I am adept at conducting psychosocial assessments having completed hundreds throughout my career. That along with my specialized training and experience in trauma-informed care, led me to work as a mitigation specialist. 

My first job after earning my undergraduate degree was helping men and women transition to their communities upon release from prison. My first job after earning my master’s degree was as a psychiatric social worker in a county jail where I worked to ensure mental health care and other social services were provided to individuals in custody. Then, as a civilian for the US Navy and USMC I provided clinical mental health services to active-duty service members with substance use issues and later to homeless Veterans as a VA social worker. 

Trauma abounds in the populations where I’ve chosen to focus my career. Everything that happens to us has an impact on our brain. The impact on our brains varies depending on our environment, genetics, age, and circumstance. People aren’t born knowing how to manage traumatic experiences, stress, overwhelming thoughts, and feelings and all the other unpredictable events that take place in life. When systems fail these individuals and families and families then fail their children, all too often it culminates with involvement in the criminal justice system. 

My goal is to gather all the necessary information to tell the life story of our client in a way that demands acknowledgment of their human experience and how that impacts the circumstances surrounding their current criminal involvement.