About

I began my career in the arts, working for over a decade as a professional actor and screenwriter in television, film, and theater. It was work that required emotional presence, deep observation, and a constant effort to understand what people mean — not just in their words, but in their silences, behaviors, gestures, and physicality. I was honored to work with many great teachers and artists who kept me curious and taught me that there is always another layer to the story.

Alongside my work in entertainment, I volunteered for five years with The Trevor Project, providing suicide prevention and crisis support for LGBTQ youth. That experience became my bridge between storytelling and psychiatry — showing me that the skills I’d honed as an artist could be used in service of healing, presence, and advocacy. I later joined the organization full-time as a Crisis Services Supervisor, overseeing high-risk cases and co-developing a national “Caring Contact” protocol for post-crisis follow-up. From there, I worked as a "psych tech" on the forensic unit at Bellevue Hospital, providing direct care to incarcerated patients with serious mental illness — individuals whose needs exceeded what the jail system could provide.

Today, I’m a third-year medical student at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. My academic work focuses on Theory of Mind, language, and the ethical use of AI in mental health care. I’m currently engaged in a study examining how large language models perform on ToM tasks — research that uses theatrical script analysis to explore how both humans and machines infer intention from language. I’ll be presenting this work at Grand Rounds at Zucker Hillside Hospital in June, 2025. I’ve also completed a scoping review on Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) as part of the KLAR Leadership and Innovation Program, evaluating its potential to extend psychiatric services in resource-limited systems.

At the center of all my work — creative, clinical, and academic — is a desire to understand people more deeply and advocate for more humane, equitable, and sustainable systems of care.