Meet Our Team
Jamie Danielle Daniels, Phd, LICSW
Jamie is the owner and director of Polestar Therapy. She is a trauma-informed clinician, who approaches treatment utilizing an anti-oppressive/liberatory framework. Her work is relationship based and culturally responsive. She fluidly addresses issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class oppression, while integrating identity development and social position into treatment. Her clinical orientation is psychodynamic and relational, utilizing cognitive and behavioral strategies when appropriate. Jamie is a dedicated scholar specializing in the mental health of Black women. Jamie holds a PhD in Advanced Clinical Social Work from Smith College School for Social Work, an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work, and a BA from Mount Holyoke College with dual degrees in Psychology and Political Science.
Gabrilla Ballard, LCSW, MSW
Gabrilla is a trauma-informed and culturally responsive clinician. She brings a wealth of experience working with individuals living with chronic illnesses and survivors of intimate/domestic violence. Gabrilla views therapy as a sacred space where individuals can courageously navigate the complexities of their mental health, confronting unique challenges, and unraveling layers of generational wounds and societal pressures. Through this transformative journey, Gabrilla guides her clients in reclaiming their narratives, fostering healing, dignity, and resilience.
Lee Lewis, MSW
Lee is guided by radical, liberatory values in her clinical work. They use a psychodynamic and relational approach to therapy and implement narrative and motivational interviewing as appropriate. She utilizes a disability lens to help support clients to deconstruct internalized oppressive systems and rebuild worldviews more aligned with their values and needs. Lee supports adults working with a variety of challenges and traumas that arise from living in a world built for the nonexistent normative. She is fat positive, queer and trans inclusive, sex and kink positive, spiritually inclusive, and enjoys working with folks experiencing intersecting marginalized identities. Lee is deeply rooted in anti-oppressive, interdependent, and culturally responsive/responsible therapy
Coco Montellano, MSW
Coco’s therapeutic approach is strengths-based, person-centered, and collaborative. They believe that each person’s lived experience is an essential source of knowledge, and they work to center that wisdom throughout the therapeutic process. Their clinical orientation is grounded in psychodynamic and relational theories, and informed by feminist theory and liberation psychology. They bring thoughtful attention to the social forces that shape our inner worlds and the ways we relate to ourselves and each other.
They believe healing happens in relationship. Through a therapeutic connection grounded in trust, playfulness, and courage, they support clients in opening up new possibilities for growth, self-understanding, and meaningful connection.
Shannon Farrand-Bernardin, LCSW, MDiv, MA
Shannon’s clients describe her as warm, empathetic and caring. Her practice of therapy begins by building a relationship where clients are seen, valued and understood. She incorporates curiosity, compassion, and in moments, a sense of humor into her work. Shannon has many years of experience in college settings and particularly enjoys supporting young adults around issues related to identity development, perfectionism, gender and sexuality, trauma and histories of family abuse. She is also skilled in supporting adults of all ages through experiences of perinatal and parenting transitions, sexual and interpersonal violence, grief and loss, spiritual exploration and healing from religious trauma.
As a clinician, Shannon values the lived experience of her clients and partners with them in an eclectic process that draws from social justice oriented frameworks and numerous evidence-based and trauma-informed approaches such as Narrative Therapy and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). She also draws insight from attachment theory, Relational-Cultural Theory, feminist and womanist theories and queer theory. In addition to a Masters in Social Work in Advanced Clinical Practice from Columbia University School of Social Work, Shannon holds a BA from New York University in French, Italian and Gender & Sexuality Studies, an MDiv in Pastoral Psychology from Luther Seminary, and an MA in Social Ethics and Theology with a focus on women and public health care, from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.