Vanessa is a caring and dedicated social worker and counsellor who offers over seven years of professional experience focused on mental health counselling, children’s mental health, child protection, hospital social work, court assistance, conflict resolution, relationship counselling, and community counselling.  Her approach is client-centered, anti-oppressive, and solution-focused.  She also integrates Narrative approaches to help clients heal from trauma, achieve internal transformation, and build greater strength and resilience.  Vanessa is a registered Social Worker with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW) and holds a Bachelor of Social Work from York University.  

Vanessa takes a warm, genuine, and personal interest in each of her clients and works to convey to them that they are not alone in their struggles.  She is dedicated to creating and providing to her clients a guilt-free and stress-free space where they can relax, open up, and find greater strength and power within their struggles, adversities, and vulnerability.  With a structured and goal-oriented approach to therapy, Vanessa skillfully uses the most appropriate tools and techniques to tailor her approach to each client’s unique situation, concerns, and emotional needs.  She is committed to helping clients become more resilient and live their best life by supporting them in harnessing the inner strengths that help them overcome the adversities and fears that often get in the way of healing, happiness, peace, and success.

Vanessa’s approach is authentic and gentle.  She views the counselling process as a trusting alliance between therapist and client and believes that healing begins once clients start to trust, open up, and disarm.  She is also able to help clients to identify and set meaningful goals and to hold clients accountable for their development and for making progress toward their goals.  Her objective is to empower clients by helping them tap into their own strengths and resilience to overcome any traumatic events and memories that hold them back from reaching their goals and from being the best version of themselves.  

Vanessa understands that life can be very difficult and overwhelming at times and she is dedicated to helping clients to successfully face, manage, and overcome these very real difficulties.  She supports clients to learn useful coping strategies for dealing with tough times and for moving forward in their lives without letting life overwhelm them.  She supports clients in the important work of identifying which parts of their life they can change or control and which parts of their life they cannot change or control.  She also supports clients in building stronger and more useful coping strategies to deal with the difficult situations and elements of life that cannot be changed or controlled.  In this way, she helps clients to achieve greater balance, resilience, peace, and success in their lives.

In her free time, Vanessa enjoys playing badminton and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. She also enjoys cooking and trying different ethnic foods.