Meet Our Founder & CEO

Dr. Williams diagnoses and treats mental health disorders in the health service setting. She is a trauma specialist that provides evidence-based treatment to child and adult populations. She also specializes in mood and anxiety disorders, co-occurring disorders, and suicidality. Her approach to evidence-based treatment integrates cognitive behavioral, neuro-relational, and integrated health interventions.

Dr. Williams received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 2016 from an American Psychological Association-accredited program, the Wright Institute (Berkeley, CA). She completed her post-doctoral training as the first Indigenous psychologist to be employed at American Indian Health & Services (Santa Barbara, CA). She is a licensed in California, Hawaii, and New Mexico, and is a credentialed by the National Register for Health Service Psychologists.

Dr. Williams has eight years of post-doctoral experience in prevention research science for federally-funded projects (Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration and Indian Health Service). She has expertise in trauma-informed program design, and trains and coaches prevention staff in program implementation. As an evaluator, she specializes in mixed-methods approaches to needs assessments, readiness assessments, program evaluation (formative, process, outcome, and impact), and community-based participatory research. Her three years of pre-doctoral child and adult psychological assessment training informs her current trauma-informed approach to evaluation.

Knight, K., Love, M., Williams, J., & Vargas, M. (2023). Central Coast Regional Equity Initiative: Co-Creating and Actionizing a New Community-Led Equity Framework. Social Sciences, 12(8), 441.

Love, M., Knight, K., Williams, J., & Vargas M. (2024). Indigenous Approaches to Equity Research: A Story of California’s Central Coast Community. In Antunes, A., & Howard, J. (Eds.), All In: Community Engaged Scholarship for Social Change (pp. 113-135). Myers Education Press.

Williams, J. R. (2016). Adverse childhood events and adult substance abuse among urban and reservation American Indians (Doctoral dissertation, The Wright Institute).