Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Medicare
Optum/United Healthcare
Our life has seasons, and sometimes we feel connected, vibrant, and on a path that feels designed for us. Other times we can feel unmoored, stuck, and unsure we are moving in the right direction. Feelings of sadness, anxiety, and disconnection can complicate our efforts to fully engage in what life has offered us. Colt believes the people he works with are experts on their own experience, and have an innate sense of when things aren’t where they want them to be. He uses evidence-based interventions that include exploring and deepening his client’s understanding of their own values, and then using those values to build a life aligned with what is most important to them. Colt believes in moving through therapy shoulder-to-shoulder with his clients, engaging in a process of mutual discovery and collaborating on a path forward. Making the decision to come to therapy can be a hard one, but is often the first step towards overcoming those barriers to getting what you want from life.
Colt has worked for the last eight years in community health settings in a variety of capacities serving individuals struggling with mental health challenges, addiction, issues related to sexual identity, and chronic illnesses including Hepatitis C and HIV. Colt earned his Master of Arts in Social Work at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and received ongoing training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in a post-graduate fellowship. Colt is a member of the National Association of Social Workers and the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.
Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
BCBS HMO Medicare Advantage (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Medicare
Optum/United Healthcare
Hannah provides clinical therapeutic services to individuals and couples. She is warm, compassionate and eager to partner with clients. Hannah uses a strengths-based approach and believes in the power of therapeutic relationships. It is a goal of hers to listen and understand clients and help them learn appropriate coping skills that can help them outside of the therapy session. She understands the courage it takes to ask for help.
Hannah is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She earned her Masters of Arts from The University of Chicago, The School of Social Service Administration, where she was awarded the Brinks Fellowship in Family Support. For over 15 years, she has provided clinical services to individuals, families and couples. Hannah’s areas of expertise include working with individuals or couples impacted by infertility, high-risk pregnancies, grief and loss, parenting challenges, working through life-stage and career transitions, and experiencing depression and anxiety.
Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Medicare
Optum/United Healthcare
Sacha is a Licensed Marriage and Family therapist who believes healthy relationships are the stepping stones to healing, processing, and understanding not only each other but also ourselves. While utilizing Gottman, emotion-focused, strategic, and experiential approaches, she seeks to create a space for clients to feel safe in their therapeutic process. She also provides a space for couples to reconnect, rebuild, and redefine their relationship at each stage of their lives.
Sacha acknowledges each client’s experiences as their own while providing a systemic perspective to assist them in their process to self-discovery. She has experience with guiding both individuals and couples through life transitions, anxiety, depression, relational challenges, and emotional healing. Sacha often works closely with clients to build skills around communication, healthy boundaries, and interpersonal relationships. She understands for people to process life’s challenges they need to experience a supportive, earnest, and genuine environment. Sacha provides that with empathy, cultural sensitivity, humor and a deep care for human nature.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489) Humana
Optum/United Healthcare
Deanna earned her Master of Arts in Social Work at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and a Bachelor’s in Theatre from New York University. Prior to coming to LifePath, Deanna worked in community-based mental health treating violence intervention and prevention, child welfare, crisis intervention, LGBTQ+ identities and their intersections, foster care and adoption, grief and loss, complex trauma, and intensive outpatient treatment.
Deanna believes a person’s identity, values and beliefs guide their path of healing. Therapy can be a way of liberating ourselves from limiting ideas, societal messages, oppression and isolation. Deanna sees the client as the expert in their experience and collaborates with them to develop a space to learn and grow. Her therapeutic approach is both systemic and person-centered with a focus on inherent strengths and resilience. Deanna pulls from relational, attachment, family systems, racial trauma and polyvagal theories while using such modalities as ACT, DBT, CBT, TCI-F and Motivational Interviewing. She also draws, when appropriate, from her own life experiences.
Deanna’s peace comes from walking her dog, cooking, singing, connecting with my community and attending weekly meetings to continue recovery from addiction and oppression.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
HUMANA
Medicare
Matthew Parsons is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who received his Masters of Arts in Social Work at the University of Chicago, with a clinical focus in trauma. As a relational therapist, he fundamentally believes that healing happens in relationships where we feel safe, supported, and seen. To this end, Matthew above all else strives to cultivate a warm, collaborative, and non-judgemental therapeutic relationship.
Matthew works with individuals and couples and specializes in working with people with childhood trauma and PTSD, as well as those navigating their gender and sexual identities. He also has significant experience working with people processing the sudden loss of a loved one, dealing with complex medical diagnoses, and helping professionals struggling with compassion fatigue and burnout. Therapy will look different for everyone, but Matthew will seek to partner with you to explore difficult past experiences and current challenges in living as a way to better understand your inner experience. He draws from a range of clinical perspectives including humanistic therapy, emotionally focused therapy (EFT), internal family systems (IFS), and body-based therapies geared toward tuning into the physiological experience of emotion. Matthew will strive to help you deepen your relationship with yourself, even parts that you may not like or want to get rid of, while also working with you to make sense of your history so you may write a new story.
Prior to joining LifePath, Matthew worked in the trauma unit at Stroger Hospital providing counseling to victims of gun violence and their families, as well as end-of-life care. Before becoming a therapist, Matthew spent 5 years working in international human rights research focusing on health access across the Middle East. He received his BA from Tufts University in International Relations and Arabic.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489) Humana
Optum/United HealthcareMedicare
Aetna Medicare Advantage
Anu is a licensed clinical social worker with 15 years of psychotherapy experience. She received dual master’s degrees in Social Work and Women’s Studies from Loyola University, Chicago. She previously worked as a hospice and palliative care social worker for 7 years at Midwest Palliative and Hospice CareCenter (now Journeycare) where she provided care for individuals and families coping with with terminal and life limiting illnesses. Anu was a therapist at Thrive Counseling Center in Oak Park for 8 years, working with older adults providing at home psychotherapy, and also doing individual and family therapy with adults across the lifespan. There, she started and facilitated a support group for individuals struggling with death, loss and grief. She was one of the co-founders of the agency’s BIPOC group. She currently teaches core courses at Dominican University’s Graduate School of Social work. Anu’s previous experiences include running a shelter program and counseling women escaping partner violence.
As a clinician drawing from Family Systems theories, Anu has been utilizing concepts of a person in environment perspective to recognize and incorporate knowledge of systemic “isms.” She sees the therapeutic relationship as a collaboration between the individual and the therapist while exploring and creating supportive systems in the community which continue to aid the client and family in their recovery. She works with clients struggling with chronic mental illnesses and focuses on depression, anxiety, trauma and PTSD, marital and partner dynamics and challenges of individuals on the neurodivergent spectrum. She uses narrative and feminist therapeutic models to recognize intersectional challenges experienced by women, people of color and LGBTQI populations. Her therapeutic style is empathetic yet directive. Anu often utilizes her background in yoga teaching to help clients learn ways in which trauma manifests in the human body and incorporates mindfulness and meditative practices in her work.
Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Medicare
BCBS HMO Medicare Advantage (Site 475 and 489)
Optum/United Healthcare
Samantha (she/her) is a Licensed Social Worker, who became a therapist because she believes that change is always possible, and that humans have an inherent ability to heal and transform when they feel safe, heard, and connected. She understands that sometimes patterns of thinking or difficult emotions feel like they pull us away from living life fully. In session, Samantha works with individuals to identify their strengths, increase self-compassion, create safety in their bodies, and expand their capacity to respond in the face of life’s difficult moments. She’s also a big believer in the power of humor, and encourages her clients to bring their full selves into their work together.
Samantha specializes in working with young adults and adults as they move through life transitions. She has worked with individuals experiencing complex trauma responses, processing grief and loss, working through identity related concerns or religious deconstruction, and those struggling with shame, self-esteem/body image, suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety. In her couples and relationship work, Samantha helps partners strengthen connection, navigate deep-seated conflict, and improve day to day communication. She has experience working with couples preparing for marriage/life transitions, and partnerships navigating the impact of trauma on their relationship.
Samantha shows up to sessions with compassion, curiosity, honesty, and hope, creating a space to slow down and tune into emotions, beliefs, and responses. While she often works in the present moment through using mindfulness and coping skills to manage immediate needs, she understands the impact our histories have on our sense of self and current challenges. She therefore takes a holistic perspective to treatment, and provides space to challenge societal messages and experiences related to sexism, racism, oppression, and marginalization, and their impact on your mental health.
She earned her Master of Arts in Social Work at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, and her Bachelor’s degree in Human Service Studies from Elon University in North Carolina. Prior to coming to LifePath, Samantha worked with college and graduate students at Columbia College of Chicago Counseling Services, with children and adolescents experiencing community violence and trauma, and in the field of community development, where she partnered with a health center in Uganda to conduct human-rights focused HIV/AIDS research.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489) Humana
Sherilynn M. Allen, MSW, LCSW, obtained a Master’s degree in Social Work with an emphasis in leadership and development in social services, from Loyola University in Chicago and her Bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Chicago State University in Chicago. She is also a certified mediator through the Chicago Center for Conflict Resolution.
Sherilynn participated in a robust post-graduate fellowship through Cathedral Counseling Center in Chicago and has engaged in advanced clinical training in trauma-focused care, through the Chicago Center for Integration and Healing, and dialectical behavioral therapy. Her experience includes providing corporate crisis grief counseling and debriefing services in the aftermath of critical stress incidents, working with gambling addiction, and working with both individuals across the lifespan with an array of presenting concerns and with couples in a variety of relational experiences.
Sherilynn describes herself as a solution-focused optimist and considers it an honor to support her clients’ mental and emotional well-being, growth, and healing. Sherilynn enjoys getting to know her clients, developing a strong therapeutic relationship anchored in trust, and using what is already working in their lives as a solid foundation to build upon. She supports clients in working through the impact of systems of oppression and approaches her work from a social justice lens. Sherilyn also incorporates faith and spirituality when requested. Some areas of focus in Sherilynn’s work include anxiety, depression, racial concerns, experiences of oppression, grief and loss, caretaking for loved ones, parenting, and working with older adults.
Paige (she/her) is a Licensed Social Worker passionate about helping individuals increase awareness so they can increase self-compassion, intentionality, and well-being. With a firm belief that healing and growth happen in relationship, she strives to walk alongside clients with curiosity, empathy, cultural humility, and humor.
Paige creates a warm and supportive environment, making space for the messy and the beautiful, the painful and the glorious, the absurd and the mundane. Using a holistic approach, she helps clients process difficult life experiences from the past while also finding ways to live in the present moment. She collaborates with clients to leverage their own strengths, forge their own path to healing, and live more fully into their values. Paige’s clinical interests include perinatal mental health (e.g., postpartum depression and anxiety, infertility); complex and acute trauma; grief and loss; and the intersections of identity, power, and oppression. She also enjoys facilitating support groups, recognizing the unique power of the group to help clients find validation and connection.
Paige earned her Master of Arts in Social Work from the University of Chicago, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Prior to joining LifePath, she worked with adolescents, young adults, and families navigating challenges related to depression, neurodiversity, suicidal ideation, relational conflict, gender and sexuality, and so on. Her clinical approach is informed by mindfulness, Internal Family Systems, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Queer Theory, and trauma-informed approaches.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Anya (she/her) believes that every individual is unique, and that starting therapy can be difficult no matter your age. A person’s mental health is very important, and while it can be burdensome to start the process of improving it, reaching out for support is an important first step. Anya likes to spend the first session getting to know her clients and their goals. Then, through building- trust, Anya’s objective is to co-create an environment where clients feel open, relaxed, and comfortable. Therapy can be challenging, and at times it may be tempting to give up, but Anya is committed to supporting clients through all ebbs and flows of the journey to ensure clients get the most out of each session.
Anya received her Masters in Social Work from Loyola University Chicago where she specialized in mental health and gerontology. Anya has spent the last five years at the University of Chicago Medical Center working on the adult inpatient side, while managing private practice on the side. When working with clients, Anya likes to use a variety of therapeutic models. Not everyone benefits from the same standard practice, so she aims to customize her approach. Her primary models of practice are psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral therapy, strength-based, motivational interviewing, and acceptance and commitment theory. She believes that in order to change a person’s thought patterns (CBT) you need to look at their past and how these patterns started (psychodynamic). Anya has experience with anxiety, grief and loss, depression, adjustment to chronic illness, familial dementia stressors, and sibling relationships.
Anya enjoys spending time with her 80lb rescue dog Roland, watching sports, completing jigsaw puzzles and reading.
Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS PPO
Humana
Medicare
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
BCBS HMO Medicare Advantage (Site 475 and 489)
Noel (he/him) brings extensive knowledge with over 15 years of experience, specializing in helping individuals navigate traumatic life experiences within child welfare and public health fields. He passionately believes in fostering connections and combating isolation to improve mental health outcomes.
Noel values creating relationships based on honesty, accountability, and warmth using Functional Analytic Psychotherapy as a framework to assist clients in overcoming complex trauma and anxiety. He tailors his approach, whether it’s embracing experiences and charting new paths with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or reframing negative thoughts with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Noel brings a calming and empathetic presence and uses his nurturing style to create a comfortable and safe space.
With a Master’s in Social Work, Policy, and Administration with a Clinical Concentration from the University of Chicago, Noel has primarily worked with teenagers, LGBT+ youth of color, adults, and families of color involved with child welfare. He brings a client-centered focus and a commitment to social justice to his therapy practice, offering an eclectic approach that ensures treatment plans are defined by the client’s needs. Therapeutically, Noel has experience with anxiety, grief, adjustment to chronic illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and complex family systems. Noel has a particular interest in working with LGBT+ individuals, trauma survivors and career changers. He is passionate about working with caregivers managing burnout and with supporting parental alienation and parental stress.
Outside of work, Noel actively engages in LGBT+ and community of color activism and enjoys singing, stage plays, and spending time with family, friends, and his pets (a dog and a cat).
Jack Lionberger is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who earned his master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice where he was a member of a program of study that focused on the newest forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
Jack enjoys working with both individuals and couples, and draws most from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Jack takes an approach that looks beyond diagnoses, and explores the larger patterns and processes of behavior and thinking that get in the way of people’s lives and relationships. He believes that challenges like conflict, uncertainty, worry, sadness, anger, grief, loss and more, are the natural outcomes of being alive, and often contain important information for what matters most to us.
Jack has extensive clinical experience in community mental health, inpatient psychiatry, and working with frontline and healthcare workers. He has a proven record of helping people who experience acute anxiety, OCD, suicidality, PTSD, moral injury, addiction, interpersonal difficulties, chronic pain, death and grief, and more. Beyond any one theory, Jack believes that therapy should focus on a client’s values and strengths to help them get closer to a life that is authentic and purpose driven; he makes it his mission to show up to every therapy session with empathy, authenticity, care, and humor.
In his personal life Jack enjoys simple pleasures like cooking, baking, good coffee, playing bass, time with his dog, eating pizza, and beach days.
Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489), BCBS HMO Medicare Advantage (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Medicare
Optum/United Healthcare
Amy is a Clinical Social Work Intern who is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Social Work at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. She is completing her internship practicum at LifePath Therapy Associates, where she assists the Intake Team in matching clients with therapists, co-leads a therapy group session, and leads a small individual therapy caseload.
Amy’s approach to therapy is holistic and eclectic, drawing from humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and psychodynamic models. She is committed to anti-oppressive practice and believes in challenging all forms of systemic injustice. Above all, she strives to create a therapeutic environment that centers empathy, dignity, and growth. Amy is particularly interested in working with young adults and clients with chronic mood and anxiety disorders.
Amy received her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Macalester College, where she concentrated in Critical Theory and was particularly interested in the study of ethics, existentialism, and postmodernism. In her free time, she enjoys singing, playing the ukulele, and exploring Chicago neighborhoods and parks by foot.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS PPO Choice
As your therapist, Lauren (she/her) feels honored to be a part of your story. Whether you are searching for meaning, clarity, increased fulfillment, or relief from specific symptoms or stressors, Lauren considers it a privilege to support you in the process of healing and growth.
Above all, Lauren privileges authenticity, transparency, and a sense of agency in the therapeutic process. She is deeply passionate about challenging normative and structurally reinforced assumptions about therapy, namely that it involves a relationship between a “sick” person and a “healthy” one. Lauren views herself not as an expert- someone tasked with helping to “fix” something wrong- but as a co-creator of relational space that holds potential for new ways of being and understanding ourselves, others, the world, and our experiences within it. Her clinical style and approach has been described as warm, genuine, direct, and actively engaged.
Lauren believes in the value of deepened awareness of our experience through exploration of both conscious and unconscious processes, and views the therapeutic relationship as a primary tool for such exploration. Increased insight into the origins and maintenance of patterns contributing to distress, discontentment, conflict, or a sense of stagnancy can help illuminate paths towards living with greater satisfaction and vitalization.
Lauren is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a background in critical social science theory. She received her master’s degree in social work from the University of Chicago Social of Social Service Administration and holds a bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Dickinson College. Lauren has extensive training in relational psychodynamic theory and practice and enjoys incorporating components of behavioral therapies (primarily Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) when useful and appropriate. Lauren has years experience working in higher levels of care, though her primary interest is in longer-term therapeutic work. She particularly enjoys working with young adults and adults dealing with depression, anxiety, relational stressors and life transitions, traumatic experience, self-injurious behaviors, and substance misuse, as well as folks who are new to the process of therapy.
Aetna
Aetna Medicare Advantage
BCBS
Medicare
Humana
Optum/United Healthcare
Generosa (she/her) earned her Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology at Roosevelt University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a concentration in Human Development from DePaul University. Prior to coming to LifePath, Generosa worked in an inpatient hospital setting providing crisis management and therapeutic services to children, adolescents, and adults. Generosa has also worked alongside various non-profit organizations and community based mental health centers to address barriers to mental health services in underserved communities.
Many of the clients she serves are working through concerns related to trauma, grief, loss, life transitions, chronic illness, immigrant and multicultural experiences, caregiver support, family conflict, identity, anxiety, and depression.
Generosa’s therapeutic style is warm, supportive, collaborative, and strength-based. She aims to create a safe environment where clients can feel seen, heard, and valued. Through care and compassion, she works alongside clients to process and explore their most vulnerable thoughts and experiences, while creating goals that promote growth and healing. She works from a trauma-informed lens and draws from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Psychodynamic therapies to meet the individualized and unique needs of every client. Generosa is passionate about creating an inclusive and culturally sensitive therapeutic space while striving to empower clients to make positive changes in their lives as they work towards becoming the best version of themselves. She would be honored to be part of your healing journey.
Generosa is bilingual in Spanish. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, drawing, and painting.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS PPO Choice
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Katie Schloss, AM, LSW (she/her) is a Licensed Social Worker helping entrepreneurs, professionals, writers, survivors, and current patients navigate transitions. The uncertainty of the “in-between,” as it’s often called, can be an anxiety-riddled time—one with many peaks and valleys—and through client-centered, solutions-focused, evidence-based practices, Katie helps her clients traverse the highs and lows involved in life experiences.
Katie is known for creating a warm, supportive environment, helping her clients get from where they are right now to where they most want to be. Getting curious about and reframing anxiety, Katie helps her clients find the courage to look within, tell their stories, and handle anything that comes their way.
Katie earned her Bachelor of Arts from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with concentrations in business administration and design in 2010. After experiencing entrepreneurial success as well as the greatly unexpected hardships of being a brain tumor survivor, she understood that she wanted to help folks stuck in the valley find their way back on the mountain trail. This led Katie to the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy. Katie also has experience working at UChicago Medicine, where she worked as an Adult Inpatient Social Worker.
Maddie (she/her) is a Licensed Social Worker who is passionate about creating a space for healing and growth through empathy, warmth, and vulnerability. She understands the difficulties of sharing the deepest parts of ourselves with others and strives to make therapy an inclusive and safe space. Her style draws from trauma-informed practice, psychodynamic theories, and strengths-based practice. As a couples therapist, her style draws from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT.)
Maddie has worked with individuals and couples experiencing sudden life changes, interpersonal conflicts, and those struggling with perfectionism, identity-related concerns, and mood and anxiety disorders. Maddie is especially dedicated to serving those who have been impacted by trauma. She believes in empowering others by making it possible to “speak the unspeakable.” She engages with each client’s unique challenges by first promoting safety and healthy coping and then with a focus on understanding how each aspect of our lives, from our pasts to our presents, impacts who we are today. This also means that she is devoted to promoting anti-oppressive practice, which includes acknowledging and challenging sexism, racism, homophobia and all forms of marginalization in and out of session.
She earned her Master of Arts in Social Work from the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and her Bachelor of Arts in Communication from DePaul University. During her studies, Maddie worked with the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry as a member of the Trauma Treatment Services team. She has also worked with children, adolescents and their families in both school and research settings.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Payton is a Licensed Professional Counselor who is passionate about providing care for individuals and couples experiencing a wide variety of challenges. Payton creates a safe place for clients to feel valued, heard, and empowered helping to foster personal growth. As a relational-cultural therapist, Payton helps clients gain insight into how relationships impact life experiences. Payton has had substantial experience working with adolescents and young adults navigating anxiety, depression, life transitions, interpersonal relationship issues, and substance abuse. Payton focuses on exploring values to aid clients in uncovering their life compass directing them towards a more fulfilled and purposeful life.
We face many challenges and stages in life’s journey and navigating through its different phases can sometimes be a difficult process. Payton focuses on supporting clients through this difficult process and collaborating with a strong therapeutic relationship. The beauty of therapy is that it will look different for each person and will be tailored to specific needs. Payton also specializes in facilitating sustainable empowerment and personal growth for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community.
Payton is building interest in working with couples who are experiencing disruption in their relationship. Payton utilizes Emotion Focused Therapy and the Gottman Method to provide structure, space, empathy, warmth, and compassion. Payton is focused on helping couples increase awareness, intimacy, acceptance, regulation, respect, effective communication, and connection.
Her therapeutic approaches are centered around Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, Attachment Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Client-Centered, Solution-Focused, and trauma-informed care.
Payton earned her Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Criminal Justice from the University of Northern Colorado. Payton gained invaluable experience as an intern in the Weld County, Colorado Public Defender’s Office and at Hartgrove Hospital where she provided counseling services to a myriad of individuals experiencing life transitions, anxiety, depression, interpersonal relationship conflict, gender-identity questions, and trauma history.
Outside of work, Payton enjoys reading, pilates, yoga, hiking, traveling, and good food!
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Each person is an expert of their own experience. Believing someone and accepting them as a human being worthy of love is the foundation for a successful therapeutic relationship. Kiernan deeply believes that when this supportive environment is provided, a person can begin to more fully listen to and trust in their own experience. This promotes greater self-awareness, and the ability to care for oneself. Kiernan works with trauma survivors and is committed to trauma-informed work.
Therapy is not just about addressing the unpleasant and troubling though; it also involves clarifying values and determining what gives your life meaning. Kiernan aims to help people discover what underlying stories they tell about themselves and explore alternative narratives.
Kiernan completed his Bachelors of Social Work at Goshen College and his masters from The University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration. He previously worked as a substance abuse counselor in Virginia, and documented Human Rights abuses in Southern Mexico for two years.
In addition to a Person-Centered approach, Kiernan uses an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy framework for addressing human suffering. Distressing thoughts and feelings are an inevitable part of life; understandably we often try to suppress these painful experiences. He uses mindfulness and other experiential exercises with his clients to change how they interact with their thoughts and feelings. With couples, Kiernan uses a mix of the Gottman Method and EFT.
Other approaches used in therapy include Motivational Interviewing and Functional Analytic Psychotherapy. He works with individuals living with anxiety, depression, trauma, mood disorders, problematic substance use, and more.
Aetna
BCBS PPO
BCBS HMO (Site 475 and 489)
Humana
Samantha (she/ her) has joined Life Path as an Intake/ Billing Specialist. She majored in psychology and received a bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University in 2016. Since then, she has been working in mental health in various intake, administrative and patient care roles. As a mental health advocate, she believes that her life’s purpose is to help others and she is extremely passionate about connecting individuals to appropriate mental health care and resources. Inclusivity and acceptance are her priorities and she believes in creating safe spaces for all people.
Being raised on the southside of Chicago, she has a lot of love for the city and in her spare times enjoys exploring different neighborhoods and restaurants. She also enjoys time spent outdoors at local parks with her dogs and strongly values quality time with her family and close friends.
