I'm doing this work because I
feel I can offer important help to parents for themselves and their kids
that will positively affect their lives in big ways. I wish it wasn't
the case, but I believe it is a kind of help that is hard to find. I
find being part of helping families navigate to a better place extremely
rewarding.
What kind of work were you doing before this?
I
was and continue to be a research mathematician. I'm currently working
at UC Berkeley. I have an undergraduate and masters degree in math
from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Berkeley. I carve out time for Family
First Advising because I feel it is important.
So how did you come to be doing this work?
Through
personal experience. When I started going through marital trouble with
kids, I chose to focus on one goal: to parent well and make good, well
informed choices for the long term health of my family. The problem was
that I found it really difficult to get any reasonable information
about how to go about achieving this goal. In the process of seeking
help from all kinds of resources and navigating things for myself I
discovered a lot of surprising and helpful things. Over time, I found
myself in quite a few conversations with people who asked for advice and
I discovered the lessons I had learned were helpful to others.
If you had to distill the foundation of your approach to one idea, what would it be?
I'd
say that it's based in the idea that (in most cases) kids thrive when
both parents are heavily involved and work together. When a person I
work with really absorbs this idea good things happen: their kids
benefit, they become a better parent, and they become happier as a
consequence. Of course there is much more to the process and the devil
is in the details.
So what makes you good at what you do?
It's
a combination of things. I help parents through the process of
assessing where they are, understanding their options and deciding
where they want to go, and finally navigating themselves and their
family there.
The help I give starts with the core of what I learned during my own experience. I use the concepts, perspectives, strategies, and knowledge I accumulated to provide important missing pieces for many families going through hard times. Concepts that help the people I work with see the larger, long term picture. Perspectives that help put the health of the kids into focus even amidst uncertainty and stress. Strategies that allow people to be themselves and help their kids even while they are under tremendous stress. Knowledge that realistically clarifies the available paths.
The situations that people face and work to improve are emotional to the core and extremely complex. When your relationship with your partner is stressed and your kids are in the middle, the result is a complicated swirl of emotions, personalities, experiences, and perceptions all tangled together. I believe the most useful help addresses and supports both the emotional and the analytical components of each person's situation. My own experience and work with others allows me to provide compassionate understanding and tools to help support the emotional component of the journey to a better place. Simultaneously my math background has given me the skills to untangle, sort through, and plot a good course through the ongoing practical complexities that parents constantly face through their process. For someone to move their kids, themselves, and their family to a happier and healthier place is hard work and often requires real changes. To help people achieve these kinds of changes, I use ideas from many sources including psychology, the science of habits, emotional intelligence, and my extensive experience as a sports coach.
The help I give starts with the core of what I learned during my own experience. I use the concepts, perspectives, strategies, and knowledge I accumulated to provide important missing pieces for many families going through hard times. Concepts that help the people I work with see the larger, long term picture. Perspectives that help put the health of the kids into focus even amidst uncertainty and stress. Strategies that allow people to be themselves and help their kids even while they are under tremendous stress. Knowledge that realistically clarifies the available paths.
The situations that people face and work to improve are emotional to the core and extremely complex. When your relationship with your partner is stressed and your kids are in the middle, the result is a complicated swirl of emotions, personalities, experiences, and perceptions all tangled together. I believe the most useful help addresses and supports both the emotional and the analytical components of each person's situation. My own experience and work with others allows me to provide compassionate understanding and tools to help support the emotional component of the journey to a better place. Simultaneously my math background has given me the skills to untangle, sort through, and plot a good course through the ongoing practical complexities that parents constantly face through their process. For someone to move their kids, themselves, and their family to a happier and healthier place is hard work and often requires real changes. To help people achieve these kinds of changes, I use ideas from many sources including psychology, the science of habits, emotional intelligence, and my extensive experience as a sports coach.
