Background & Approach
Clinical experience, research, and leadership.
For more than two decades, I have worked at the intersection of psychology, healthcare, and professional education: with clinicians in the therapy room, organizations in the boardroom, and trainees in the classroom. Seeing the same problem from all three vantage points has shaped my understanding of what it takes to build sustainable careers and a sustainable healthcare workforce.
I am a licensed clinical psychologist and hold a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (PsyD). I have founded two clinical psychology practices and a wellness center, and have taught at multiple universities. My work has included serving as faculty for medical residents, developing curricula for healthcare trainees, leading organizational education, and directing research studies as principal investigator.
My research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy and the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. I am also the recipient of a research grant from the John Templeton Foundation, supporting my research in Sufi Psychology.
Beyond my clinical and academic work, I founded the Caring 4 Our Caregivers initiative, which supported more than 360 hospitals across four countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I serve as President of the Sufi Psychology Association.
How this Work Developed
My work with healthcare professionals began long before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated and clarified what I had been observing for years. When hospitals began buckling under the strain, I founded Caring 4 Our Caregivers, an initiative that grew to support more than 360 hospitals across four countries. That work brought me into contact with every level of healthcare: administrators, physicians, nurses, support staff, and medical residents. What struck me most was that, despite their different roles, they were all struggling. Burnout was not simply an individual problem; it reflected the interaction between the demands placed on people and the systems in which they worked.
I kept tracing the problem upstream, trying to understand where it began. Eventually, it led me all the way back to medical students, who were already experiencing many of the same pressures before their careers had even begun. And at every stage along that continuum, I saw the same gap: people trained exhaustively in caring for others, yet given almost no education in how to sustain themselves.
That realization shaped the work I do today. I partner with healthcare organizations to strengthen workforce sustainability, help clinicians build careers they can sustain, and work with training programs to reach future clinicians at the very beginning, when these skills are easiest to build.
For more on my healthcare work, visit the Organizations page. For my research and teaching, visit Training.
My Approach
At the center of my work is a question that professional training rarely asks: What allows a person to sustain themselves throughout a demanding career?
In healthcare, clinicians are trained to focus outward: on patients, performance, and productivity. Far less attention is given to the skills that allow them to last. Without those skills, chronic stress can gradually erode self-awareness, accelerate burnout, and disconnect clinicians from the purpose that brought them into healthcare in the first place.
My approach is rooted in preventative psychology. Rather than waiting until distress has become entrenched, I focus on developing the psychological capacities that help people recognize challenges early, regulate stress, maintain healthy boundaries, and remain connected to themselves, their work, and the people who matter most. The goal is not simply to reduce burnout; it is to make long, meaningful careers possible.
The Framework
A central component of this work is Sufi Psychology, a discipline that explores the full dimensions of human experience, including thoughts, emotions, the body, and deeper layers of awareness. I have spent more than two decades integrating this framework into clinical practice, healthcare education, organizational work, and research, including research supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
At its core, Sufi Psychology is a framework for developing self-knowledge. It complements contemporary psychology by helping people better understand the patterns that shape how they think, feel, relate to others, and respond under pressure. That deeper awareness creates opportunities for meaningful and lasting change rather than simply managing symptoms as they arise.
This framework is supported by both clinical application and a growing body of research. Findings from my Templeton-funded study, published in the APA journal Psychotherapy, demonstrated significant reductions in psychological, relationship, critical, and spiritual distress following a Sufi Psychotherapy intervention. Independent research on the Tamarkoz method of meditation and concentration, published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal, has shown measurable reductions in perceived stress and improvements in emotional regulation.
In practice, I integrate these perspectives with clinical psychology, stress neurobiology, trauma-informed principles, and experiential learning to help individuals and organizations develop greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, clarity, and balance.
The aim is not simply short-term stress relief. It is to help people navigate demanding work with greater awareness, steadiness, and purpose while remaining connected to themselves, the people around them, and the work that matters most.
