Our Team

We are professionals trained in psychology, counseling, and education, who specialize in addressing trauma and creating healthy environments. With a focus on technology, we are uniquely equipped to support the individuals, teams, and organizations working to keep online communities safe.


 

Naheed Sheikh, PsyD

Naheed Sheikh is the co-founder of The Workplace Wellness Project. As an organizational consultant and coach, Naheed’s commitment is to create workplace cultures that retain humanity, equity, and inclusion despite change and challenge.

Specializing in the treatment of trauma and vicarious trauma, Naheed has designed and implemented community violence prevention programs at the local and state level, and trained graduate students to provide no-fee mental health services in under-resourced public schools. She has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California.

Stefania Pifer, PsyD

Stefania Pifer is the co-founder of The Workplace Wellness Project. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute. As a Wellness Coach and Consultant, Stefania has developed supportive and practical interventions for individuals, teams, and leaders to address vicarious stress and trauma in the workplace.

She enjoys supporting clients in developing their resilience in the face of difficult yet rewarding work. Prior to becoming a psychologist, Stefania worked in tech and brings first-hand knowledge of the challenges and opportunities that exist within a fast-paced work culture. She uses her industry experience to both support and challenge organizations to more closely align their principles with their practices.

Sarah Barnard, MS, LMFT

Sarah Barnard received a Master's in Counseling Psychology from SF State University. In addition to her clinical training, Sarah is a trained yoga and mindfulness instructor and appreciates the ways that these tools can offer concrete resources for some individuals and teams.

Sarah excitedly joined The Workplace Wellness Project in 2019 and enjoys the opportunity to support teams in developing resilience strategies to buffer the potential effects of vicarious trauma. Prior to joining our team, she spent 10 years working in the juvenile justice system, focusing on trauma-informed practices for individuals, groups and probation staff. Since 2013, Sarah has been working with university students at SF State and CSU East Bay, supporting students as they navigate a transitional phase and the stress and mental health challenges that often accompany it.

Sherri Taylor, PsyD

Sherri Taylor, Psy.D. (she/they/femme) is a contemplative, teacher, scholar, leadership consultant, and group facilitator. She completed her undergraduate education in Feminist Studies at Stanford University and earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California.

She has provided consultation and trainings for organizations on a variety of topics including trauma-informed systems; leadership; anti-racism; justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI); resilience and restoration; the cultivation of joy; healing imagination; and creativity. In her consulting work Sherri invites a spirit of hospitality and generosity into the room to create a container for people to tap into their capacity and creativity to do good work together and reconnect to each other. Groups are supported to balance structure and flexibility, move from certainty to curiosity, remember a shared sense of purpose, and to clarify wise action(s) as needed. Sherri draws from various specialized trainings in somatics/body-based practices to support individuals in their personal exploration of Self and the importance of wise use of power with heart.

Michele Oelking, MSW, PCC, AAC

Michele Oelking is a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation. She received a dual bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Spanish from Louisiana State University and a Master’s in Social Work from Southern University at New Orleans. Michele has more than 20 years of experience in coaching, consulting, therapy, program development, staff development, training and facilitation.

Holding the belief that people are whole, resourceful and intuitively capable of their own healing, Michele brings a warm, curious and collaborative approach in partnering with clients. By coaching at the intersection of cultural anthropology, positive psychology, neuroscience and trauma informed practices, Michele uses relational and somatic modalities often drawing upon her own ethnically and racially diverse background as well as education in movement, mindfulness, culture and context.

After scaling a successful and research-driven coaching program at Tulane University, Michele returned to trauma-informed systems work through organizational consultation and individual coaching in Colorado. With a passion and commitment to connection and healing, Michele most recently co-founded a community of practice in Southern Colorado. Working alongside veterans and other healing practitioners, Michele facilitates personal expansion through wilderness or nature based therapy, ceremony and rites of passage.

Golnaz Nejad-Duong, PsyD

Golnaz Nejad-Duong is a licensed clinical psychologist who completed her clinical training and received her doctorate in clinical psychology from The Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. She has worked in community mental health settings to address trauma and stress in children, adults, and families for the last 12 years.

Grounding her work in her identity as an immigrant and a woman of color, she pays close attention to the intersectionality between trauma and race, class, gender, and sexuality. Since 2018, she has worked as a Resilience Coach and Consultant with TWWP supporting employees and their managers to navigate the challenges of working on the digital front lines.

Saskia Rock, MA, MBA, SHRM-CP

Saskia Rock (she/her) is a multilingual intrapreneur with international HR experience on 3 different continents, dedicated to making people’s lives better by building inclusive workplaces and by improving & simplifying work processes. She has extensive experience building inclusive workplace culture with proven impact on employee engagement and productivity.

Saskia is a tech savvy intrapreneur dedicated to streamlining and updating HR practices and systems to ensure compliance and save time. At The workplace Wellness Project, Saskia works behind the scenes to keep processes running, from HR (payroll, benefits) and IT management, to calendar management and fielding questions from existing and new clients. She loves using her organizational talent to support the coaching team, and is always available to rethink and streamline processes. She loves the humane mission and vision at The Workplace Wellness Project, it's wonderful to work at a company that actually practices the kindness it preaches.