Hello there and welcome! My name is Jennifer and I am a licensed clinician and certified eating disorder specialist with 9 years of experience providing service in the mental health field. I graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Minor in Queer Studies. I later returned to Cal State Fullerton to receive my master’s degree in Counseling and graduated in 2018. My master’s thesis was focused on working with trans and gender diverse intimate relationships through a relational-cultural and growth-fostering theoretical lens. 

Currently, I am a doctoral student attending The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and pursuing a Psy.D in Marital and Family Therapy.  The focus of my doctoral dissertation is a program development for BIPOC women and femmes struggling with an eating disorder/disordered eating. 

I completed my MFT traineeship as a clinician at the LGBT Center OC, where I provided free and low-cost counseling services to individuals in the Orange County community. I also spent 8 years in an adolescent residential treatment setting where I served in several roles including mental health technician, therapist, program director, and executive director.

I feel very passionate about working with BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities and believe that social justice advocacy is inherent in therapeutic practice. As a Queer multiracial woman and therapist, transparency and authenticity are at the center of my practice, and are some of the most important factors for building the therapeutic relationship. 

In my practice, I always consider the impact that identity and culture have on the well-being and health of my clients and work to explore and process those factors in therapy to move towards healing. I also believe that people are the experts when it comes to their own lives and what they need, and my role is to join and walk alongside my clients to help them learn how to listen to their internal compass. 

As a clinician who specializes in eating disorders and has experienced fat-phobia personally and through my work, it can be very challenging to not internalize the messages we are bombarded with on a daily basis. My goal as a therapist is to support clients with healing themselves, and their relationship with their body/food, so that we can all collectively work together to challenge ableism and fat-phobia. 

Feel free to reach me at (714) 388-6341 or e-mail me at jennpiercemft@gmail.com.