I earned my doctorate in psychology from Duquesne University's internationally renowned program in human science psychology and dedicated my career to motivational interviewing training and coaching, intervention development and implementation, clinical research, and practice. I've spoken widely at international, national, and regional conferences, published more than 40 articles and chapters, and trained, coached, and mentored professionals from a wide variety of disciplines in substance use, mental health, and healthcare settings, in person and virtually, across the US and internationally.
I joined MINT in 1998. In 2008 I co-led MINT's Training of New Trainers. I served for nine years on MINT’s Board of Directors, including three years as Chair. I've been Editor of the MINT Bulletin and MINT’s online journal, Motivational Interviewing: Training, Research, Implementation, Practice (MITRIP). At various times I chaired the MINT Trainer Development and Certification Workgroup, the MINT Practitioner Certification Committee, and the MINT Forum Program Planning Committee. In 2022 was an organizer of the 6th International Conference on Motivational Interviewing.
From 2016-2024 I was Director of Training and then Vice President, Clinical Program Development at Vital Decisions and (after its acquisition) Evolent Health, where I was responsible for innovation in the design and execution of MI-based telehealth advance care planning and patient navigation programs for people with advanced ilness. For more than two decades before that I was a clinician, teacher, and clinical researcher in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, where I oversaw intervention development, training, and fidelity monitoring for a dozen clinical trials of MI in substance use, mental health, and health behavior settings. Most of my research focused on the development and testing of new applications of MI, in particular when used to enhance treatment engagement and adherence.
In 2015 I authored the first self-guided MI book, Finding Your Way to Change: How the Power of Motivational Interviewing Can Reveal What You Want and Help You Get There, published by Guilford Press and also available in Dutch, Italian, and Spanish. You can find my Psychology Today blog exploring the science and practice of motivational interviewing at Fueling the Fire of Change.
