Grounded Team
Alex Tomback and Hillary Perlman founded Grounded Therapy as a way to provide accessible support for those in need. We believe the most effective therapy is client-centered and evidence-based and specialize in individual, couples, and group therapy.
Hillary Perlman • Co-Founder & Clinical Director
Hillary (she/her), a Licensed Clincial Social Worker (LCSW ) and originally from Texas, received her Masters in Social Work from Columbia University in 2012. She has a warm, grounded, and authentic style, using curiosity, humor and compassion to encourage healing. Hillary works with individuals and couples to confront and explore trauma, anxiety, depression, complicated grief, sexuality and gender issues, major life changes, and chronic health issues, including HIV/AIDS. She has specific training in Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), two evidenced-based treatments for healing from traumatic experiences.
Alex Tomback• Co-Founder & Clinical Director
Alex (she/her) is a Licensed Clincial Social Worker (LCSW) and graduate from Columbia University School of Social Work. Alex has been trained in a mixture of methodologies, including Sex Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Trauma-Informed CBT, and Family Systems Therapy. Her approach is relational, attachment-driven, warm, and collaborative. She utilizes different therapeutic techniques to create a space where collective change and healing can begin. Alex works with individuals, couple’s, families, and groups.
Therapists
Alice Roberts• Therapist
Alice (she/her), an LMSW and originally from New York City, received her Masters in Social Work from New York University in 2007. Alice’s therapeutic stance is deeply grounded in Attachment Theory. She has advanced training in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Family Constellations and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (TF-CBT). She has also completed the Sex Therapy Program at The Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapies and Somatic Experiencing Certification Training SEP. Certified by the Ackerman Institute for the Family, Alice is passionate about supporting individuals, couples and families to create strong, meaningful and creative relationships.
Alina Augustin• Therapist
Alina (they/them), an LMSW and graduate from Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, offers compassionate, eclectic, and evidence-based psychotherapy. Alina practices through an anti-racist, LGBTQIA+ affirming, trauma, and neurodivergent-informed approach. They aim to create a comfortable space for people to feel safe, seen, and challenged in a world that can feel isolating. They specialize in working with individuals who are struggling to find a sense of belonging and want to break the cycle of living in a loop between depression, anxiety, fear, and more. In sessions, Alina draws from various modalities such as psychodynamic theory, trauma-informed CBT and motivational interviewing, which they tailor to suit each client’s needs.
Alyssa Romano • Therapist
Alyssa (she/her/hers), an LMSW and graduate from Columbia University School of Social Work. Her style is engaging yet casual, creating a comfortable space to collaboratively explore thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and engage in curious internal reflection. In sessions, Alyssa strives to ensure individuals feel at ease to be their authentic selves and provides a refreshingly relatable experience in the therapeutic process. Alyssa draws from Mindfulness Interventions, Solutions-Focused Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Person-Centered Therapy to best meet the unique needs and identified goals of each individual. Alyssa is a trained EMDR therapist working with survivors of trauma to find healing. Alyssa specializes in working with young adults and adults who experience anxiety, challenging life transitions, trauma, and relationship/family conflict. Alyssa believes that each individual’s experience is a unique one and seeks to facilitate an open and collaborative dialogue to empower, process stressors and navigate each individual’s unique set of experiences.
Aoife Hough • Therapist
Aoife (she/her), an LMSW and graduate of Columbia School of Social Work. Aoife is passionate about enacting anti-racist and anti-oppressive principles in her therapy work and believes deeply in disability justice, Health at Every Size, sex positivity, and queer and trans liberation. She has been trained in a variety of methodologies, including Sex therapy and Sensate Focus techniques, Internal Family Systems, and Somatic Experiencing. She has experience working with people navigating anxiety, depression, OCD, and trauma.
Aoife believes in meeting clients wherever they are, centering their expertise in their own lived experience, and celebrating each person’s internal wisdom and capacity for growth. She brings a focus on warmth and relational connection to her work with individuals, couples/polycules, and groups, creating a space for vulnerability and change.
Ashley Retta• Therapist
Ashley (she/her), an LCSW who has worked extensively with survivors of trauma in family/criminal court, child welfare, abuse (emotional/physical) and sexual assault. Ashley specializes in trauma, life transitions and relationship conflict. She received her Masters from Fordham University, and is a New York Native. Ashley takes a warm person centered, strengths based approach when working with clients. Ashley is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Trauma-Informed CBT, Person-Centered Therapy, Family Systems Theory, and Healing Centered Engagement. Ashley uses a combination of these techniques to support and empower healing and growth in the clients she works with.
Heather Spurrell • Therapist
Heather (she/her), an LMSW and graduate from New York University, works collaboratively with clients to explore areas where they feel stuck and identify new ways to move forward. Heather has extensive experience supporting clients as they navigate relationships, life transitions, anxiety, depression, trauma, and supporting individuals and families through perinatal and parenting stages. Her approach integrates CBT, DBT, and psychodynamic modalities to meet each client’s unique needs.
Heather’s style is warm, authentic, compassionate, and deeply empathic. She believes that meaningful therapeutic work begins when clients feel safe, understood, and connected. Viewing each person as the expert of their own experience, Heather honors the unique combination of strengths, wisdom, and bravery that each client brings to the process. She takes an active and curious stance, helping clients recognize their strengths, address challenges, and understand how unconscious patterns can shape their lives. Heather believes in every individual’s profound capacity for kindness, courage, compassion, accountability, and agency—and in the power of these qualities to foster genuine change and healing.
Julian Goldhagen • Therapist
Julian (they/them), an LMSW who is originally from Jacksonville, Florida. They received their Masters in Social Work from Hunter College in 2018. Julian’s practice experience as a community organizer, theater artist, and sex educator deeply inform their therapeutic approach. They work collaboratively to help individuals and groups tell their stories and develop agency in shifting unhelpful narratives and negative beliefs. Julian offers therapy to individuals and couples around topics including sex, intimacy, relationships, gender & sexuality issues, identity, anxiety, depression and major life transitions. They practice utilizes a range of approaches including narrative therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and cognitive behavioral therapy. Julian’s therapeutic practice is grounded in the contexts of social justice and equity and has worked extensively as a sex educator and therapist, and specialize in offering sex therapy to individuals and couples.
Justin Vahala • Therapist
Justin Vahala (he/him/él), is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT-LP) originally from Texas. He received his Masters in Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies. He is trained in psychodynamic, relational, and transpersonal approaches to therapy as well as hypnotherapy and sex therapy. Justin is a trained Accelerated Resolution Therapist (ART) helping survivors of trauma work through difficult memories and emotions. He also specializes in work with artists and performers. As a therapist, Justin is warm, direct, and creative in his approach. He works with individuals, couples, and families to process anxiety, depression, trauma, life transitions, and questions of purpose. Justin practices a liberation based psychology from a multicultural perspective and is bilingual in English and Spanish and proficient in French and Portuguese.
Justin is also a certified Reiki Master, yoga teacher (RYT 200 hour), performing artist, and tarologist and can bring his experience in these fields to clients seeking more transpersonal and holistic approaches to their healing journey.
Lara Ngu • Therapist
Lara (she/her/hers) is an MHC-LP who works with a variety of concerns and specializes in fertility, perinatal, and early parenthood issues, as well as toxic and abusive relationships, including narcissistic abuse. She believes in the power of building meaningful connections, whether with oneself or others, and uses both her life experience and Master’s level training from Northwestern University to support people in finding healing, contentment, and purpose.
Lara’s integrative and relational approach blends the wisdom of Psychodynamic Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the Gottman Method, and Relational Life Therapy (RLT). Having completed Gottman Levels I and II, Lara is an approved Gottman Connect provider who utilizes the research-based Gottman Relationship Checkup with couples. In Lara's therapeutic space, clients will find a non-judgmental, empathetic, and warm environment where they can safely explore their emotions and experiences, allowing them to heal, grow, and thrive.
Supervisors
Ric Mathews • Clinical Supervisor (LMHC)
Ric (he, him, his) is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and brings over ten years of experience in health and wellness to his work in psychotherapy. He is part of the core faculty in the Sex Therapy Program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. He holds post-graduate clinical certificates in sex therapy (ICP), gender and sexuality studies (ICP), trauma-informed clinical care (NYU), and EMDR (Helping Hands). Ric also holds multiple certifications in yoga, meditation, and Thai Yoga massage. Ric is a published writer and is frequently quoted as a mental health expert in leading news publications. Ric’s style of therapy is integrative, holistic and eclectic, sourcing from psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, narrative and yoga and mindfulness therapy. His approach is culturally sensitive, open, sex positive, anti-oppression, anti-racist, anti-patriarchy, anti-heteronormative and feminist. Ric is a native New Yorker who is multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual.
Interns
Alyssa Romo • Marketing Manager and Intern Coordinator
Alyssa graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, where she conducted research on stress reactivity in college students and co-rumination in romantic relationships at the Columbia Couples Lab. Being Mexican, Chinese, and Jewish, she prides herself on her ability to connect with people from all backgrounds and resonates deeply with the intricacies that individuals hold within themselves. She has a profound curiosity to learn deeply about the people around her and ensure they feel genuinely understood. She is especially interested the psychology of sex and relationships and hopes to become a couples therapist in the future.
Mikayla Wong• Marketing and Research Intern
Mikayla is a third year undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley majoring in Psychology with a minor in Disability Studies. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, where the diverse community has driven her curiosity for healthcare and social change. Some of her greatest interests lie in mental health advocacy and developmental research, with a focus in underserved populations. Her time in college has allowed her to aid in the construction in multiple mental health apps, start initiatives for online healthcare support systems, and engage in her own research on anxiety and ADHD. Pursuing a career in medicine, Mikayla hopes to work with neurodivergent children - promoting empathy and inclusion while reducing social and behavioral stigma. With her unwavering commitment to her medical aspirations, Mikayla hopes to make a meaningful impact in the future of care and compassion.