About Me

I earned my Master's degree from Northwest University and received post-graduate clinical training in mental health counseling. But ultimately, I'm just another guy--another human being living his life on a beautiful rock hurtling through an unfathomably vast universe. 

While in graduate school studying mental health, I interned at Youth Eastside Services, where I counseled children and teens. Before that, I tutored very many pre-college students for years. After graduating, I worked as a mental health clinician at the Renton office of Valley Cities Behavioral Health, a community mental health clinic serving a diverse population of Medicaid clients, with a very wide variety of mental health challenges.

My former career was in law. I obtained my Juris Doctorate degree from the New York University School of Law in 2008 as a Robert McKay scholar, Articles Editor of the NYU Annual Survey of American Law, and research assistant to a professor. For ten years I practiced as a litigator, mostly in commercial and civil disputes but also in federal criminal defense work. During this time I myself was in therapy, and decided to change careers to help others in the way that therapy and EMDR have helped me. 

I work with individuals of all cultural and faith backgrounds, including those without any religious faith. I myself do not follow any particular religion, and identify as a Unitarian (i.e., the belief that all religions are different paths to the same destination). I have particular personal experience in Protestant and Episcopalian Christianity, and later life exposure to Buddhism as well.

Many moons ago, I studied history, literature, cultural anthropology, and Japanese as an Asian American Studies major at Stanford University, graduating with honors and distinction, and winning a prize for my senior thesis. 

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and am a third-generation Japanese-American.