Infant-Parent Program Clinical Staff

Janelle Albanés-Jower, MS, LMFT

Janelle has provided childhood mental health services since 2014 at the Infant-Parent Program, where she provides infant-parent psychotherapy for families and early childhood mental health consultation. She began with the Infant-Parent Program as a trainee, and prior to her IPP training, she worked as an early interventionist supporting young children ages 0-3 in meeting their developmental milestones. Currently, she continues her work as an infant-parent psychotherapist and primarily provides services to multicultural and Spanish-speaking families in their home using psychodynamic theory while holding in mind cultural diversity and trauma-informed practices. As a consultant, she is in daycares, preschools, and family resource centers collaborating with teachers and other services providers in supporting the social-emotional needs of children and their families and building stronger community connections.

Lea Brown, LCSW

Lea has been the clinical supervisor of both infant-parent psychotherapy and early childhood mental health consultation for the past 15 years and serves as a field instructor and field placement liaison for social work students training at the Infant-Parent Program. Ms. Brown also provides direct services in infant-parent psychotherapy, group intervention, and early childhood mental health consultation, as well as training both in the Infant-Parent Program/Daycare Consultants Program and to local and regional infant mental health and early intervention agencies. She has served as a faculty member in the Advanced Clinical Supervision Certificate Program at the Smith College School of Social Work. She is currently an adjunct faculty member for the Coalition for Clinical Social Work through the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, as well as a community partner in the Community Psychoanalysis Track at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California.

Sophia M. Cárcamo-Heekin, LCSW

Sophia (she/her/ella) is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist. She was born and raised in Ramaytush/Ohlone land (colonized San Francisco, CA). She is bilingual (Español/ English), and bicultural (Salvadorian American). She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in social work, both from San Jose State University. She believes learning occurs at many levels including community and academic. Her approach is complex trauma-informed and continuously practices inclusivity and decolonization while also acknowledging her privileges and abilities. She has knowledge in and practices individual and dyadic modalities including infant-parent psychotherapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and energy medicine/ energy psychology interventions. She recently completed initial training in child-parent psychotherapy with the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program. She has extensive experience working with children (0-25+ years old), their caregivers, their communities, and the systems which they navigate and live in. She also has extensive experience with crisis, acute needs, and exploited populations. Currently, she provides consultation and clinical services as part of Daycare Consultants.

Elisa Cooney-Urrutia, AMFT

Elisa  (she/her/ella) is an associate marriage and family therapist at the Infant-Parent Program, providing early childhood mental health consultation and infant-parent psychotherapy for families. She trained in IPP’s Intensive Practice-Based Training in Multicultural Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health program while completing her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy at the University of San Francisco. As a clinical trainee, Elisa conducted dyadic psychotherapy for marginalized, monolingual Spanish-speaking families, many of whom had recently immigrated from their countries of origin. Elisa is a bilingual and bicultural clinician, and provides trauma-informed and culturally responsive services in both English and Spanish. Additionally, Elisa is undergoing the rostering process for child-parent psychotherapy.

Maya Haskins, LMFT

Maya (she/her/ella) is a licensed marriage and family therapist providing services in early childhood mental health consultation and infant-parent psychotherapy. She is bilingual, bicultural, and provides culturally sensitive and trauma-informed services in Spanish and English to a diverse population. She earned her master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of San Francisco, followed by two years of training and honing her skills in early childhood mental health at the Infant-Parent Program.

Prior to becoming a therapist, Ms. Haskins worked in early childhood education and has extensive experience working in the field. She is deeply committed to supporting administrators, providers, families, and children in group care settings. Her commitment is rooted in the conviction that early relationships have a profound impact on the trajectory of one’s life. It has been a long-time ambition for her to work in early childhood mental health, where she can combine her passions for early childhood education and mental health, and is thrilled to be back at IPP.

Katie Kwon-Brossman, MSW, ASW

Katie is an early childhood mental health clinician and consultant at the Infant Parent Program. At IPP, she provides trauma-informed and culturally sensitive program consultation to teachers and families at early childhood sites throughout San Francisco, as well as infant-parent psychotherapy to children and their families. Katie completed her master’s degree at the Smith College School for Social Work in 2020. During her studies, Katie trained at IPP, where she provided in-home dyadic psychotherapy to young children and their caregivers. She has previous experience providing clinical services to children and adults in home, community, school, and clinic settings. Katie has extensive experience working with families experiencing child-welfare involvement. She is a current fellow in the Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship and candidate for rostering in child-parent psychotherapy.

Karol J. Markowitz, LMFT

Karol (she/her/ella) is a licensed marriage and family therapist who obtained her master’s degree with a dual concentration in industrial-organizational psychology and counseling psychology from Golden Gate University. Karol is bilingual (Spanish and English) and bicultural (Salvadorian/American) and is deeply committed to collaborating with, and supporting immigrants and underserved and marginalized families in our society.

Karol’s upbringing and personal observations from an early age allowed her to witness inequality and several forms of oppression during the Salvadorian civil war. Likewise, her own immigration to the United States and accounts from clients have supplied fuel for her to fight against social injustices and challenge broken, racist structures that do not give opportunities to infants and families in an equitable manner. Karol has extensive experience in community mental health supporting trauma survivors and strengthening relationships betweencaregivers and their children. She has offered early childhood mental health consultation to teachers and administrators and reflective clinical and programmatic supervision to providers such as family therapists, social workers, family partners, and community workers.

Additionally, Karol has extensive experience working with families involved in the child welfare system and has managed and supervised clinical programs that provide specialty mental health services to families with children ages 0–5. She is certified in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT), Phase 1, and is rostered as a child-parent psychotherapy provider. Karol holds a small private practice in San Mateo County where she sees adults and young children.

Lauren Perez, PsyD

Lauren is a licensed clinical psychologist with the Solid Start Initiative at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG), and the co-director of clinical training at the Infant-Parent Program. She provides reflective facilitation and training; infant, perinatal, and is rostered in child-parent psychotherapy; infant and early childhood mental health consultation; and perinatal mental health and reproductive justice services both within inpatient and outpatient services at the Women’s Health Clinic and Birth Center at ZSFG and other community settings. Lauren is the liaison to the Family Treatment Court system partnered with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. As a bilingual and bicultural Latina clinician, she provides trauma informed and culturally responsive direct services, consultation, and reflective facilitation in both English and Spanish.

Kristin S. Reinsberg, MS, LMFT

Kristin has provided clinical services, supervision, program development and management in the field of infant and early childhood mental health for over 20 years. She is currently the interim director of the Infant-Parent Program (IPP) and the director of Daycare Consultants—IPP's early childhood mental health consultation program—in the Division of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCSF. She is currently the project co-director, along with Barbara Ivins, PhD, of the SAMHSA-funded Early Childhood Mental Health Workforce Development Consortium, which is bringing early childhood mental health training and consultation to 10 rural northern California counties over a 5-year period.

Previously, she cofounded and directed the early childhood mental health program serving the San Mateo and Santa Clara counties at Jewish Family & Children’s Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, and Sonoma Counties. She has extensive experience developing and implementing early childhood mental health consultation programs; providing mental health consultation to shelter, residential, and early childhood programs; and supporting the learning and professional development of early childhood mental health consultants and supervisors by providing training and reflective supervision within her program and to consultants in nearby states.

Kristin also has a private practice in San Francisco where she works with adults, children, and families, and has been a contributor, author, and content expert in the area of early childhood mental health for the Georgetown Center of Excellence for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation and AbilityPath, a website supporting families with children with disabilities. She is endorsed as an infant-family and early childhood mental health specialist and reflective practice facilitator II by the California Center for Infant-Family and Early Childhood Mental Health.

Andrea Scott, LMFT

Andrea is a licensed marriage and family therapist who comes from a long tradition of relationship-based modalities. She divides her time between the Infant-Parent Program at UCSF and private and collaborative practice in the Bay Area.

Before becoming a therapist, Andrea was a movement analysis practitioner who trained in the Duggan/French Approach in Barcelona, Spain. This training was uniquely instrumental to her professional trajectory. Upon moving back to the United States after 14 years abroad, she trained in somatic psychotherapy at John F. Kennedy University under the tutelage of then-program director, Mark Ludwig, LCSW. Andrea sought out a specialization in trauma informed therapy with infants, toddlers, and parents. The supervision and mentorship of Linda Perez, PhD, and Sister Fran Kearney at the Mount St. Joseph/St. Elizabeth recovery program for women with substance abuse challenges helped her develop needed infant and toddler skills.

Andrea went on to work in the SEED Program for six years with founder Kathryn Orfirer, PhD, an Infant-Parent Program alum, at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. By way of the Infant-Parent Program diaspora, she came home to roost in the Infant-Parent Program in 2016. There, she has been immersed in daycare consultancy work. Andrea consults to a variety of sites, all of whom work with socially and economically vulnerable populations. She is keen to bring to the forefront notions of social justice, diversity, inclusion, and belonging as she continues to develop a trauma-informed, relational, and somatic perspective in her infant-toddler mental health consultancy work.

Maria Seymour St. John, PhD, LMFT

Maira is a clinical professor with the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and co-director of training for the Infant-Parent Program. Endorsed by the California Center for Infant-Family and Early Childhood Mental Health as an infant-family and early childhood mental health specialist, reflective facilitator II, and mentor, Dr. St. John’s areas of expertise include infant-parent psychotherapy, diversity and inclusion, and reflective supervision. She is a member of the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California and also of the Barnard Center Advanced Clinical Training Program at the University of Washington.

Dr. St. John is licensed as a marriage and family therapist and completed her doctoral training in the UC Berkeley Department of Rhetoric, an interdisciplinary critical studies program. She has published on subjects related to race, class, gender, and sexuality in infant mental health work in numerous books and journals, including Infant Mental Health JournalZero to Three, Feminist Studies, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Attachment and Sexuality, and the World Association of Infant Mental Health Handbook of Infant Mental Health. She is a developer of and national trainer on the Diversity-Informed Tenets for Work with Infants, Children, and Families. Her book, Focusing on Relationships: An Effort That Pays, was published by Zero to Three in 2019. She holds a psychotherapy and consultation practice in Oakland.

Anna Spielvogel, MD, PhD

Anna is a health sciences professor on recall in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences who specializes in perinatal psychiatry. She is a past director of the High-Risk Obstetrics Clinic and residency training at ZSFG. At present, Dr. Spielvogel teaches, supervises, and provides patient care in the Infant-Parent Program and the Ob-Psych Program. In addition, she serves as psychiatrist to the ZSFG High User Emergency Department Case Management Program. Across all settings, Dr. Spielvogel is a certified Jungian analyst and has been dedicated to teaching interdisciplinary providers how to develop an in-depth approach to patients, as well as identifying obstacles to optimal health care for patients with mental illness and options for primary health care providers and mental health providers to overcome them.

Amanda Wake, LCSW

Amanda (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker born and raised in the Bay Area. She provides therapeutic support using infant and child parent psychotherapy interventions to Family Treatment Court-involved families. In addition, she delivers perinatal and reproductive justice services at the Women’s Health Clinic and Birth Center at ZSFG. She also offers mental health consultation to childcare centers in San Francisco. Prior to coming to the Infant-Parent Program, Amanda worked for seven years running a youth program that advocated for reproductive justice in the Bay Area and nationally. She then received her master’s in social work from New York University. After graduating, she provided therapeutic services to families with infants and young children in the Alameda County Child Welfare System working with a multi-disciplinary team at the SEED Program of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. She comes from a Japanese American family of passionate advocates for racial and economic justice. She brings this passion into her work as she strives to make the therapeutic space one that is safe and liberating to all.

Esther Wong, LCSW

Esther is a licensed clinical social worker who obtained her master’s degree from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. As an early childhood mental health consultant and clinician in the Infant-Parent Program, she provides trauma-informed and culturally sensitive program consultation in daycare and early education settings, as well as dyadic therapy services to young children and their families. She has previous experience providing crisis and outpatient therapy services to children, adolescents, adults, and families in home, community, and clinic settings and providing individual, family, group, and milieu therapy in daycare and therapeutic preschool settings.

Esther is a graduate of the Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship Program, and her publications include “Reflecting on ‘How You Are is as Important as What You Do'” in Zero to Three Journal. The Neurosequential Network acknowledges that she has completed NMT training certification through the Phase 1 level.