Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Thảo-Châu Trịnh

“Losing my dad was a pivotal event in my life - it was devastating and heartbreaking, but I think it also led me to become the person that I am today,” shared Dr. Thảo-Châu Trịnh, a 2022 graduate of the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology program. “There are a lot of aspects of my life where I feel like I had to grow up a little earlier than my friends did, but at the same time, I feel like it helped me become an empathic person who would be good at this kind of work.”

Dr. Trịnh grew up in Sunnyvale, California with her parents and older sister. Her parents were refugees from the Vietnam War and, despite the fact that they rarely spoke about it, it was clear that they experienced a lot of trauma before immigrating to America. Dr. Trịnh was the first person in her family to be born in the US and, although her older sister helped her learn some English from an early age, the family spoke only Vietnamese at home. Both girls attended public schools in their predominantly white neighborhood and it wasn’t always an easy path. “I remember kids making fun of the way my food smelled or looked,” Dr. Trịnh recalled. “The kids couldn’t pronounce my name, so I wanted a name that sounded more American, and if my parents spoke Vietnamese to me in public, I would get so embarrassed.” There was also a level of added responsibility placed on the sisters at a young age, from translating for their parents at parent-teacher conferences and doctor’s appointments to helping with the mail and making phone calls. This only increased when Dr. Trịnh was twelve years old and her father passed away suddenly from heart failure, which was devastating to the whole family.

When the time came to start college, Dr. Trịnh was accepted to several UCs and offered scholarships, but decided to attend Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, CA. “I didn’t want to leave home after my dad died, so I opted for Santa Clara so that I could commute, but it was very expensive,” she explained. “I had to navigate college as a first generation college student, taking out loans and applying for scholarships while working part-time to help with rent and bills at home.” Dr. Trịnh decided to major in combined sciences, which involves studying a mixture of natural and social sciences, and minor in biology in preparation for medical school in the future.

Following her graduation from Santa Clara in 2005, Dr. Trịnh spent a few years working in pharmaceutical research and decided she was more interested in clinical research than going to medical school. In 2009, she enrolled at Midwestern University in Glendale, AZ to pursue a MSc in biomedical science. Glendale was quite a culture shock for her after growing up in the Bay Area, especially given that it was during the time of Arizona’s SB 1070 law, which encouraged local police to check the immigration status of people they had “reasonable suspicion” were in the US illegally. “I got pulled over several times and it was scary because they would ask me for my paperwork and I only had my driver's license - I don't carry my birth certificate or my passport around with me,” she recalled. “It was basically racial profiling and they were given that legal right by the government, so it was really scary.” Thankfully, she had a very close-knit cohort at Midwestern who all studied together and supported one another. “The classes were really challenging, but I really enjoyed the clinical work because it was so familiar,” she reflected. “I worked in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic for oncology clinical trials and then I worked with a nonprofit doing translational biology for liver cancer, so it was really exciting to get that opportunity!”

From 2012-2016, Dr. Trịnh was a scientific research associate at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in their Infectious Diseases & Virology department. In this role, she conducted safety and toxicology screenings as part of the preclinical drug testing process. “It takes an average of 10 years to get a drug to the market, from research through clinical trials and then onto your shelves or being able to be prescribed,” she explained. “There are so many steps in the preclinical side, before it even goes in vivo, which means before you even put it into animals and people.” Dr. Trịnh tested new potential drugs on samples outside of the human body, like bone marrow or liver or heart cells, to ensure that they didn’t cause any side effects. “It was exciting because, if I found toxicity early on, we could decide not to move forward with testing,” she recalled. “A lot of people aren’t familiar with the research process and think all that we do is test on animals and people, but there’s a lot of work that goes in before that to make sure it’s safe.” Although Dr. Trịnh found this role to be very rewarding, her heart was pulling her in another direction.

Dr. Trịnh began working as a grief and loss counselor at Circle of Care in 2015, supporting children and teens experiencing loss. The premise of the organization is that young people who have lost a caregiver participate in a support group with other children their age while their surviving caregiver is in a group with other caregivers receiving their own support. Looking back at the loss of her own father, Dr. Trịnh can only imagine how beneficial this program would have been for her mother, sister, and herself. “Growing up, my sister and I were constantly being told to make sure we took care of our mom and helped her out, but nobody ever stopped to ask how we were doing,” she shared. “I didn't start going to therapy for the first time until I was in my 20s, so I'm so grateful I had my sister to talk to since most people my age didn’t understand.” At Circle of Care, Dr. Trịnh worked with groups as young as three to five years old all the way through teenagers and saw firsthand how beneficial the work was. “It was very healing for them, but it was also healing for me,” she reflected.

In both her personal therapy and her work at Circle of Care, Dr. Trịnh noticed that culture greatly affects the way we experience trauma. When discussing her own traumas in therapy, she found that she had to explain a lot of things about her background, from the stigma of mental health in Asian culture to the history of Vietnamese refugees in the US. “I felt like I had to defend my culture and traditions against this backdrop of Western ideals for what was considered healthy mental functioning,” she recalled. “It was really hard to find a psychologist of color, much less somebody who was Southeast Asian, so I wanted to be that person for someone else.” With the encouragement of her partner, Dr. Trịnh decided to go back to school, despite the fact that she was pregnant at the time. She chose to pursue a PsyD because she was really interested in the assessment aspect of psychology and the homey atmosphere felt like a perfect fit as she began her studies in the fall of 2017.

Thinking back to her time as a student, Dr. Trịnh remembers many highlights and challenges along the way. One course that was both difficult and rewarding for her was Multicultural Awareness. “I found my people, who I still have really deep personal relationships with,” she explained, “but I also had to confront a lot of aspects of my identity that were erased or marginalized.” Although that work was painful at times, she found it to be a turning point in her studies. In 2019, Dr. Trịnh had the opportunity to serve as a fellow for the Graduate Student Leadership Institute for the Asian American Psychological Association, spending a week building community with other Asian-identified doctoral students. “My favorite class was probably ‘In the Center’ (now called ‘Centering Experiences for Clinicians and Clients of Color’) because it was the first time students of color had their own space, outside of MCA class,” she recalled. “Many of us were first-generation college graduates as well and we were just given a space to process our identities, but in the context of clinical practice.” Being enrolled in that course as the Covid-19 pandemic began was excellent timing for Dr. Trịnh as they were able to check in on and support one another. Her experiences as an Asian-American during the early days of the pandemic also inspired her to co-found the ReModel Minority student group, which is still going strong today.

There were several professors who went above and beyond to support Dr. Trịnh during her time as a student, even keeping an eye on her sick toddler during a presentation. “It was the first time in my educational experience that professors saw potential in me and supported my success,” she reflected. “They saw that there were other factors impacting my life and that I was trying to be a really responsible student, but there were just times when I felt completely overwhelmed.” Dr. Allison Briscoe Smith, who taught her Trauma and Recovery and Clinicians to Society courses, is Dr. Trịnh’s role model and encouraged her to become a child psychologist. She was also very close to her Case Conference leader, Dr. Beate Lohser, who she described as having a “fierce mama bear energy.” Other professors who had an impact on Dr. Trịnh are Dr. Becky Pizer, Dr. Veronique Thompson, Dr. Leon Wann, and Dr. Sydnie Yoo, and she is so grateful for their instruction and guidance on this journey.

Dr. Trịnh’s practicum experiences during her first three years at the Wright Institute all centered around working with children or teens. “I came in knowing I wanted to specifically help kids cope with grief, loss, and trauma,” she explained, “especially if they’re from marginalized communities that don’t have access to those resources.” Dr. Trịnh admitted that her interest in early childhood trauma likely stemmed from her own experiences and a desire to re-write her own narrative, wishing she had been given that type of support after losing her father. “I have a soft spot for early childhood because my work centers around play therapy,” she shared. “Kids learn and communicate so much through play and it’s the best feeling when you get to witness pure laughter and joy from a kid who’s experienced significant trauma and help their caregivers rebuild those connections.” Her work leading support groups with teens even inspired her dissertation, titled “The Impact of School-Based Mental Health Services at a High-Risk Continuation High School.” She found that providing mental health services during the school day impacted their grades, self-esteem, and sense of community.

Looking back on her time at the Wright Institute, Dr. Trịnh feels like she graduated from the program in 2022 a different person than the one who entered and she encourages current students to be open to that growth as well. “I feel like I'm a more integrated, whole person because I was able to acknowledge the things that I dealt with my whole life, never got to name, and still need to grow from,” she reflected. There were certainly painful and challenging aspects of her experience, but they enabled her to find her voice and her community. “You have to be willing to engage in difficult dialogue, even if it's with somebody that you cannot find commonalities with,” she explained. “I think it's really important to hear other perspectives because our clients aren't always going to agree with us or share the same values.”

Dr. Trịnh completed her internship and postdoc at Westcoast Children’s Center in Oakland, CA, where she worked as an outpatient clinical therapist and psychological tester, working with foster youth and those experiencing extensive trauma. “Working with this population can be really heartbreaking because you're confronted with the harsh reality of the most terrible things that can happen to children, often at the hands of someone very close to them,” she reflected, “but there's so much beauty in watching that healing process happen.” In this role, Dr. Trịnh learned a lot about the impact of intergenerational trauma and the ongoing familial and systemic trauma many of the families she worked with were experiencing. She also saw how vulnerable children in foster care are and how many barriers there are to providing them with the resources they need. “There’s a lack of access to the resources they need, but also an intense mistrust of the system,” she explained. “As part of that system, I had to try to shift the narrative and find a way for the system to help them.”

In 2023, Dr. Trịnh began a position as a psychological tester at Mind Matters SF, conducting neurological and psychoeducational testing for children, adolescents, and young adults. “Because of my background in research, I've always been drawn to data and numbers, so assessment felt like a good marriage of analytical and clinical skills,” she shared. “And it's been such a rewarding feeling to be able to get to know these kids, identify their superpowers, and then communicate that back to their families and their schools so they get the support that they need.” Although she recently stepped away from this role, she’ll never forget creating personalized feedback stories for each child at the end of their assessment based on their interests as a little gift for them at the end of a long assessment.

Last year, Dr. Trịnh returned to the Wright Institute as an adjunct faculty member, teaching Child & Adolescent Counseling and Family Violence & Protection in the Counseling program and Multicultural Awareness in the Clinical program. “These are the three areas I'm really passionate about and I really enjoy learning,” she explained. “I feel like teaching has been a way for me to stay on top of my learning, both from the materials and from the students and their experiences, and pass on my clinical knowledge.” Dr. Trịnh has always had a profound respect for professors and the labor that they put into preparing lessons and supporting students’ needs, so she was excited to have the opportunity to come back and teach at the Wright Institute. Although she has found it challenging to balance teaching, working elsewhere, and being there for her family, Dr. Trịnh has really enjoyed teaching and seeing the impact she is able to make on her students.

One of Dr. Trịnh’s favorite hobbies is rock tumbling with her eight-year-old. They collect special rocks, put them in different rock tumblers, and make predictions about how they’ll turn out. Dr. Trịnh admitted she even keeps a spreadsheet of data about each rock and is very excited to demonstrate the use of the scientific method. In 2015, Dr. Trịnh opened her own Etsy shop called “See Luna Run,” (inspired by the family’s husky, Luna) where she sells matching baby and pet accessories along with masks. Each year, she selects different charities to which she donates all of her profits. Dr. Trịnh also loves teaching the Vietnamese language, cuisine, and traditions to her child. “It's so funny to think back on how ashamed I was of my foreign-sounding name, the food that I ate, and my parents not speaking English because I wanted to be more American,” she reflected. “Now that I'm a parent, I'm trying to latch on to all of that so tightly!” Dr. Trịnh is proud that her child is already bilingual and eager to share their Vietnamese and Taiwanese heritage with their friends.

Recently, Dr. Trịnh began working at Eden Counseling Services, supervising 2nd and 3rd year doctoral trainees. “I’m so grateful to have had really supportive supervisors, most of whom were BIPOC women and/or parents, who really helped me develop my clinical skills and embrace and integrate my identity into the work,” she shared. “They instilled so much knowledge and wisdom in me, so I’m hoping I can make a similar impact on these budding psychologists. This spring, Dr. Trịnh is excited to be beginning an additional role at UCSF Oakland Children's Hospital's Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic, providing gender-affirming care to children and adolescents. “A former training director once said to me that, as a woman of color, you may be on the downside of power in society, but once you have that doctor title, you can use that title to leverage your power and your privilege to advocate for communities that otherwise wouldn't have a voice,” she recalled. Looking further to the future, Dr. Trịnh hopes to continue working in community mental health organizations, serving vulnerable communities.