiences can shape expectations of closeness, safety, and whether love will remain available when it’s needed most.
Case Study: Counselor Ethics & Multicultural Considerations
A case-based exploration of how spirituality, culture, LGBTQ+ identity, counselor values, and professional ethics can be held together while protecting client agency.
Reflection: Advocating for Human Needs in a Divided World
An exploration of why human needs are easiest to recognize in crisis, easier to overlook when systems appear to be working, and worth advocating for before crisis makes them impossible to ignore.
Framework: My Emerging Model for Navigating Complex Moments
A developing framework for making sense of complexity, understanding what matters, moving toward grounded action, and allowing the resulting difference to become visible.
Contact
If something here sparks a question, connection, or possibility, I’d be glad to hear from you. I’m currently preparing for practicum beginning in May 2027 and especially welcome conversations with practices and supervisors who see a potential fit, along with others who connect with the ideas and work reflected here.