OUR TEAM
MELISSA JOHNSON, PSYD | Co-Director & Licensed Psychologist
Dr. Melissa Johnson is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 15 years of clinical experience, including the provision of brief and long-term psychotherapy to adults and couples. She has a strong clinical background and interest in treating depression and anxiety, as well as issues related to gender and sexual identity, loneliness, dysfunctional relationship patterns, challenges related to life transitions, fertility, pregnancy and postpartum issues, and bi/multicultural identity issues.
Dr. Johnson believes that a safe, authentic, and trusting therapeutic relationship plays a key role in the healing, learning, and growing process. Her approach to therapy is relational, collaborative, active, and nonjudgmental. She values transparency and flexibility and encourages open and direct feedback from clients.
Dr. Johnson earned a MA and PsyD in clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco. Her dissertation research focused on provision of gender-affirmative psychotherapy with gender-diverse children. She earned a BA in psychology with a minor in critical gender studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Johnson can provide therapy bilingually in Spanish and English.
Pronouns: she/her ~ License Number 021039
PHILICIA RUBIN, PSYD | Co-Director & Licensed Psychologist
Dr. Philicia Rubin is a licensed clinical psychologist with experience providing short and long-term therapy to adolescents, adults, and couples. She specializes in working with depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and issues related to gender, sexuality, and identity. Dr. Rubin spent six of her first 15 years of clinical experience in college counseling centers and particularly enjoys working with undergraduate and graduate students as they navigate this unique and challenging time in their lives.
Dr. Rubin believes that a strong, trusting therapeutic relationship is the key to a successful therapy. She approaches therapy with a warm, collaborative, and down-to-earth style and strives to create a space where her clients can feel safe to be their true, authentic, and open selves. She uses genuine curiosity, compassion and sense of humor to foster connection.
Dr. Rubin co-founded Groundwork Therapy following a longstanding position at Fordham University’s Counseling and Psychological Services, where she held roles as Group Therapy Program Coordinator, Outreach Coordinator and Supervising Psychologist. Dr. Rubin earned her PsyD in clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco after receiving her MS in psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned her BS in psychology from the University of Florida.
Pronouns: she/her ~ License Number 021098
Dr. Ginette Sims is a clinical psychologist with extensive experience providing care to adolescents, adults, and couples across the gender and sexuality spectrum. Dr. Sims works with a variety of concerns, including depression, anxiety, difficulties with emotion regulation, attachment issues, relational conflict, life transitions, and recovery from traumatic experiences. She specializes in serving couples and individuals who have experienced multiple types of trauma including discrimination and identity-based trauma, complex trauma, PTSD, and secondary exposure to violence.
Dr. Sims approaches therapeutic work from an active, psychodynamic and relational perspective. Her style focuses on examining how relationship dynamics impact unconscious motivations, defenses, maladaptive behaviors, and perceptions. By building strong therapeutic relationships through mutual respect, compassion, warmth, and authenticity, Dr. Sims guides clients’ development of insight into their own defenses and motivations to uncover paths to change. As a multiculturally- and trauma-informed clinician, Dr. Sims considers how systemic factors impact development, self-perception, relationships, and worldviews.
In addition to psychodynamic, relational techniques, Dr. Sims is trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). She utilizes these treatments to augment clients’ skills in managing stress, improving communication, and increasing self-esteem. Dr. Sims is a collaborative, warm clinician who is passionately committed to tailoring her services to the needs, identities, experiences, and goals of her clientele.
Dr. Sims earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her dissertation was titled Media Exposure of Police Violence: Assessing Psychological Risk and Resilience in Black Americans. She earned her BA in Anthropology from Williams College.
Pronouns: she/her ~ License Number 027021
GINETTE SIMS, PHD | Licensed Psychologist
ANA LOMIDZE, PSYD | Postdoctoral Psychologist
Dr. Ana Lomidze is a postdoctoral clinical psychologist experienced in providing brief and long-term therapy with adults in outpatient and inpatient settings.
Dr. Lomidze has extensive experience working with patients through varied issues including complex trauma, depression, anxiety, disordered eating, life changes, grief and loss. She is focused on issues surrounding social identity and systemic oppression. She also is dedicated to supporting patients as they navigate self-acceptance, relationship issues and more complex existential concerns about the world around them. Additionally, she has strong interest in working with young adults, college students, and people in the arts.
Dr. Lomidze is dedicated to ongoing learning and growing as a professional. She uses an integrative approach to therapy, utilizing relational psychodynamic psychotherapy, person-centered therapy, attachment-based therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). She is highly flexible and able to use different techniques catering specifically to the individual needs of clients. Dr. Lomidze believes in giving people a safe, warm and nonjudgmental environment needed to establish trust to process their inner world. She believes in cultivating a strong, trusting relationship with her patients and encourages ongoing feedback.
Dr. Lomidze received her PsyD in School and Clinical Psychology from Pace University where she also received an MSED. Her dissertation focused on the mental health implications of mispronunciation of names. Her other work in research focused on examining the impact of social media, texting and the internet on mental health. She received an MA in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University. She also earned her BA from Pace University where she majored in Psychology.
Pronouns: she/her ~ Permit Number P125279
Supervised by Dr. Melissa Johnson
CORINNE LYKINS, PSYD | Licensed Psychologist
Dr. Corinne Lykins is a licensed psychologist with experience providing long and short-term therapy to adults in a variety of settings including college counseling, group private practice and community mental health. She is experienced in working with concerns related to depression, anxiety, trauma, and life transitions. Dr. Lykins is especially interested in issues of identity, self-acceptance, trauma recovery, the process of building and deepening relationships, and couples therapy.
Dr. Lykins incorporates relational, psychodynamic, and attachment-focused approaches in psychotherapy and recognizes the importance of humor, connection, and creativity in both coping and thriving. She enjoys the imperfect process of meaning-making, helping clients tap into their own resilience, as well as exploring self-acceptance and self-expression as forms of healing.
Dr. Lykins approaches therapy with an awareness of the impact of social, cultural and systemic factors on wellbeing and centers trauma-informed, feminist, and culturally responsive frameworks in session. She believes that consent, collaboration, and attention to power dynamics are necessary in creating safe and mutually empowering therapy relationships with her clients. She has worked with a diverse range of queer and trans clients and is experienced in therapeutic approaches that affirm gender and sexual diversity. She values multicultural and queer perspectives on wellbeing and believes that affirmative care should reflect the diversity of queer and trans communities.
Dr. Lykins completed her Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology and received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of New Mexico.
Pronouns: she/her ~ License No. 026409
Hannah is a depth-oriented therapist providing therapy to adults and couples across the lifespan. She particularly loves working with clients around identity-related and interpersonal issues, and finds joy in helping people build their curiosity and insight about themselves. Hannah also supports clients around issues of self-acceptance, sex and sexuality, loss and grief, loneliness, depression, anxiety, dysfunctional relationship patterns, and existential concerns.
Hannah believes that it is in the context of our most intimate relationships that our most engrained and dysfunctional interpersonal patterns tend to manifest. She strives to help her clients cultivate more self-awareness and intentionality in their relationships (including the relationship they have with themselves), in order to foster the types of connections they want to have, rather than unconsciously repeating what is familiar.
Hannah’s approach to therapy is warm, nonjudgmental, and collaborative. She uses compassion and humor to cultivate meaningful connections with her clients, and to create a space where individuals feel safe to explore all parts of themselves. As a relational, process-oriented therapist, Hannah believes in the importance of attending to the here-and-now of the therapeutic relationship, and encourages transparency and ongoing feedback from clients. She meets with select clients on a twice-weekly basis to deepen the therapy experience.
Hannah earned her bachelor degree in psychology from Bowdoin College, and a master degree in clinical social work from Hunter College.
Pronouns: she/her ~ License No. 119292
Supervised by Dr. Philicia Rubin
HANNAH GARTNER, LMSW | Therapist
Abbey provides therapy to adults and couples of all ages, working with a variety of issues from sex and relationships, family dynamics, depression, anxiety, and trauma. Providing care that is queer and trans-affirming is very important to her, and she believes that personal identity is something that can grow, change, and shift at any point in a person's life.
In addition to working with mood, identity, and relationship challenges, Abbey has specialized training in eating disorders. She operates within a “health at every size” frame of physical and mental health and believes that one does not have to be diagnosed with an eating disorder in order to receive help for struggles related to feeding, eating, exercise, and body image. Abbey also has experience supporting people whose eating and body issues intersect with queerness and dysphoria.
Abbey’s approach to therapy is grounded in psychodynamic and relational theory and techniques. She believes that the therapeutic relationship is deeply important for therapeutic growth and healing and brings unconditional care and curiosity to her work. She also posits that every person has a rich inner life that is worth exploring, and that therapy can be a powerful tool for self-discovery. Abbey also values the utility of cognitive and behavioral approaches and integrates behavioral tools when helpful for her clients.
Pronouns: she/her ~ License Number 124184
Supervised by Dr. Corinne Lykins
ABBEY MAXBAUER, LMSW | Therapist
William is a psychotherapist with experience providing short and long-term therapy to adolescents, adults, and couples. He supports and collaborates with clients as they navigate challenges with emotional regulation, anxiety, depression, sex and sexual identity, recent or resurfacing trauma, and life transitions. He has extensive experience working with clients around issues of intimate/relational aggression and other forms of acting out, as well as sexual and non-sexual trauma, internalized stigma, and pressured masculinity.
William’s approach to therapy emphasizes the therapeutic relationship as the main vessel for growth and healing with the goals of improving self-awareness, developing acceptance of individual wants and needs, as well as healing from past harmful relational experiences. He utilizes psychodynamic, relational, and narrative psychotherapy from a trauma-focused, person-centered approach in order to foster exploration and understand how past experiences inform current challenges. This includes guiding clients in identifying, understanding, and expressing complex thoughts and emotions that are at the root of problematic behavior. He implements strategies from motivational interviewing and DBT to empower clients to develop skills in emotional processing, mindfulness, and coping with stress and anxiety.
William believes in honoring a client’s authentic experience in regards to culture, race, ethnicity, neurodiversity, gender identity, sexuality, and faith. He approaches clients with empathy, sincerity, and humor as he honors each client as the expert on their own lives. He understands the necessity of cultural humility and transparency in learning when engaging in this work. His top priority is to create a safe and warm therapeutic space that is racially and politically aware, LGBTQ-affirming, spiritually mindful, and sex-positive.
William received his masters from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, where he completed a Field of Specialization in Gender and Sexuality.
Pronouns: he/him ~ License Number 099652
WILLIAM HAGEE, LCSW | Therapist
Maggie provides therapy to adults and couples across the lifespan. They support all clients in their exploration and healing around issues of gender identity, sex and sexuality, loss and grief, depression, anxiety, cultivating healthy relationships, and self-acceptance. Additionally, Maggie specializes in therapeutic work with queer and trans clients. They believe that the most important aspect of therapeutic work is the creation of an affirming and safe relationship between therapist and client. In this way, Maggie’s approach as a therapist is one that first and foremost is warm, kind, and authentic.
Maggie works from a trauma-informed and eclectic style of practice, utilizing elements of psychodynamic practice as well as relational cultural therapy, internal family systems, acceptance and commitment therapy, and narrative therapy. Additionally, pulling from their experience in the performing arts and in somatic movement practice, they use somatic focused mindfulness practices when appropriate or useful in supporting their clients' relationship with emotions and how they are felt in the body.
Maggie’s therapeutic practice is informed by critical race theory as well as queer and feminist theory and grounded in an awareness of the impact of marginalization and systemic oppression on mental health. They are grateful for the chance to learn from and with their clients, and understand that as a white therapist, cultural humility and anti-racist practice are essential to their work with clients of all backgrounds.
Maggie is a graduate of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, where they completed a Field of Specialization in Gender and Sexuality.
Pronouns: they/them ~ License No. 098819
MAGGIE DUNLEAVY, LCSW | Therapist