Ph.D. candidate in counseling psychology, Oklahoma State University  
Stillwater, Oklahoma

Along with my own coursework and dissertation work, I am also a therapist and undergraduate instructor in the pre-counseling minor at OSU. Additionally, I work for Equip as a research intern. Equip is a virtual eating disorder treatment program. 

The service I’m involved in focuses on eating disorder treatment and access to care. I am an Albert Schweitzer Fellow in Tulsa, OK. The Schweitzer fellowship requires fellows to develop a project or plan to address health inequity in the Tulsa community. I have a partner for my project and our focus is on access to eating disorder support for uninsured and underinsured Oklahomans, with an emphasis on empowerment and connection to resources. Our goal is to help members of our community connect to support via our free groups, identify outside resources, understand social systems and inequities that drive health inequity, and become advocates for individual and systems-level changes in eating disorder care.  

I am also part of the FEDUP collective, a group of trans, gender expansive, and intersex people who believe eating disorders are social justice issues. We work to train eating disorder professionals in affirming care and provide direct peer support to people in the trans and intersex communities. 

Austin College prepared me for my work in so many ways! AC allowed me to pursue all of my passions (hence the triple major) and to learn from so many different schools of thought. The liberal arts orientation of AC also put me in classrooms with people from multiple disciplines and helped me hone my ability to communicate what I care about in ways that people outside my field can understand and connect with. This is helpful when meeting with people about research, when writing grants to fund my studies, and in my interdisciplinary fellowship cohort. In my fellowship cohort, we have people from PhD programs in multiple fields, from med school and from law school. Knowing how to navigate discussions with people who are trained in different schools of thought helps me understand others and have more enriching conversations to connect the work we’re all doing. 
All in all, AC helped me learn to connect with others, value service in a culturally humble way, and taught me how what we do for each individual can help change the world around us. I’m forever thankful for my time at AC!