Kris is a Wife, Mother, Friend, Psychotherapist, and Entrepreneur.  Kris is the owner of Child and Family Therapy Institute, where she works with people of all ages with a wide scope of challenges.

Kris has 17 plus years experience in treating mental health concerns for all ages in a variety of settings. She has worked in hospital based systems (adolescent and adult partial care, inpatient care, intensive outpatient care), Outpatient Care Systems, Pediatric Clinics, and Public School Systems. Kris has grown three different businesses over the course of her professional experience. Prior to becoming a Mental Health Therapist, Kris has 8 plus years of collaborative experience working with families in home, working with individuals in crisis (dispatching for 911 Services) coaching, day camps, and personal development camps with teen girls.

Kris is a National Certified Counselor and holds a Nebraska License for Independent Mental Health. Kris has been studying inter-personal neurobiology concepts and human development concepts since 2012 and pulls from this information daily. Kris is experienced and well-versed in Play Therapy models including Synergetic Play Therapy. Other modalities that Kris has training in includes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness based therapy, and Somatic based therapy. Kris is certified in specific evidence based practices Parent Child Interaction Therapy and Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Additionally, she provides Child Parent Psychotherapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Alternatives for Families Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Kris is currently studying Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy with the intent to become certified in the treatment model. Kris does marriage counseling, using neuroscience, attachment theory, and the biology of human arousal to teach couples to navigate the marital journey. While having and developing a skill set in evidence based practices is an important attribute to being a therapist, Kris believes that developing an ability to respond to people authentically is the most important way people get their needs met.

Kris has facilitated multiple trainings to an array of populations. Included in this has been trainings for professionals handling stress and burnout, trainings to professionals to manage self harm in their clients, topics regarding mother-daughter relationships, teen girl development groups, trauma informed presentations to community partners and school personnel, and child behavior trainings. Kris has run dialectical behavior therapy groups, inpatient groups, Drug and Alcohol Intensive Outpatient Groups, and has created an intensive outpatient group for adolescents in private practice. Kris has provided professionals and graduate students looking for continuing education hours in the area of child behaviors, trauma informed care, and adolescent development areas. Kris is a Level I Train the Trainer for other Licensed Mental Health Therapists that wish to pursue certification in the evidence based model of Parent Child Interaction Therapy. Kris has done clinical supervision with other Mental Health Practitioners, Master Level Students for Practicum and Internship experiences, and often facilitates career and human development speeches and job shadowing for High School Students. Promoting Mental Health and Public Health to students is a value of Child and Family Therapy Institute.