I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Queer Rites of Passage Guide, Educator, and Workshop Facilitator. I’ve worked extensively with youth in outdoor behavioral health settings, schools, rites of passage programs, and inpatient residential treatment centers. My foundational focus as a therapist, guide, and social worker is to cultivate and maintain trusting, safe, reliable, compassionate, and consistent relationships with the individuals and communities I work with. I understand that people are the experts on their own lives, and my role is to support people in uncovering and trusting their inherent and unique knowledge, strengths, gifts, and wisdom. My theoretical orientation informs all work I do, even work that isn’t explicitly therapeutic. Across diverse settings, I lean on theoretical orientations that situate human experience within broader structures of oppression, value lived experience, and maintain an unwavering optimism in the potential for human growth and transformation. I am openly transgender and center much of my work on supporting the LGBTQ+ community. An experienced educator and public speaker, I have designed and facilitated interactive gender diversity workshops for the National Wilderness Therapy Symposium, Youth Passageways, Oregon School Social Work Conference, and for Portland Public Schools. I believe in the transformative and healing powers of nature, where people can connect with various ecosystems to help them claim their gifts, deepen their sense of self, and find belonging in their communities.