What is your job title/your role at Scottish Rite for Children? 
I provide everything under the umbrella of psychological service to children and families on the inpatient medical unit and outpatient ambulatory clinics at Scottish Rite for Children. This includes consultative services to medical teams, psychological testing and assessment, parent management training and behavioral management for families, brief individual therapy and presurgical psychological evaluations, to name a few. The Psychology department also has a Postdoctoral Fellowship Training Program, where I am the primary supervisor for the Dallas campus. Additionally, I am also engaged in collaborative clinical research at Scottish Rite.
 
What do you do on a daily basis or what sort of duties do you have at work?
As a clinical psychologist, we wear many hats. If I’m in my clinic block, I can be seen in the ambulatory clinics consulting with providers and seeing patients, or on the inpatient unit visiting with long-term patients and families or teaching postsurgical patients different pain management techniques. If I am in my outpatient clinic, then I can be witnessed providing presurgical psychological evaluations, seeing new and ongoing therapy patients or managing crisis appointments. In between all of that, there’s designing and submitting my next research proposal; managing current research studies to ensure everything is running smoothly; attending committee and department meetings; supervising and training fellows, which includes didactic presentations and reviewing/signing off on their work; catching up on emails, orders, phone calls and team/patient requests; prepping my clinical interventions and test batteries for patients; program development; professional development; oh yeah, and lunch.
 
What was your first job? What path did you take to get here or what led you to Scottish Rite? How long have you worked here?
My first job was during high school, where I was hired as a shoe sales associate for Kmart. I think I just dated myself, as those stores no longer exist!
 
What do you enjoy most about Scottish Rite?
As I have always worked within large hospital corporations, I enjoy the small size of this organization. It means that I have generally been able to meet and interact with most Scottish Rite employees, which makes the work environment feel a little more “tight-knit.”  I also enjoy how Scottish Rite is willing to supply providers with preferred clinical tools so that optimal patient care can be provided within a timely manner.
 
Tell us something about your job that others might not already know?
Psychology is so much more than Freudian therapy, where you lay on a couch for hours facing the ceiling and the psychologist tells you how all your problems are related to your parents.  While many of our problems may be related to our parents (laughs), pediatric psychologists at Scottish Rite employ more of a behavioral health approach that seeks to assess what is preventing you from attempting, improving, growing or feeling better, and then using evidence-based techniques to help remove, improve or better cope with that blockage. We do this through a variety of methods, such as teaching, talking, modeling, modifying and sometimes interactive activities that patients find intriguing and enjoyable. I have also found it interesting that some professionals at Scottish Rite are unaware that psychologists are also well-trained in providing autism assessments.
 
Where is the most interesting place you’ve been?
This was a difficult question to answer. My initial gut response was Italy or Mexico because of the sheer beauty of the landscape, the architecture and each country’s rich history. But as I continued thinking about my response, I also wanted to provide an answer that was more local and accessible for others to enjoy as well. So, as my final answer, I decided on Meow Wolf immersive art gallery. While the original immersive art gallery I visited was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, they have since expanded to several cities and will soon be opening in Grapevine!
 
What is your favorite game or sport to watch and play?
NCAA D1 women's volleyball, because you get to see more of the technical skill in their play. I played club volleyball during graduate school and currently play in an adult city recreation league. However, my vertical is not what it used to be.
 
If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to?
I will keep this one light —1999 … think Prince.
 
What’s one fun fact about yourself?
Brace yourselves. I come from a huge (extended) family. I have 81 first cousins. That’s a fact.