Clinical depth, operational clarity

I used to sit with clients in distress every day. Now I build the systems that reach them at scale.

MSW and trained clinician turned program leader. I bring real clinical depth in mental health to the work of building digital care—the kind of expertise these products are too often built without.

Open to the right conversations

Clinical expertise is what separates mental health tools that work from ones that just take up space.

Not actively searching—but always open to teams building digital mental health with real clinical rigor. If that's you, let's talk.

Let's chat
Digital mental health Clinical content strategy Project design EAP
01

Who I am

I came to this work as a clinician. After my MSW, I spent years in direct practice—virtual psychotherapy, community-based social work, and iCBT digital support across multiple platforms—managing large caseloads, sitting with real distress, and learning exactly where digital mental health tools help people and where they fall short.

That clinical grounding is what I brought into content strategy and program management at TELUS Health, where I've spent the past four years building the infrastructure behind good clinical work. I've designed outcome-driven program architecture, built content governance and taxonomy systems grounded in user analytics and deep research, led clinical writing teams, and—in my current role as Program Manager—I coordinate across clinical strategy, product, engineering, design, and data teams to make sure what we deliver is sound and measurable. The work I care about most balances clinical rigor and operational clarity—the frameworks, the architecture, the supportive processes that make quality sustainable at scale, globally.

I'm a writer by compulsion and a systems thinker by training. I care about the gap between what we promise people mental health content will do and what it actually does—and I want to be on teams working seriously to close it.

Download resume
Deryn

Current role

Program Manager, Mental health & emotional wellness EAP productContent and outcomes

Education

Master of Social Work
Adult Mental Health specialization
University of Southern California

Bachelor of Arts, Honours
Psychology (Gender Studies minor)
Queen's University

Clinical background

2 years in ACES community work
3+ years in direct clinical practice / as an iCBT platform provider
Large-scale caseload management
Digital platform delivery

Based in

Austin, Texas

02

The work

Therapeutic delivery

On the Provider Side

Before I built digital mental health content, I delivered it. Psychology and social work background, trained across CBT, ACT, EFT, and more—I worked directly with people in real distress across multiple populations and platforms. That clinical grounding is what I bring into every content, strategy, and program decision I make now.

Clinical AI

Clinical Eye on an AI Chat Product

Worked with the AI development team at TELUS Health on clinical accuracy and crisis-response evaluation for an AI therapy coach / EAP navigator—providing detailed research on critical clinical issues, response and escalation protocols, how to engage individuals in distress, and training on core therapeutic tools. Unlike static content, an AI product can generate something clinically harmful in ways you can't fully anticipate—which means the evaluation framework has to be rigorous, research-backed, and built for variability.

Content governance

Making a Multi-Product Content Library Work

Managing clinical content across a multi-product portfolio is genuinely hard—duplication creeps in, standards drift without clear alignment, things become impossible to find or reuse. I'm building the governance architecture at TELUS Health to address that: editorial standards, clinical quality gates, a multi-dimensional taxonomy, and the production workflows that connect it all.

Outcomes & measurement

Measurement-Based Care in Practice

Building frameworks—grounded in deep research and clinical rigor—that shift how teams architect programs: starting from clinical need and stage of change, not just topic coverage. Then building the measurement infrastructure to track whether it's working: measurement-based care and validated clinical outcomes, engagement and activation KPIs, and a reporting process that translates all of it into buyer ROI.

Program leadership

Cross-Functional Leadership in Clinical Contexts

Coordinating across clinical strategy, product, engineering, design, and data teams on programs where the clinical integrity of the work has to stay intact through every handoff. That means understanding what each function needs, where the dependencies are, and what can't be compromised on the clinical side—and building the governance and cadence to keep it all moving.

Systems & process

Building the Systems That Make Quality Repeatable

Behind every high-functioning product/content team is a lot of unglamorous infrastructure—SOPs, workflows, operating manuals, governance frameworks, onboarding systems. Working across a global team delivering for our entire mental health portfolio, these things become do-or-die—because it's what holds everything else together.

03

Talk to me

Ask me anything — about my background, how I think about clinical content, what I'm looking for, or what I think is broken about digital mental health products right now.

Deryn — available
D
Hi — I'm a version of Deryn, trained on her background, her thinking, and her clinical POV. Ask me about her work, her approach to digital mental health content, what she's interested in working on next, or why she thinks most mental health apps are better at optics than outcomes.
04

Writing

Video script An Enduring Connection: Where Does Love Go After Loss? Grief Guided exercise Your Family Portrait: An Exercise in Familial Bonds & Connection Family systems Video script The Ball in the Box: Growing Around Your Grief Grief
05

Off the clock

Currently enjoying

  • That specific pleasure of finding the perfect something at a thrift store — we’ve started calling it “eufindia” here
  • The perfect wonderful weirdness of Austin, Texas
  • Balmy summer nights serenaded by cicadas
  • Morning cold plunges to start the day off strong
  • Maple syrup on my roasted brussels sprouts

Currently thinking about

  • The red-tailed hawk babies that live in my backyard (did you know they nap off food comas lying down?)
  • Why Irish mythology isn’t as widely beloved as Greek, when the pantheon is just as rich and detailed
  • Wasted boundaries people-pleasers set: a boundary without consequence or reinforcement is just an invitation
  • Believing deeply that zodiac personality types are not a thing…and then comically identifying with too many claims about Cancers

Currently reading

  • Just about to start The Will of the Many by James Islington
  • Everything epic fantasy or science fiction, always
  • Anything my dad recommends
  • The Throne of Glass series again, vicariously, as my mother reads it for the first time

Currently following

  • Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast; it’s so wholesome and joyful
  • The new craze of turning cheesy hockey romances into fad TV shows (total guilty pleasure)
  • Canada’s current historic FIFA World Cup run!
  • The life cycle of the five baby hawks in my backyard (have I mentioned how cool this is yet?)
currently on repeat
a playlist • updated june 2026
06

Let's talk

Open to conversations about clinical content, product, and what comes next.