I am currently an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, board certified in General Psychiatry as well as Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I have mostly been in clinical practice in many settings including twenty-four years in a private practice, almost twenty years in an urban Community Mental health Center in Rochester and recent years in collaborative settings through Strong General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Rochester.

Consultation to public school and other educational settings has also been a big part of my work including urban, suburban and rural public school settings and Center-based and Day Treatment Programs. I am continuing my own work in educational settings as well as working towards developing a more centralized approach to Mental Health Consultation to all the school districts and program in the region.

I am also part of a state wide, rapidly developing collaborative program with primary care providers to help them manage mild to moderate mental health needs in their practices, providing phone and face-to-face consultation as part of a grant through NYS OMH. This project includes developing and carrying out educational programs and trainings to help primary care providers better assess, manage and treat children in their practices with Mental Health Issues. Liaison Coordinators help Primary care providers find and connect with appropriate evidence-based treatment providers (when possible) in their communities.

I am also very involved with the training of new doctors and Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists through being an active faculty member at the UR School of Medicine. As I get further down the road in my own career in medicine, I realize how critical the practical skills are – patient and family interviewing, partnering with kids and their families in the often long and bumpy road of clinical care, clinical decision making in real world settings, understanding and using wraparound and crisis services and many more – for growing clinicians to learn. My goal is to pay forward as much as I can of what I have learned from my mentors and from the patients and families I have been privileged to meet.