A native Texan, I was born and raised in Houston and completed my undergraduate education at Texas A&M University and my graduate training at Texas Tech University. As much as I love the great Lone Star State, I caught myself engaged in some California dreaming and began my trek out west. I spent my internship year at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System in Utah and moved to the Bay Area for a Pain Psychology Postdoctoral Fellowship at Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco Medical Center. As I completed my postdoc, I was recruited by Stanford University to help build the behavioral health subsection of their pain division. At the time, there was barely more than 1.0 FTE of time allocated to Psychology; while I was hoping for a full-time role, I saw the opportunity to engage in program development and accepted the part time position and concurrently worked as the Program Director for the Kaiser Permanente Chronic Pain Center in Redwood City, CA.
With colleagues at the annual PAINWeek Conference in Las Vegas, NV