Since I was kid growing up in the East Bay, I wanted to find a way to contribute to the world around me, to make a difference in people’s lives, and try to help heal the wounds that I saw all around me.
I have worked as a therapist for over 10 years, and passed my licensing exam more than 5 years ago. I was drawn back to working with mental health after a number of years engaging in social justice organizing and activism, as well as forming and working in non-hierarchical organizations and businesses.
Both activism and experiences in non-hierarchical spaces inform my approach to therapy, not least in the realm of seeing myself as clients in partnership to help them get where they need to be. My experience as a cisgendered man of mixed ethnicity has taught me a lot about the interplay of structural privilege and disadvantage. I aspire to temper this understanding with compassion and help heal the rifts between subjugated and privileged parts of ourselves, bringing ourselves and our communities into greater balance, and therefore able to affect greater change in our world.
I hope that I have the pleasure of getting to know you.
-Will
William Ma, LMFT 