Mutual accompaniment means moving alongside individuals and communities toward a better world. It reflects David’s practice of listening, learning, and standing in solidarity, while offering professional assistance freely. This work is grounded in Indigenous teachings, his Baháʼí Faith, and a desire to honor his ancestors. Over many years, he has shared in mutual accompaniment gatherings with tribal communities, nonprofit groups, and community support organizations. These services are always offered at no cost.

True trauma-informed education involves building shared understanding, awareness, and strategies that support learning and wellbeing in the context of individual, family, community, and generational violence and oppression. David brings a process-oriented approach rooted in listening, reflection, and collaboration, shaped by his lifelong work as an educator and psychologist in special education and trauma-impacted settings. This work invites communities to reflect safely together, build trust and compassion, and develop responsive strategies that can evolve with emerging needs. His experience includes work with tribal and public schools, community colleges, behavioral health providers, social service agencies, foster parents, juvenile justice systems, and front-line crisis workers.

Through alliance, consultation, and facilitation, David supports circles of wellness providers in deepening vision, strengthening strategies, improving engagement, and achieving meaningful outcomes. Over his career, he has designed and managed behavioral health programs for hospitals, clinics, agencies, and schools, with experience spanning psychotherapy, neurorehabilitation, education, foster care, youth and elder services, and culture-centered care. He is also recognized nationally for his critical scholarship on the history and needed reform of U.S. mental health services in Native America.

David has collaborated in offering “Mental Health” Revisioning, an approach developed with writer and elder Deena Metzger. This work is not focused on strategy or theory, but on creating safe space for healing, restoring spirit, and strengthening connections among professionals who often carry deep fatigue and grief from their work.

David helps groups within social and wellness organizations address conflict, miscommunication, burnout, disunity, and competing demands that undermine cohesion and shared purpose. Working together in circle, participants are supported in healing relationships, rebuilding trust, and reengaging with their work and one another. His consultation experience includes nonprofit boards, tribal organizations, and global corporate teams, often using organizational mirroring and simulation methods to foster understanding, collaboration, and stronger teamwork.

David begins by consulting carefully with educators, administrators, counselors, and behavioral health colleagues to understand what is truly needed before designing a custom experiential learning event. His work is intended to move beyond “checking a box” and instead restore meaning, purpose, and engagement within teams. These experiences invite participants to reflect on how learning and healing are understood in their settings, what emotional and cognitive barriers may be impeding progress, and how reconnecting with purpose can support students, clients, and colleagues alike.

David offers psychotherapy and youth support services consultation to programs, group practices, and individual clinicians, either in person or virtually. Grounded in the belief that clients are human beings rather than cases, his work supports helpers in navigating the emotional demands of their roles. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapy mentor and youth services provider, David works closely with colleagues to support client wellbeing while also addressing secondary grief, traumatic stress, and self-care. His consultation supports deeper attunement, effective engagement with difficult or high-risk clinical material, and greater confidence in responding to complex client needs.