Desirée has a Master’s degree in Depth Psychology with a specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco Psychologies and a B.A. in Multimedia Journalism and broadcast management. Her Master’s research focused on restorative justice and applying that to the built environment and design to create restorative environments and an applicable “restorative container” framework.

As part of her research, she conducted a fieldwork study/praxis at a county jail where she worked with a group of justice-involved women to explore if it was possible to create a restorative container even in a place like jail using embodiment practices and arts-based methodologies while centering imagination and creativity, which will be in Taylor and Francis’ Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, Positive Psychology special edition.

Furthermore, she completed a post graduate externship at Blackwell and Jennings, a Health and Wellness interior design firm, where she brought restorative elements and approaches, biophilia, and color psychology – showing what the future of mental health offices could look like if speculative design is combined with a restorative justice lens, and this design concept can be found in Non Profit Quarterly’s magazine, Design for Social Change column at the end of March!

Lastly, she is in the process of doing some volunteer work with the Trauma-informed Design Society and will be completing their CE trauma-informed design credentialing this summer, and she is currently certified in Ecological Landscape Design. Overall, her work lies at the intersections of Restorative, Empowered, Ecological, and Trauma-informed design.

Desirée welcomes collaborations, partnerships, and consulting opportunities and can be reached via email!