Leveraging more than 25 years of experience in nursing, her practice focuses on psychiatric and behavioral health care, with specialization in mental health and substance abuse treatment. Her expertise includes behavioral medicine, psychiatric diagnosis, psychotherapy, medication management, and detoxification programs, along with experience addressing complex mental health conditions and co-occurring disorders. Her work also involves curriculum development, health sciences education, and treatment planning for individuals with substance use disorders and related psychiatric conditions, including extensive experience treating veterans with moderate to severe mental health conditions.

Her professional background includes clinical, academic, and program development leadership roles as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, program director, and educator. She has developed and implemented outpatient detoxification and addiction treatment programs, conducted psychiatric and medical evaluations, managed pharmacologic interventions, and provided individual and group psychotherapy. Her academic appointments include assistant professor and faculty roles at multiple institutions, where she contributed to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral education and led the development of psychiatric nurse practitioner programs with an addictions focus. Her research experience includes serving as a principal investigator on federally funded studies addressing substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as participation in multidisciplinary clinical research and grant development initiatives.

Her additional qualifications include completion of a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-sponsored postdoctoral clinical research fellowship in psychiatry and substance abuse at a leading academic medical institution, supporting advanced expertise in addiction science and clinical research. She has contributed to the field through peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and national and international presentations, and has served as a trainer and consultant to healthcare providers on addiction treatment methodologies, including medication-assisted treatment. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree, a master’s degree in nursing, and a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and is a board-certified advanced registered nurse practitioner in both family health and psychiatric mental health, as well as a certified addictions professional and certified addiction trainer/educator. Her professional affiliations include membership in organizations such as the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatrists, and the International Nurses Society on Addictions.