I take a sociological approach and specialize in feminist qualitative methods to study the organization and politics of healthcare, spanning the areas of reproductive health and mental health. My research critically examines how health professions are established and organized, the consequences of cultural and structural reliance on the medical model, and health-related stigma. In the lineage of critical sociology, my goal as a researcher is to trouble elements of life we take for granted by studying the interactions and systems that make up the social world. My work brings into focus things that exist out of frame but have a big impact on how life is lived.

My work as a social scientist is informed by a 20 year career providing mental healthcare. I have worked as a mental health clinician in hospitals, primary care, community-based settings, and independent practice, always with a focus on reproductive life experiences including abortion, infertility, and the perinatal period. Working with people in these contexts inspires my research agenda and teaches me how to ask good questions, observe, and listen carefully. It has especially attuned me to the worthiness and power of tending relationships, a value I bring to all facets of my work.

In addition to my clinical work and scholarship at the intersection of health and social science, I am a longtime contributor to adoptee-led activism. Following the feminist ethos of “the personal is political,” I am especially committed to writing and speaking about adoption, reproductive justice, and politics of the family. You can find my writing on this and other topics published in scholarly journals, The Nation, and Parapraxis, and hear me discuss some of my research on A Health Podyssey.

​I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco and I maintain a small psychotherapy practice in Oregon. I live on land indigenous to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Umatilla, Cayuse, Oholone, Ramaytush, and Nimiipuu people, colonially known as Portland, the Bay area, and rural towns in the north Cascade and Wallowa mountains.