2023–2024 Certificate Course Faculty

Beth Kita, MSW
Curriculum Advisor

Elizabeth (Beth) Kita is a clinical social worker in public/private practice in San Francisco,
California. In her private practice, she works primarily with people contending with complex
posttraumatic stress; her work in a public clinic is with people who are returning to the
community following lengthy periods of incarceration.

She obtained her MSW from UC Berkeley and her PhD from Smith College. Beth teaches in the MSW program at UC Berkeley, and is the Co–Chair of the Coalition for Clinical Social Work at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She thinks, writes and presents on the intersections of race, trauma, and incarceration from a psychodynamic social work perspective.

Brian Ngo-Smith, LCSW, BCD-P, FABP
Instructor

Brian Ngo-Smith is a psychoanalyst and board certified clinical social worker in private practice in Denver, CO. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Religion, Philosophy, and Gender Studies at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, and his Master of Social Work from the University of Iowa. He is a graduate of the Adult Psychoanalytic Program at the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis. 

Brian was the Division Director of Adult Intensive Services at Aurora Mental Health Center from 2014-2018 and an affiliate faculty member in the Social Work Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver from 2011-2016. In 2013-2014, he was a Fellow with the American Psychoanalytic Association. 

Brian currently serves as President of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW), as well as their Colorado Area Representative. He is a Past President of the Colorado Society for Clinical Social Work (CSCSW), a past Board Member for the State of Colorado Board of Social Work Examiners, and a past Board Member for the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative (MDHI).

Daniel L. Buccino, LCSW-C, BCD
Instructor

Daniel L. Buccino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Director of the Johns Hopkins Civility Initiative. After over 30 years at Hopkins, directing mood disorders and substance use disorders treatment programs in the public mental health system, he has recently expanded his private practice. Mr. Buccino has been on the clinical and adjunct faculties at the University of Maryland, Smith College, Morgan State, and Catholic University Schools of Social Work. He is a former Chairman of the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners and a past President of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work. Mr. Buccino undertook his Lacanian psychoanalytic formation in New York and Paris.

Daniel Yu, LCSW
Instructor

Daniel Yu is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in San Francisco. He received his master’s degree in clinical social work from San Francisco State University where he has also served as adjunct faculty. Daniel is a former board and faculty member for the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance. He currently teaches a course on aggression and its relation to emotional development, with a focus on racialized aggression, for the Coalition for Clinical Social Work, a program at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP). He is the chair of faculty for the program. He is also on faculty for the Supervision Study Program at The Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley. Additionally, he supervises for the Access Institute for Psychological Services in San Francisco, as well as the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program at SFCP. 

 

Recent presentations have included “Who Does the Supervisor See when They Look into the Face of the Supervisee of Color?” and “Dreaming a Different Future into Existence: Psychoanalytic Activism.” Daniel began his career working in community-based social work settings, and continues his commitment to addressing the effects of the socio-political environment on individuals through community organizing, teaching, training and in the treatment of his patients.

Ryan Parker, LCSW
Instructor

Ryan Parker is a clinical social worker practicing in Austin, TX. Her clinical and theoretical interests lie at the intersection of social work and psychoanalysis. She has taught and presented on issues related to race, racialization and whiteness for over 10 years. In her article “Slavery in the White Psyche,” published in Psychoanalytic Social Work in 2019, Ryan presents her qualitative research and psychoanalytic study about white Americans’ intergenerational and collective unconscious relationship with U.S. Slavery. 


She earned her BA in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and her MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. Ryan spent many years in community mental health, working with young children and their bio and foster families in San Francisco. She completed the intensive Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Fellowship, and continues to have a clinical focus on helping infant-parent and child-parent dyads and families work through issues of trauma. Ryan has served on the boards of Reflective Spaces Material Places in San Francisco, American Psychological Association Division 39, Psychoanalysis and Social Responsibility nationally and Austin Psychoanalytic. In 2016, she founded a cross-generational and community building Mentoring Program at Austin Psychoanalytic and continues to serve as its co-chair. Ryan is currently an advanced candidate at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston/Austin, and serves on their Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce. Ryan has a private/community practice where she enjoys working with people with diverse identities and ages in individual and dyadic (couples and child-parent) therapy. 

Teresa Méndez, LCSW-C, LICSW
Instructor

Teresa Méndez is a clinical social worker practicing in Baltimore, MD. Her clinical and theoretical interests are in identities that exist on the border of multiple races and ethnicities. A journalist in her prior career, she is the author of several papers on the mixed-race experience and editor of a special issue on race and psychoanalysis for the journal Psychoanalytic Social Work where she serves on the editorial board.

 

Teresa earned her AB in Anthropology from Princeton University and her MSW from the Smith College School for Social Work. She is past President of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work, a past fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a past scholar of the American Psychological Association’s Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology. Currently an advanced candidate at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis where she serves on the Diversities Committee, Teresa is also a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Holmes Commission on Racial Equity.

Cathy Eisenhower, LPC

Cathy Eisenhower is an LPC and clinical supervisor licensed in Maryland, Texas, and Washington, DC. She began her work in community mental health, and her private practice now includes adults and children of diverse backgrounds and ages. At the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, she completed the Psychoanalytic Studies Program, and just joined the faculty for the New Directions writing program. Through the WBCP’s partnership with Jubilee Jumpstart, an early childhood center for families with the least access, she provides low-fee psychotherapy to teachers. As a critical component of her clinical work and thinking, she participates in a long-term, weekly whiteness and psychoanalysis study group.

 

Cathy earned her B.A. in English/Women’s Studies, a Ph.D. in Creative Writing, an MLIS, and an M.Ed. in counseling. She has published on critical pedagogy, taught writing and research for many years, authored several collections of poetry, and co-curates a reading series at a nonprofit community art space.