My research program is guided by a commitment to climate-informed mental health as an ethical, educational, and systems-level responsibility. I work at the intersection of counseling, environmental justice, and disaster behavioral health, examining how climate change shapes emotional well-being, professional identity, supervision, and the structures that support care. Across projects, my scholarship asks not only how individuals and communities are affected by climate-related stressors, but how the mental health profession prepares for—and responds to—these realities over time.

This work is grounded in purposeful, justice-oriented scholarship that bridges research, practice, and professional leadership. Methodologically, my publications draw heavily on qualitative and conceptual approaches, including narrative inquiry and integrative theory building, to center lived experience and contextual complexity. Much of my research focuses on counselors, educators, and students navigating climate-related emotions, disaster exposure, and ethical ambiguity, as well as youth and communities disproportionately affected by environmental disruption.

A defining feature of my scholarship is its field-shaping orientation. My work has contributed to the early empirical foundation of climate mental health in counseling, informed national competency development, and advanced new ways of conceptualizing disaster-informed supervision and counselor preparation. Rather than treating climate change as a niche topic, my publications situate it as a pervasive context that intersects with trauma, identity development, advocacy, pedagogy, and professional sustainability.

Equally central to this work is translation and reach. I publish across peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, professional outlets, and reference texts, with the intention that scholarship remains accessible, actionable, and responsive to real-world conditions. Together, these publications reflect a sustained program of research designed to inform practice, shape training standards, and support counselors and educators leading within an increasingly complex and climate-changed world.

My professional engagement reflects a sustained commitment to scholarship as leadership and service to the profession. I view engagement with national and regional counseling organizations not as an adjunct to research, but as a critical site where scholarship is translated into standards, guidance, and collective action. Through this work, I have contributed to shaping how the counseling profession understands and responds to climate change, environmental justice, human rights, and disaster-related mental health concerns.

Across roles with national and regional organizations, my engagement has focused on building infrastructure for change—developing competencies, advancing curriculum guidance, supporting counselor educators, and creating space for difficult but necessary professional conversations. This work draws directly from my research and, in turn, informs it, creating a reciprocal relationship between scholarship, policy, and practice.

A central throughline in this engagement is collaboration. I have worked alongside counselor educators, practitioners, students, and interdisciplinary partners to advance climate-informed mental health in ways that are ethically grounded, developmentally appropriate, and responsive to lived experience. These roles reflect both long-term leadership commitments and targeted initiatives designed to move the field forward during a period of rapid ecological and social change.

Selected Professional Engagement (Past 5–8 Years)

American Counseling Association (ACA)

• Chair, Human Rights Committee (2021–2023)
  Provided national leadership on counseling responses to human rights concerns, including environmental and climate-related injustice, and supported the integration of human rights frameworks into professional advocacy and policy conversations.

• Contributor to Counseling Today and ACA-sponsored initiatives addressing climate change, social justice, and ethical responsibility (2017–present).

Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES)

• Lead Author, Climate Change and Environmental Justice Competencies for Counselor Education (adopted by ACES Governing Council, 2025).
  Led a national, multi-year collaborative effort to develop the first comprehensive climate change and environmental justice competencies for counselor education, now informing curriculum development, training, and textbook authorship across CACREP-accredited programs.

• Co-Chair, Climate Change Curriculum Committee (2023–2025).
  Guided strategic planning, member engagement, and dissemination related to climate-informed counselor education.

• Invited national presentations and institutes on climate-informed supervision, pedagogy, and counselor preparation (2020–present).

Western Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (WACES)

• Chair, Climate Competencies Committee (2022–2024).
  Led regional efforts to pilot, refine, and disseminate climate-related competencies and professional development resources for counselor educators and supervisors.

• Conference leadership and invited presentations focused on climate-informed mental health, disaster response, and counselor education (2018–present).

Additional Professional and Public Engagement

• Facilitator, Climate-informed therapist support groups, Climate Psychology Alliance (2022–2023).

• Partnerships with state counseling associations to deliver free, accessible trainings on climate anxiety, disaster mental health, and ethical practice (multiple states, 2019–present).

• Participation in national media, public scholarship, and continuing education initiatives translating climate mental health research for professional and public audiences (e.g., ACA CE video series, public radio, podcasts).
  

Together, these engagements reflect a commitment to scholarship that not only advances knowledge, but helps build the professional structures needed to respond thoughtfully and ethically to climate-related mental health challenges.

A core dimension of my scholarship is public engagement—the intentional translation of research into accessible, responsible conversation beyond academic venues. I view media, invited talks, and public scholarship as an extension of ethical practice: an opportunity to support counselors, educators, families, and communities grappling with climate-related distress, disaster impacts, and uncertainty in real time.

My media work focuses on making climate-informed mental health concepts legible and usable without oversimplifying complexity. This includes addressing climate anxiety and grief, disaster mental health, environmental justice, and the responsibilities of helping professionals in a climate-changed world. Across these engagements, I am attentive to message design, developmental appropriateness, and the risks of both minimizing and sensationalizing climate-related mental health concerns.

These efforts reflect a commitment to reach audiences where they are—through professional media, continuing education, community forums, podcasts, and public storytelling—while remaining grounded in research, ethics, and lived experience.

Selected Media & Public Engagement (Past 5–8 Years)

Professional & Educational Media

• Featured expert, Eco-Anxiety and Youth Mental Health — WHRO Environmental Sciences Video Series (2024).
  Discussed climate-related emotions among youth and implications for educators, counselors, and families.

• Contributor, American Counseling Association Continuing Education Video Series — climate change, mental health, and counselor preparation (2023–2024).

• Contributor, Counseling Today — multiple articles translating climate mental health research for practitioners (2017–present).

Podcasts, Radio, & Storytelling

• Podcast guest, Climate Change Anxiety: The Coming Storm — Behavioral Corner (2022).
  Focused on eco-anxiety, professional responsibility, and clinical implications.

• Participant, StoryCorps — climate change, human experience, and meaning-making (2023).

• Guest interviews on public radio addressing climate anxiety, disaster response, and mental health ethics (regional and national outlets, 2022–2024).

Invited Public Talks & Community Engagement

• Staying with the Trouble: Recognizing and Attending to Climate Anxiety — Invited public lecture, Alexandria Public Library (2022).

• Community and professional webinars on climate-informed mental health, hosted by counseling associations, libraries, and interdisciplinary organizations (2019–present).

National & Interdisciplinary Platforms

• Interviewed and cited by national outlets including Grist and Greater Good Science Center, addressing the mental health dimensions of climate change and resilience (2022–2024).

• Facilitator, climate-informed therapist support groups — Climate Psychology Alliance (2022–2023).

Across these engagements, my goal is not simply to inform, but to help people think more carefully about how climate change is shaping mental health—and how we respond with responsibility, care, and context.

My current projects extend this body of work through longitudinal, qualitative, and collaborative research focused on how climate-driven disasters are reshaping mental health practice, professional identity, and training systems. Across these projects, I am especially interested in how counselors, supervisors, and educators are prepared—or left unprepared—to navigate sustained exposure to disaster, uncertainty, and collective trauma.

A central emphasis of this work is training and supervision: how we support helpers working in disaster-likely regions, how supervision models must adapt to chronic and climate-related stressors, and how counselor education can move beyond episodic crisis preparation toward more durable, climate-informed frameworks. Together, these projects aim to inform counselor education, supervision practice, and systems leadership in ways that are empirically grounded and responsive to lived experience.

National Qualitative Study: Counselors’ Experiences of Climate-Related Disasters

I am currently leading a large-scale qualitative study examining counselors’ personal and professional experiences with climate-related disasters, including floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and other climate-fueled events. This narrative inquiry includes over 40 in-depth interviews conducted across multiple regions, capturing how counselors experience disaster not only as professionals, but as community members, caregivers, and survivors.

This study explores themes such as cumulative exposure, boundary complexity, moral distress, professional role strain, and meaning-making in the aftermath of disaster. Early findings highlight significant implications for counselor preparation, supervision, ethical decision-making, and professional sustainability, particularly in regions facing repeated or compounding climate events. The project is already informing conference presentations, manuscripts, and the conceptual grounding for climate-informed disaster behavioral health training.

Climate-Informed Disaster Supervision Model (In Development)

Building directly from this qualitative work, I am co-developing a climate-informed disaster supervision modeldesigned to support counselors and supervisors working in disaster-prone and high-impact contexts. This emerging model attends to supervision as both a clinical and relational space where cumulative exposure, climate emotions, ethical complexity, and professional identity are actively addressed rather than minimized.

The model integrates insights from disaster mental health, relational supervision, and climate-informed practice, with particular attention to supervisor preparedness, parallel process, and the sustainability of care over time. Intended applications include counselor education, post-graduate supervision, and continuing professional development, with implications for both individual supervisors and organizational systems.

Climate–Emotion Collaboration & Training Applications

Additional projects focus on translating climate mental health research into training-relevant frameworks for educators, supervisors, and interdisciplinary partners. This includes the ongoing development of the Climate–Emotion Collaboration Model, which examines how counselors, educators, and allied professionals can more effectively respond to climate-related emotions across developmental stages and settings.

This work is being developed through collaborative writing teams and is oriented toward practical application in counselor education, school settings, and community-based mental health systems.

Why These Projects Matter

Together, these projects reflect a commitment to research that:

• centers lived experience and relational complexity

• addresses training and supervision gaps exposed by climate change

• supports helpers navigating chronic and cumulative disaster contexts

• informs future-facing models of counselor education and leadership

Rather than treating disaster and climate response as episodic or exceptional, this work asks how the mental health profession adapts its training, supervision, and support structures to meet the realities of a changing world.

These projects are united by a single question: how do we prepare counselors and supervisors not just to respond to disaster, but to practice ethically and sustainably within an era of ongoing ecological disruption?