Zoe Leaf, PhD-I

Zoe Leaf (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology at Long Island University-Brooklyn. She is interested in understanding clients’ desires, motives, and perspectives, and she feels passionately about working with individuals to improve their lives and well-being. She is deeply committed to respect, justice, and liberation, in clinical practice and beyond. In this work, she strives to be a thoughtful and communicative collaborator.

Zoe graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University in 2020 with a major in Child Study and Human Development, focusing on child psychology. The interdisciplinary lens of the Child Study and Human Development department allowed her to explore her interest in clinical psychology and provided her with a developmental perspective on psychopathology. At Tufts, she thrived by devoting herself not only to her studies, but to engaging with surrounding communities as well. She took a hands-on approach to her learning and was involved with numerous extracurricular activities that linked her interests in psychology and child development with practical work supporting children in local, diverse communities.

After graduating, Zoe worked as the Lab Coordinator of Dr. Beatrice Beebe's Communication Sciences Lab at NYSPI/CUIMC. There, she discovered the importance of observing dyadic nonverbal communication and noticing patterns of mother-infant interaction. For example, mother-infant interactions can inform how we look at nonverbal communication in the therapist-patient relationship, which is salient to her clinical training. She is keenly aware of nonverbal cues in the clinical relationship and incorporates this attunement into her practice. She also took the one-year Infant Observation Seminar through the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program, where she conducted weekly clinical observations with a mother-infant dyad and met with a seminar supervision group. This seminar provided crucial clinical training in working with parents and children together. Her observations also offered the opportunity to consider how nonverbal communication manifests through transference and countertransference in the psychoanalytic setting.

Zoe also worked under the supervision of Dr. Peter Meiland, a clinical psychologist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, to conduct psychological evaluations for individuals seeking asylum in the United States. She participated in clinical interviews and wrote psychological assessments which were used in support of these asylum cases.

In her PhD studies, Zoe hopes to concentrate on child psychology and treatment and parent-infant relationships across diverse cultural contexts. Ultimately, she hopes to practice psychotherapy with children, adolescents, and families, and to pursue research on sociocultural bases for mental health in childhood. A native New Yorker herself, Zoe is passionate about understanding the psychosocial issues affecting New Yorkers. At Dwellness, Zoe is excited to pursue rich, meaningful clinical work with children and families. Zoe’s approach to therapy is empathic, playful, and creative; additionally, informed by a strong commitment to social justice, she is dedicated to empowering clients across a diverse range of cultural backgrounds and contexts.

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