Erika is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 25 years of global experience in the humanitarian sector, focusing on trauma. She began her career in grassroots community development in East and West Africa, including Rwanda, Uganda, Togo, and Ethiopia. She has also worked and raised her family in multiethnic refugee and Afro-Caribbean communities, addressing resettlement challenges, poverty, gun violence, incarceration, drug recovery, and grief in marginalized urban areas.

Over the last 11 years, Erika has provided cross-cultural trauma therapy to refugees, asylum seekers, torture survivors, trafficking survivors, and frontline aid workers. Her expertise includes complex trauma, grief, trauma and crisis stabilization and recovery, and adapting Western mental health care to be culturally and linguistically appropriate. Erika’s preferred clinical modality is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) due to its proven effectiveness in treating trauma. She holds an undergraduate degree in International Studies and a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology with a focus on trauma.

Erika currently serves as a contractor for Konterra Group as the Clinical and EAP Program Manager for USAID Staff Care and runs a nonprofit that serves migrating populations. In her personal time, she enjoys traveling internationally, fishing, seeking adventure, learning other cultures and spending time with her family.