A seat at the table. Lovely. But who built the table?
Who gets invited? Who has to knock? And who is still standing outside, filling in yet another form to prove they belong?
I've spent much of my professional life listening to people whose experiences don't fit neatly into the categories institutions have created for them. In therapy, I hear what happens when someone learns that being themselves comes at a cost. In research, I examine how those costs are produced, maintained, and sometimes disguised as perfectly reasonable procedures. And through advocacy and consultancy, I want to bring those conversations into the rooms where decisions are made. Not to speak on behalf of everyone. Nobody gave me that mandate. But to question what we've come to accept as normal, and to help make room for people who have too often been expected to do all the adapting.
Beyond good intentions
Inclusive. Affirming. Person-centered. Wonderful words. But what do they actually mean when someone walks through the door?
Does a trans person have to explain their identity to three different professionals before receiving care? Can a disabled person ask for an adjustment without feeling they're requesting a special favor? Does a queer couple have to correct the assumptions built into an intake form? And when someone doesn't return to a service, do we ask what was wrong with them, or what might have happened while they were there? I am interested in the gap between institutional commitments and everyday experiences. Because inclusion isn't something an organization can declare into existence. It has to be examined in the decisions it makes, the language it uses, and the experiences of those who encounter it. Sometimes that means changing a policy. Sometimes it means questioning why the policy existed in the first place.
Where I can contribute
Consultation & organizational practice
The form says everyone is welcome. Does the experience agree?
I work at the intersection of psychotherapy, queer and trans studies, and social welfare research. I can bring that perspective to conversations about service accessibility, inclusive practice, institutional language, and the assumptions shaping how organizations understand the people they serve. This may involve reviewing materials or procedures, contributing to discussions about service development, or helping teams think critically about the unintended consequences of established practices. I'm particularly interested in mental health and social welfare settings, where seemingly small decisions can carry considerable weight. A checkbox. An eligibility requirement. The language used to describe someone's needs. Small things, perhaps. Until you're the person whose life doesn't fit.
Training, workshops & professional conversations
A little discomfort can be useful. Humiliation, less so.
I enjoy conversations that unsettle what we think we know.
Why do we assume monogamy is the default? How do diagnostic categories shape what clinicians notice, or fail to notice? What happens when professional neutrality becomes a way of avoiding difficult questions about power? I can contribute to workshops, seminars, and professional discussions on queer-affirming and sex-positive practice, trauma, shame, identity, relationships, and the social contexts of psychological distress. My approach is conversational, clinically grounded, and informed by research.
I don't believe people learn particularly well when they're frightened of getting every word wrong. But I also don't think meaningful learning happens when we're determined to leave every assumption intact. We can be curious. We can disagree. We can even laugh. And still take the work seriously.
Policy, research & public engagement
Whose lives become evidence?
And who gets to interpret it?
A policy may be written in the language of protection while producing harm. A service may be technically available while remaining practically inaccessible. A research project may claim to empower a community while giving that community little say over the questions being asked. These contradictions interest me. My doctoral work in Social Welfare at the CUNY Graduate Center explores the relationship between identity, institutional power, and access to care, with particular attention to queer and transgender communities. I welcome opportunities to contribute to policy discussions, collaborative research, public consultations, and initiatives examining the experiences of marginalized communities. I'm especially interested in work that treats lived experience as knowledge, without pretending that any one person's experience can stand in for everyone else's. And in asking what happens after we've gathered the evidence. Who reads it? Who acts on it? What changes? Or does it become another beautifully formatted report gathering dust?
What I bring to the conversation
I'm a psychotherapist, writer, and doctoral researcher.
I founded Beyond Labels Therapy & Consultancy to bring these different strands of my work into conversation. Clinical practice keeps me close to the intimate consequences of social and institutional decisions. Research helps me examine the systems and assumptions behind them. Writing gives me somewhere to challenge ideas that might otherwise pass unquestioned. I also bring my own perspective as a queer immigrant who has lived and worked across different social and institutional contexts. That perspective matters. But it isn't a substitute for listening to the people most affected by the decisions under discussion. I don't claim to have a universal blueprint for inclusion.F rankly, I'd be suspicious of anyone who did. What I offer is a willingness to ask difficult questions, examine the evidence, and remain attentive to what gets lost when complex human lives are translated into institutional categories.
A final question
What if the people we're trying to include aren't the ones who need to change?
What if the problem isn't that someone struggles to navigate a service, but that the service was designed around assumptions that never accounted for them? And what if, instead of teaching people to become more legible to institutions, we asked institutions to become more responsive to people? I think those questions are worth pursuing. Not because the answers will always be comfortable. But because the alternative is to keep asking people to squeeze themselves into spaces that were never built with them in mind.
Shall we talk?
I welcome enquiries from organizations, researchers, educators, community groups, and others interested in working together. Whether you're developing a project, organizing a discussion, reviewing an approach, or simply wondering whether my perspective might be useful, you're welcome to get in touch.
You don't need to arrive with a fully formed proposal.
A good question is a perfectly respectable place to start.