Jennifer Chen, PsyD

About Dr. Chen

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I am a licensed clinical psychologist serving the East Bay in Northern California. I grew up in the Bay Area, and received my BA in Psychology and BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley. I worked in the corporate world in the Midwest and the UK as a healthcare tech consultant for a number of years before returning back to school for my graduate studies. I received my doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from the PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium in Palo Alto, CA in 2013. I have had extensive training in inpatient and outpatient hospitals, VA medical centers, forensic settings, and community mental health clinics in the Bay Area and New York City.  I completed my pre-doctoral internship at Maimonides Medical Center and Cancer Center in Brooklyn, NY and my postdoctoral hours at the Bronx VA Medical Center and at the Manhattan Center for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

I most recently worked as a clinical manager and supervisor in the Specialty Mental Health division of Asian Health Services in downtown Oakland, leading the Child & Youth team and supervising trainees, postdoctoral fellows, and licensed and license-track staff. I provided didactics and facilitated monthly joint case conferences between the behavioral health staff and the specialty mental health clinic. I am a strong advocate of increasing accessibility to mental health resources and decreasing stigma for mental health care within the AAPI community. I have served as a clinical supervisor and consultant to Asian Health Services in their Integrative Behavioral Health team, and am a part of their Community Healing Unit (CHU) that was formed in response to the anti-Asian hate and community violence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in providing no-cost therapy to victims of violence.

I previously worked as a Senior Psychologist at the Manhattan Center for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in New York City, primarily seeing adolescents and adults in individual therapy and teaching a weekly didactics seminar to trainees at the center. My time in New York helped me to hone in on my clinical interests of mindfulness, cultural factors and competency in mental health, and utilizing evidenced-based treatments.

I enjoy having one foot in academia, and was an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College (part of the City University of New York) in the Department of Psychology, teaching in the Mental Health Counseling Graduate Program. I have taught courses on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Foundations of Therapy, and Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Factors in Counseling. I am currently an adjunct faculty at the University of San Francisco (USF) in their Clinical Psychology PsyD Program, teaching an Evidence-Based Practices course. I am passionate about teaching and training new therapists, especially in helping them understand and utilize therapeutically the dynamics of the therapist-client relationship.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was a part of the Bay Area Frontline Workers Counseling Project (FWCP) to help support frontline workers. Additionally, I consult and facilitate workshops for organizations and institutions that want to initiate change conversations on race, privilege, and inclusion.

pronouns: she / her / hers