Overview
SD Shanti is a postdoctoral fellow with the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program.
Biography
SD Shanti is a postdoctoral fellow with the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program at UCSF. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT, and did her pre-doctoral internship at Montreal General Hospital, in Montreal, Canada. She has also done a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, with a focus on health psychology and the application of psychology in dentistry. Her training was grounded in cognitive behavior therapy, existential psychology, and psychodynamic approaches.
She joined as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in FSAP because of her passion for and commitment to mental health in the workplace.
She also holds a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University and a DDS from Northwestern University. A veteran of academia, she has done fellowships and advanced training at Stanford University ( in technology for humanitarian applications) and at the University of Rochester (pediatric dentistry.) In addition to her earlier private practice experiences as a psychologist in Switzerland, her work experiences include public health and global health, faculty appointments in dentistry, and research and teaching appointments in psychology in the United States and Switzerland.
She is a long-time mindfulness teacher and practitioner and has taught mindfulness in adult education at the community level and as lunch and learn classes in organizations. She also teaches continuing education to health care professionals on health behavior, management of dental phobia and anxiety, health literacy, patient communication, stress management and burnout prevention.
Within psychology her professional interests and experiences include the translation and dissemination of psychological science into practice, the primary prevention of violence and depression, mindfulness and compassion in daily practice, mental health in the workplace and organizational psychology. She has also studied compassionate leadership, an evidence-based systems level application of compassion to improve organizational productivity and mental health outcomes at the University of Michigan. She is also pursuing teacher training through the Center for Compassionate Leadership in Montauk, NY, that will enable her to disseminate compassionate leadership in the service of improving healthcare practitioner wellbeing and patient outcomes.
In addition to her professional work, Dr. Shanti’s interests include photography, videography, music of various genres and cultures, and growing her skills in the Italian and Spanish languages.