The Scholarly Stuff

I’m a licensed clinical counselor and hold a PhD in Counseling & Counselor Education from North Carolina State University. My work on identity and belonging has been published in academic spaces, and I co-edited a book on belonging that brings together research, lived experience, and practice.

Alongside my clinical and research work, I train leaders, organizations, and institutions on how belonging actually functions — and how to create environments that move beyond performative inclusion toward real connection. Identity and belonging aren’t side interests for me; they’re the throughline of my work. I eat, live, and breathe identity and belonging. 

Here’s why…

Both my research and my lived experience inform how I understand belonging — neither stands alone.

The Back Story

As an Egyptian American kid growing up in the rural South, I silently absorbed daily comments about my heritage. Over time, those moments turned into self-doubt, self-consciousness, and a growing confusion about my place in the world. When the inevitable question — “What are you?” — came up, I started asking it of myself. That single, painful question propelled a lifelong search to understand who I am beyond the what.

Across my roles as a therapist, speaker, and entrepreneur — and as a mom, daughter, partner, and friend — I see people grappling with the same questions: Who am I? How do I stay connected to myself and others? Where do I belong?

Much of my work focuses on naming the barriers to belonging that shape these questions — many of which are rooted in systems that require self-editing, silence, or conformity in exchange for safety. Through my work, I offer a way to understand belonging that is not dependent on approval, but grounded in how connection is created across the inner world and the outer one.

Using a visual framework that maps where belonging lives, people can begin to make sense of isolation, reclaim agency around connection, and shape lives and environments that accommodate them — not just the other way around.