Natural State Wellness Foundation
LinkedIn

Jordana DiVento, Marriage and Family Therapist Trainee

  • Jordana DiVento, MPH, NBC-HWC, KYT


Jordana DiVento, MPH, NBC-HWC, KYT

Marriage and Family Therapist Trainee

Natural State Wellness Foundation

Supervised by Martena Rachel Wilson, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist LMFT #133052


Current Education in Progress


Master of Science, Clinical Psychology, Notre Dame De Namur University


Non-Clinical Education & Certifications


  • Master of Public Health
  • National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach
  • Kripalu Yoga Teacher
  • Reiki Master and Teacher

About: I am an eclectic practitioner, which means I incorporate many therapy styles. This approach makes me a good match for people who need depth of understanding, humor, and direct communication. My training in Compassion Science, growth mindsets, and contemplative practices has a particular way of informing my capacity to accept and welcome you; this is especially true if you have been trying very hard to shape yourself into a "better" person, communicate with others so they really listen to you, or somehow master complete healing. Therapy can be meaningful without always being difficult. While the process is often challenging, you always have the choice to "pick your own adventure" and select the type of therapy that works best for you. I enjoy collaborating to bring in a variety of resources and approaches, ensuring that our work together is a solid fit for you.

I have always felt drawn to becoming a therapist, but the timing took half a lifetime. The turning point came while I was supporting workforce well-being and burnout initiatives at Stanford University, Stanford Medicine Children's Health, and Stanford Medicine Health Care. As this work evolved, it increasingly required the expertise of licensed mental health clinicians, ultimately leading me to pursue clinical licensure. I am now completing supervised clinical training toward licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist, a process I expect to take two to three more years to complete.

My wide-ranging professional trajectory has prepared me for an unusually broad and diverse awareness of client backgrounds, cultures, family structures, and professions. I am highly attuned to identity development and the ways social and environmental systems shape our lives and agency. If you're wondering whether I will hold an orientation relevant to your lived experience, the answer is probably, "yes." Life presents innumerable chosen and unchosen experiences; limitations and liberations; deep sorrows and great joys. I welcome the opportunity to work alongside you to navigate these complexities.

On a more personal note, I am a curious person with a great love of learning. One of the truest joys in my life is being a guardian of small animals, especially dogs. Over ten years ago, I began experimenting with a long-held dream of making visual art. This isn't an innate talent; however, teaching myself - mostly through free tutorials - has increased feelings of satisfaction, peace, and contentment in my life. Subjects that endlessly fascinate me include medical anthropology, forensic science, history, energy healing, archaeology, biology, anatomy and physiology, and perceptual studies.

I look forward to learning where you are now and where you want to go. What happens in therapy is always your choice, and we will work together each step of the way. If you have more questions about my background and intersectionality, please see the Experience and Statements sections of my website.

Experience that informs my approach

These experiences shape how I listen, learn, and hold the complexity of individual and collective wellbeing. Click or press the arrows to learn more.

Marriage and Family Therapist Trainee

This chapter expands upon a career devoted to understanding and improving the conditions that shape the health and well-being of people.

My approach is informed by clinical psychology as well as my background in public health, coaching, healthcare workforce well-being, yoga, and anthropology. These perspectives help me consider intrinsic capacity for healing and how relationships, environments, culture, and systems influence quality of life, health, and well-being.

Healthcare Workforce Well-Being and Burnout

I developed and led programs addressing burnout, workplace stress, professional fulfillment, and organizational well-being across the Stanford Enterprise. I partnered with senior clinical and human resources leaders, analyzed team well-being data, coached leaders and teams, and helped translate employee feedback into meaningful organizational change.

My work included creating compassion programming that reached 20,000 employees, developing Stanfords COVID-19 employee support program, and implementing a workforce well-being survey that informed new team structures, peer support, and professional development programs. I also coauthored research on reducing burnout and promoting professional fulfillment among advanced practice providers.

This experience taught me that well-being is shaped not only by individual coping skills but also by relationships, workplace cultures, social conditions, and larger systems. As a therapist, I bring this broader perspective to clients experiencing burnout, chronic stress, caregiving demands, professional transitions, and the emotional burden of helping others.

Public Health

A Masters of Public Health is a professional graduate degree focusing on improving population health by addressing social, environmental, and behavioral factors.

I am an expert on what it takes to generate the best possible health for the largest number of people possible. This is called population health.

I know that the health of an individual person is substantially influenced by community, state, region, and country, in addition to biological, social, and psychological determinants.

Public health is everywhere: healthcare, public transportation, environment and air quality, water quality, access to food, walkable communities, public safety, widely available and relevant health information, reducing disease burden, tracking infectious diseases, delivering home visiting support for at-risk parents and children, and much more.

My public health specialties are

1) Making health information easy to understand.

2) Making healthcare systems more effective.

3) Designing clinical and social health programs.

4) Reproductive and sexual health.

5) Aging.

National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coaching

This is the most rigorous credential in the field of coaching.

I qualified for and successfully passed the National Board of Medical Examiners Exam for Health and Wellness Coaches.

As a coach, I challenge feelings of discouragement and sometimes low self-belief when meaningful, imperative change is needed. Other times, I provide structured, centered support to sustain momentum on goals that feel edgy and positive.

This credential permits me to work with individuals and groups on enhancing well-being in an area of life or a specific challenge, which is always defined by the client/s.

Clients choose goals independently, as the process is entirely devoted to and designed by their needs.

Core Health and Wellness Coaching Competencies

  • Preserving client autonomy.
  • Maintaining a non-judgmental working relationship at all times.
  • Holding feelings of low motivation.
  • Addressing discord in real time.
  • Creating a hopeful and meaningful goal vision.
  • Flexible goal planning.
  • Practicing behavioral shifts that are tiny steps or big leaps.
  • Sustaining accountability agreements.

Credential Highlights

  • I completed a post-baccalaureate certificate in four-year regionally-accredited institute of higher-education at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, which is now the School of Integrative Health at Notre Dame of Maryland University.
  • The NBME creates and oversees board exams for multiple clinical professions, including medical students.
  • I am certified to work in clinical settings with other licensed healthcare professional.
Kripalu Yoga

I was accepted for in-person residential training in Lennox, Massachusetts at the esteemed Kripalu Center, one of the major yoga hubs from the 1970s and endures today.

Prior to yoga teacher training, I spent time at Fo Guang Shan monastery in Taiwan. These two experiences inform everything I have learned and practiced in mindfulness, meditation, awareness, insight, and compassion. I do not practice asana at this time, but hold meditation in motion as steady practice.

Core Kripalu Tenets

  • Allow practice to become meditation in motion.
  • Compassion for self and others.
  • Daily practice in asana or meditation.
  • Prana is life force connected to the breath, which vivifies the body, expands consciousness, sharpens perception, and awakens the spirit.
  • Respect and honor each person's unique discovery and expression of life.
  • Self-observation.
  • Service.
  • Walk the path of love.
  • Willfully sustaining and deepening practice.
Anthropology

Immersing myself in the field of anthropology constituted one of the most unique, demanding, and enlightening pathways to embodying the human experience.

Contrary to what people may assume about the humanities, this effort was extremely challenging and sometimes surpassing graduate-level work.

Through anthropology, I understand why and how people share knowledge, beliefs, and values across time and place. Expressions of the human experience are collective past, present, and future threads interwoven with ancestors, the microcosm within, the planet, and all of what has been and will be.

Focus Areas

  • Forensic osteology with apprenticeships in graveyard analysis.
  • Updating analysis and identification standards for juvenile remains.
  • Independent study: medical culture of health and disease.
  • Honors thesis: sexual and reproductive health policy, domestic and global gender health disparities.

Therapeutic Areas of Practics

We explore the areas in your life, circumstances, and contexts where symptoms are active. We work together to relieve symptoms and increase the quality of your life.

Career

  • Career and Workplace Values Alignment
  • Leadership Quality
  • New Leadership Role
  • Workplace Burnout

Change

  • Desired, Difficult, Imposed, Inevitable, Unexpected, or Upsetting Change
  • Grief and Loss
  • Thresholds
  • Transitions

Health

  • Autoimmune and Chronic Conditions
  • Burnout
  • Caregiving
  • Chronic Stress
  • Psychoneuroimmunology of Complex Trauma and Chronic Stress
  • Sexual and Reproductive Health
  • Well-Being

Relationships

  • Dating
  • Divorce
  • Families: Blending, Expansive, ENM/CNM, Non-Traditional, Poly, QPR, Single Parents, Stepparent
  • Family Disengagement and Estrangement
  • Gender Gaps, Invisible Labor, and Mental Load
  • Marriage

Spiritual

  • Esoteric and Metaphysical Exploration
  • Existential and Spiritual Inquiry
  • Integration
  • Preparation

Frameworks: The ideas that orient my care

Click or press the arrows to learn more

Attachment Theory

Informs how early bonds with caregivers shape relationship patterns.

Behavioral

Treats problematic actions as learned habits that can be unlearned and replaced with healthier ones.

Biopsychosocial

Combines biological, psychological, and social factors to understand overall mental health and wellbeing.

Existential

Explores life's universal anxieties, including meaning, freedom, isolation, and mortality.

Feminist/Multicultural

Examines how social structures, oppression, and cultural identity impact mental health and well-being.

Humanistic

Focuses on a person's innate potential for growth through empathy and self-acceptance.

Psychodynamic

Uncovers how childhood experiences and the unconscious mind shape present behaviors. Significant emphasis is placed upon working with defense mechanisms, inner conflict, and navigating the connections between social rules, values, and personal motivations.

Family Systems

States that actions, stress, and behaviors of one member affect the entire group, and can perpetuate relational patterns and multi-generational dynamics. It explains human behavior, communication breakdowns, and emotional health.

Modalities: Ways that we can work together

Click or press the arrows to learn more

ACT: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Encourages accepting difficult emotions while committing to values-based actions.

Art

Non-verbal, creative self-expression is a form of language capable of revealing unconscious truths and organizing internal chaos. It does not require artistic ability or talent.

CBT: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Identifies and changes negative thought patterns to alter distressing behaviors. Places significant emphasis on small, incremental behavior change through systematic structure.

DBT: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Teaches mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation skills.

EFT: Emotion-Focused Therapy

Uses emotional awareness as a guide to discover core emotions and work with them to create secure relationships and bonds.

Internal Systems

Identifies and heals different internal "parts" to experience internal harmony.

Somatic Practice

Supporting physical sensations and perceptions to generate internal felt safety and healing. This is a strong modality for improving self-regulation, integrating body and mind, and developing trusting confidence in one's intrinsic capacity to heal.

Statements of accountability, transparency, and attention to the systems that shape our lives

Click or press the arrows to learn more

Land

I live and work on the land of the Raymatush Ohlone people, and more specifically the Urebure, who are the original stewards of the San Francisco Peninsula. They were among the first Indigenous peoples in this region to be displaced and forced into labor by the Mission system, which few survived. I also live in close proximity to sacred San Bruno Mountain. While I do not know its Ohlone name, I recognize it as the largest and oldest Indigenous burial ground and ceremonial site in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ability

For most of my life, I have been able-bodied, while also living with and managing several challenging chronic conditions that have significantly affected my life in ways I never hoped for or imagined. My familiarity with long-term, complex caregiving began in childhood, when I became the primary caretaker for a parent with severe chronic health issues and a disability.

Ancestry

I am primarily of European ancestry: Central, Western, and the U.K. I am connected to Gaulish people, Celtic people, Coptic Egyptians, scholars, monastics, and river, forest, and Alpine dwellers.

Community

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest among white, Southeast Asian, and Coastal and Puget Sound tribal communities. Amerindian culture and history were visible and prevalent in my K–12 education and in the wider community through events, outreach, and powwows. I also lived for several years in rural Eastern Washington.

Beyond Washington, I have lived in Oregon, California, the Washington, D.C. metro area, and Colorado. While living in the D.C. metro area, I attended George Mason University, which was ranked as one of the most diverse universities in the United States.

Today, my community is diverse by choice and includes people with a wide range of backgrounds and lived experiences.

Economics and Class

I have lived across economic lines, from poverty to the privilege of having my needs met. These experiences have shaped my understanding of social mobility, class, and the structural barriers that can affect both. I know how thin the line can be between having and not having, and I recognize that the American dream remains out of reach for many people despite doing the things that are proclaimed to attain it.

Education

Education is one area of significant privilege in my life. From a young age, I dedicated myself to growth through learning and knowledge-seeking, which has guided me in pursuing multiple degrees, certifications, and specialized trainings. I am well-read, with broad knowledge across many domains. Scientific methods are important to my practice because they support evidence-based care. At the same time, I understand that current findings are not always definitive truths; they evolve over time and often contain significant gaps. Personal and anecdotal experience and knowledge are also relevant, and I do not disregard them. I consider myself an expansive thinker, with an awareness that material science has historically been shaped by privilege.

Religion

I was born into the Mormon religion, which was unusual in my case because my family system did not reflect its culture or norms. I did not practice the faith as intensively as what is generally considered standard. Early in life, I identified as a spiritual seeker and went on to explore many other religious, spiritual, and philosophical systems. Today, I consider myself spiritual and remain interested in consciousness and awareness, religious history, mysticism, esoterica and metaphysics, and the development of intuition.