Welcome To Our New Members!!
It is fascinating to learn the ways that our new members resolve to unite with the ICP+P community. As a student at Catholic University, Julia Rosenfield was informed of our organization by one of her professors. In addition, she was also inspired to join by a cousin who has been a member!
Following graduation from the Catholic University’s National Catholic School of Social Service, Julia participated in ICP+P’s Fellowship Program in Contemporary Forms of Psychoanalysis, and discovered more about our organization and the benefits of membership. During her fellowship, she attended a conference in which all presenters were ICP+P members, and was impressed by the openness and depth of the presentations and the support and enthusiasm demonstrated by the audience. She arrived at the decision that she could “be at home” with ICP+P.
Graduating with a B. A. from Middlebury College in Vermont, Julia majored in History and minored in Chinese. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, she then moved to Nanjing, China, where she pursued graduate studies in Chinese history, politics, foreign relations, and culture through Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. After returning from China, Julia moved to Washington, DC, where she managed study abroad programs for college students in China. She then spent approximately a decade as a China Analyst at CNA—a federally funded think tank in Arlington, VA—where she engaged in political-military research, analysis, and writing, and provided training to government and military personnel.
Although Julia found her work on China to be meaningful, she often found herself dreaming of becoming a therapist—an idea that first began to take shape for her when she was a college student. Growing up, Julia was involved in social justice movements, human rights work, and volunteering. She always imagined she would have a career that would be in service to others, although she was unsure of what it would be. In college, Julia participated in a group led by a compassionate and skilled therapist, and that had a profound impact on her. She recalls thinking, “One day, I want to be able to do this for someone.” Julia began to realize this dream when she decided to change careers and pursue her MSW.
The location of Julia’s first social work internship was a retirement community, where she worked with senior citizens in medical rehabilitation as well as assisted and independent living. Her clinical training took place at Catholic University’s counseling center, where she enjoyed providing therapy to undergraduate and graduate students. Since graduating and obtaining her license, Julia has been providing psychotherapy in agency settings. She spent a year working with youth aging out of foster care and with adopted individuals and their families as a post-graduate clinical fellow and AmeriCorps member at The Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.). In this role, Julia received extensive training in attachment, trauma, grief and loss, and adoption-competent mental health treatment. For the past two years at an outpatient mental health clinic, Julia has provided individual and family therapy to adolescents and adults experiencing a wide range of issues.
Energized by the prospect of launching a private practice in Dupont Circle in August, Julia will be joining Prentice for a year-long association designed to provide training and support as she engages in this endeavor. In her new practice, she will provide individual therapy to adolescents and adults with a range of presenting concerns, including anxiety, depression, identity issues, relationship challenges, life transitions, grief and loss, adoption-related issues, and more.
In the fall, Julia will enter the Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (CAPP) program to continue advancing her clinical skills. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, yoga, cooking, travel, reading, and spending time by the water.
There are myriad ways for new members to connect with our organization. While traveling on a bus, Alana Jacobs met someone who suggested that ICP+P would be a good fit for her. Originating from the East, she resided on the West Coast for ten years before returning to the Washington, D.C. area. “I was hungry for a professional support system,” she informed me, and she was particularly interested in joining a study group.
Earning a B.A. in Psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Alana continued her education at the Pacific University School of Professional Psychology in Hillsboro, Oregon, and was awarded an M.S. in Clinical Psychology. In August 2014 Alana acquired a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from the same university.
Alana’s clinical experience has been drawn from a diversity of programs. She assisted a psychiatrist in all clinical duties as a clinical intern/research assistant at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. As an intern on the Voluntary Inpatient Unit at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Alana provided support to patients in group therapy sessions. In the Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART) program in Portland, Oregon she co-facilitated groups for adults seeking assistance and support in abstaining from addictive behaviors, using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy techniques in treatment.
Alana attended a two year clinical training program that integrates Buddhist psychology and mindfulness meditation with Gestalt therapy at the Gestalt Therapy Training Center Northwest in Portland. The Year of Living Mindfully Program, affiliated with the Insight Meditation Community of Greater Washington, afforded Alana the experience of didactic training in the philosophical foundations of Buddhist psychology. This was also an opportunity to deepen her personal meditation and daily mindfulness practices.
In March 2015 Alana initiated her clinical training as a psychology associate with the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington, D.C. She continues to serve in this setting as an individual therapist, employing cognitive behavioral therapy with clients who present with a range of anxiety disorders.
From December 2014 until the present Alana has assumed the position of clinical psychologist at the Metropolitan Psychological Services, PLLC, in Arlington, Virginia. The population she treats in individual therapy includes college students and young adults experiencing anxiety, depression, relationship challenges, identity issues and family of origin issues.
“My dream is to integrate yoga, dance, meditation and the outdoors into the healing process. I also love group psychotherapy and have a background teaching yoga so I hope to engage in these modalities in addition to individual therapy.”
It is my pleasure to welcome Amy Kohn McNelly to ICP+P. In her efforts to become better acquainted with colleagues in the D.C. psychotherapeutic community, Amy found that she was continuously meeting ICP+P members, so she decided to join the organization herself! Amy was born and reared in California, and resided in Menlo Park throughout her childhood. She started her college years in Seattle, Washington, but returned to the San Francisco Bay Area where she completed her bachelor’s and attended graduate school. While earning a degree in psychology from San Francisco State University, she appreciated the opportunity to work with Irvin Yalom and Al Bandura. She secured internships at various sites throughout the Bay Area, including Stanford, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Fremont. She began her own private practice in Menlo Park under the supervision of Marci Pais, LCSW, and continued to grow her practice after obtaining her license as a Marriage and Family Therapist. Amy married and moved to New York, obtained the credential to be an Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor and engaged in another experience that enhanced her professional development: she joined a group of therapists working in the drug and alcohol program at St. Vincent’s Hospital. She discovered that being the only psychodynamically trained therapist on the team proved to be an asset. After two years Amy sought a different experience, and joined the staff of Edwin Gould Academy, a residential school for children in foster care or the juvenile justice system of New York City. There she was a Family Advocate Counselor and later assumed the role of the Director of Clinical Services for girls. In this environment Amy learned that problematic staff could be more challenging to work with than the children! Following the birth of her first child, employment opportunities for Amy’s husband resulted in a move to Tennessee. There they had a second child, and Amy chose to put her career on hold in order to stay at home with her two daughters. Now that her youngest child is 12 years old, Amy is eager to return to work as a psychotherapist and is in the process of developing a private practice, while sharing office space with ICP&P members. The population that she has addressed in therapy ranges in age from young adults to individuals over 70, and includes those struggling with AIDS, drug and/or alcohol addiction, gay and lesbian issues, relationship issues, issues faced by young mothers, divorce and custody, adoption, relationship conflicts between young adults and their parents, and the problems encountered by “20-somethings trying to get started.” Amy is drawn to the challenges of working with depressed and suicidal patients, and those serving in the military. Amy has two office locations, both of which are in Dupont Circle. She offers a sliding fee, and welcomes referrals! Amy enjoys reading, walking the canal with her German Shepard, and spending as much time as possible with her two daughters and her husband.
ICP+P extends a warm welcome to Sarah Leffler, who joined the organization this summer. Sarah received her degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, completed a 2 year training program at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Society and moved to the D.C. area, where she has resided for the past 5 years.
This summer Sarah resigned from her full-time position with the Arlington County Behavioral Health Care Division in order to expand her hours as a contract therapist in a private practice in Old Town Alexandria. The population that she addresses experiences a wide range of issues, including anxiety, depression, and relationship problems. Sarah provides EMDR therapy for clients requiring specialized treatment for trauma. Individuals, couples, older adolescents and adults comprise the diversity of her psychotherapy practice.
Seeking a community where she can share a dynamic, interpersonal approach, Sarah believes that ICP+P seems like “a good fit.” Sarah anticipates becoming an active part of ICP+P by joining study groups and participating in other offerings. Her office address is 300 North Washington Street in Alexandria, Virginia where she practices 3 days and 2 evenings a week. You can reach her by cell phone: 314-910-1619. Hopefully we will be able to greet her in person in September when we join for our annual potluck dinner!
Before returning to school in 2009 to earn his masters in social work, Gary Brown, LCSW spent many years living and working overseas. His most recent overseas assignment was with the US Agency for International Development in Afghanistan where he managed an assistance program for war victims.
Gary’s interest in international work is rooted in part to the trips he enjoyed as a boy with his parents and four siblings. Although he hardly appreciated all of the wondrous things he saw at the time, Gary learned intuitively that the world was a much larger place than the (surprisingly) insulated enclave he inhabited in suburban Los Angeles. His mother and siblings still reside there, and he misses them and the ocean dearly.
After positions in policymaking and consulting, Gary cashed in the 401(k) that he dutifully maintained at his father’s urging and spent a year living and working overseas: teaching English in Istanbul, staffing a hostel in Queenstown, New Zealand, and studying conversational Hindi with a family in Udaipur, India. Since then, he’s had the opportunity to work in Sri Lanka, Baghdad, and Afghanistan as a mediator and development professional.
It was not until returning to graduate school in social work at the University of Michigan, however, and beginning his clinical work with his supervisor, Sue Watts, and his clients at the university’s Psychological Clinic(www.psychclinic.org) that Gary came to feel that he had found his life’s work.
It’s no coincidence that around this time Gary also fell in love with his wife, Cara, a fellow adventurer who led professional bicycle tours in the Indian Himalaya before earning her master’s in public health and starting her position at a local health care consulting firm. They married in October of last year and are looking forward to a two-week bicycle tour in Turkey for their honeymoon this summer!
Gary will be opening a practice this March on Farragut Square with a focus on expatriates and their families: college and graduate students participating in study-abroad or overseas fieldwork programs, embassy personnel and their partners, recent immigrants, armed service members, development professionals, medical personnel, business consultants, Peace Corps and other humanitarian volunteer or exchange program participants. Gary also enjoys working with couples and have been part of a dedicated couples’ training and supervision group for the past four years. Given his own extended musings and explorations, he can’t help but think he has something to offer in the area of work and identity as well!
Gary feels fortunate to have found his way to such a thoughtful and welcoming group and he is looking forward to building new friendships! Meet Gary for coffee? You can contact him at garystevenbrown@gmail.com or at 202-306-7921.