Building a Sanctuary Where the Body Can Finally Exhale.
A Little Bit About Me
We're not here to follow trends—we're here to build something timeless. With a blend of creativity, strategy, and heart, we help ideas come to life. Every project we take on is an opportunity to learn, grow, and do something meaningful. We treat our clients like partners and our work like craft.
The Roots of My JourneyI arrived in the United States as an international student to fulfill a dream of higher education, even though that wasn’t my parents’ original plan for me. As the eldest daughter in my family, I was expected to go to work to support the family, not to build an independent professional life half a world away. Yet, somehow I knew that I needed to leave home in order to become who I needed to be.
I grew up in Hong Kong, during the twilight of British rule where I experienced firsthand the psychological impact of being on the less fortunate side of the British class system and less than a decade’s distance and short boat ride from China’s Cultural Revolution. I didn’t have to learn about these realities from textbooks. They lived with me in my home. My father survived starvation and the Cultural Revolution. He carried with him deep unprocessed grief and trauma. Left unresolved, parents pass this to their children in one way or another. So, unsurprisingly, for much of my early life, I too had to carry his trauma. It wasn’t until later, through my work with trauma, that I began to understand how inherited pain lives in the body across generations.
New Lens on Self
Like many others, I learned how to be hyper-vigilant and high-functioning, listening to everyone else while losing touch with my own needs. The demands of daily life come so quickly and unpredictably that I wasn’t even aware that I had gone through school and half a career with some degree of congenital hearing loss. They say that life can only be understood backwards but it has to be lived forwards. Moments like discovering “you have a disability you didn’t know you had” or that you are “carrying around trauma that you didn’t know you had” can give a sudden clarity that allows you to reevaluate your entire life story. It did for me. These understandings and revelations inform my practice, everyday.
From Healer to Builder, and Back to HealerAs a Licensed Psychotherapist and mental health program director, I have worked in a number of settings, including community-based programs, primary care, and clinical leadership. I felt particularly honored to be the director of a mental health program that served survivors of the 9/11 attacks and their families, work that forever shaped my understanding of collective trauma and the limits of traditional treatment models.
After years working as director in community based primary care, I was asked to become the Senior Clinical Director, for a mental health startup during the COVID-19 pandemic where I helped develop and expand their mental health treatment program nationwide. It was a valuable experience, one for which I am thankful, but at a certain point I wanted to get back to helping clients directly. And this was where Alcyon began.
Alcyon operates with one basic principle: Healing does not happen through insight alone; it happens when the body finally feels safe enough to rest.
Why Alcyon
In mythology, the Alcyon (or Kingfisher) is a small, resilient bird said to have the power to calm turbulent seas so it can build its nest.
I created Alcyon to be a kind of "nest”. Our lives can be turbulent and unpredictable. We all need a place to “shelter from the storm” , one where we can heal from prior injuries, get our bearings and review our options.