While many people will claim they always knew they wanted to be a doctor, this was not the case with me. I’ve contemplated a plethora of careers, including being a math teacher, scientist, engineer, secret agent, detective, musician, writer, accountant, lawyer, and comedian. My father and grandfather were outstanding physicians and role models. My dad would sometimes take me to his office or to the hospital when I was growing up, and I had such admiration for his bedside manner and how he interacted with his patients. My love of the sciences, coupled with the desire to help others and inspiration by way of my father’s example, ultimately propelled me into a career in medicine.
I was born in Pittsburgh, but at three weeks old, moved to Illinois and was raised by my parents in a small town 2.5 hours outside of Chicago called Peoria. It was a great place to grow up. People in the Midwest and especially Peoria were down to earth, friendly, and always willing to lend a hand. I was adventurous and intellectually curious, playing outside, reading voraciously, and taking things apart to understand how and why they worked. I even had my own microscope (which was in retrospect a harbinger of things to come.) I excelled at school. I left Illinois as a teenager and trained on the East Coast. My first destination was studying pre-med and majoring in biophysics at Johns Hopkins. I then spent the next few years doing research at Yale and graduate school at Harvard before deciding to come back to Peoria and working as a phlebotomist at my dad’s office. I then completed medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, where I became excited about pathology and psychiatry. I’m told I must really love learning because I completed two residencies, one in pathology followed by one in psychiatry, both at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Switching careers from pathology to psychiatry was the best life decision I ever made. There is no other profession I could find as fulfilling and meaningful as being a psychiatrist. After graduation I moved to Chicago where my parents and sister now live and worked in academic psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Northwestern University. I moved to Florida in 2018; and while I miss my family immensely, I very definitely don’t miss the cold. I have experience in both inpatient and outpatient psychiatry and appreciate the challenges, complexities, and nuances of each. While I treat most adult psychiatric conditions, my areas of interest and expertise are depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and women’s mental health. I love teaching, have worked at length with residents and students, and am Clinical Affiliate Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University (FAU)’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine. In my spare time I enjoy listening to and playing music (I’m a former drummer, and I sing and play the guitar and piano), being outside, learning, exercising, practicing photography, and watching thrillers and mysteries. I consider myself to be dedicated, genuine, and compassionate and will work tirelessly to help you feel better and improve your quality of and outlook on life. I look forward to meeting and working with you!