our mission
a letter from our founder
When I first dreamed up the idea for Sprout, I was sitting in a busy meeting room at the community mental health job that I had worked at for years after graduating with my Masters. I remember feeling overworked, overburdened, burnt out, and frustrated. Like many therapists working at mental health agencies, I felt that I could not provide the care that I wanted to.I was exhausted—both mentally and physically. The long hours, huge caseloads, low pay, and minimal time off created an environment where therapists were unable to truly care for their clients, let alone themselves.
During this time, I met incredible people—brave, resilient, with strong work ethic and transformative ideologies around community care and support - who were unable to practice what they know works in the mental health field due to the system they were trying to do the work in. Sitting in that meeting, I doodled a little leaflet on my notes and remember thinking, “You know, Sprout would be such a great name for a therapy clinic.”
I’ll be completely honest - my first goal with Sprout was self-serving. I wanted to provide a place for myself and my colleagues to work that felt mentally and physically sustainable—a place where we could provide the quality of care we aspired to, both inside the therapy room and beyond it. I wanted to have a personal life. I wanted to give myself and my peers the time we needed for self-care and mental health work—the same things I was always recommending to my clients. I wanted to be mentally and emotionally able to participate in the advocacy work that I care so deeply about, while continuing to offer excellent care to my clients. I wanted my clients to know that I am not only sitting with them but fighting for them as well.
When I began Sprout in 2017, I encountered the term “boutique mental health,” that some use to describe private practices that serve lower-acuity cases, typically clients higher on the socio-economic spectrum who have private insurance or can pay out-of-pocket. I resonated with some aspects of this model—a therapy clinic that could provide consistent care to their clients, where skilled therapists have meaningful and long term relationships with their clients, in a comfortable and modern setting, who have the bandwidth to truly focus on YOU and your needs for the time they are with you.
The part that didn’t sit well with me was the unspoken goal of private practices like these - to serve only privileged populations.
Let’s be real - if you came here, after experiences seeing therapists in larger agency settings, you might be familiar with burnt-out clinicians, high therapist turnover, infrequent sessions, institutionalized spaces, and florescent lighting. You might have not known much about your therapist prior to meeting them and may have struggled to feel safe enough to be truly yourself.
As a white, cisgender, straight-passing queer woman, I saw an opportunity to use my privilege, education, and experience to create a practice that takes the best elements of “boutique mental health” and applies them to the populations who need it most.
At Sprout Therapy PDX, our mission is to offer modern therapy for everyone - providing superior individualized care in a friendly, boutique environment for those who need it most. We are committed to long-term support, ensuring that every client receives the personalized attention they deserve.
Our team is made up of progressive therapists from your community, who not only share your values, but also bring lived experiences to the therapy room that resonate with your own. We take pride in hiring clinicians who are authentic, warm, and deeply connected to the communities we serve.
We believe that when our clinicians thrive, our clients flourish. That's why we emphasize a healthy work culture—supporting both our therapists and your journey towards well-being. Our commitment to thriving clinicians, helping you flourish is at the core of our practice, where your success is paired with a nurturing environment for our team.
Thank you for being here with us as we create a therapy world we feel good about.
