Dr. Pamela S. Wrona

I fell in love with the field of psychology after the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team captured the World Cup title in 1999 and I saw an interview with their Sport Psychology Consultant, Dr. Colleen Hacker. I knew my physical body was probably not going to allow me to keep competing at the highest level (field hockey and softball had already taken quite a toll!), so the idea that I could build a career that kept me connected to the sports world was more than appealing. At the same time, I was navigating my own sexual identity and trying to make sense of why life seemed to take some of the people most important to me through illness and death.

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A year later, I entered the University of the Pacific and chose to major in Psychology with minors in Philosophy and Pre-Law. Through philosophy and psychology, I encountered some of the thinkers who would ultimately have the greatest influence on my professional identity, including Carl Rogers, William James, Viktor Frankl, and Irvin Yalom.

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While I initially entered the field determined to become a sport psychologist, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning opened my eyes to the importance of seeing the whole person -- not simply a diagnosis, presenting concern, performance issue, or collection of identity markers. That perspective led me to pursue a Master of Arts degree at Santa Clara University, where I focused on both counseling psychology and health psychology. While completing my degree, I had my first opportunity to work with college students at San Jose City College and experienced my first true professional identity crisis: Did I want to stay focused on sport psychology, or was I becoming equally passionate about being a generalist psychologist, particularly with college students?

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To explore those possibilities further, I pursued my Doctor of Psychology degree in Clinical Psychology from what was then John F. Kennedy University, now National University. During my doctoral training, I encountered yet another professional identity crisis after working with a wonderful nonprofit organization supporting people impacted by cancer and their loved ones -- Cancer Support Community. Suddenly the question became: How could I combine my love of sports and sport psychology with my passion for health psychology and the cancer community, while still getting to work with college-age and emerging-adult populations during such meaningful periods of growth and change?

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It turned out that the perfect "dream job" combining all of those interests didn't really exist -- so eventually, I learned to build it myself.

 

During my internship year at San Jose State University, I continued working with college students while being mentored by the wonderful Dr. Wei-Chien Lee. My postdoctoral fellowship brought me back to my alma mater, University of the Pacific, where I worked in Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) while also returning to Cancer Support Community. For the first time, the different pieces of my professional identity began to feel less like competing interests and more like complementary parts of the psychologist I wanted to become.

 

After a three-year hiatus from university counseling to build a private practice in Tracy, California, I returned to University of the Pacific's Counseling and Psychological Services, first as a staff psychologist, then as Training Director of our APA-accredited doctoral internship program, and ultimately as Interim Director of CAPS. My time at Pacific was incredibly meaningful. It was there that I discovered what it was like to captain a team somewhere other than a sports field -- and how rewarding it could be to help shape the future of our profession through supervision, mentorship, and training.

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After eight and a half years at Pacific, I realized it was time to diversify my professional life once again. Today, my work reflects many of the interests that brought me into psychology in the first place. I maintain my private practice, including my work in sport and performance psychology, while also investing deeply in the supervision and development of early-career clinicians. I serve as a clinical supervisor with Kaiser Permanente's Regional Associate Program, supporting post-graduate associates as they continue developing their identities and skills as clinicians. I have also returned once again to Cancer Support Community San Francisco Bay Area -- an organization that has been woven throughout my professional journey -- where I supervise doctoral trainees and contribute to their clinical training and professional development. Getting to support the next generation of psychologists has become one of the most meaningful and energizing parts of my career.

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My love for health psychology also remains strong. My own experiences have continued to reinforce my belief that our physical and psychological lives cannot be neatly separated from one another. Biological, psychological, relational, cultural, and social factors all influence how we experience health, illness, performance, loss, recovery, and wellness. I try to bring that whole-person perspective into every aspect of my work -- whether I am sitting with a therapy client, consulting with an athlete, or supervising a developing clinician.

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And, of course, my love of sports hasn't gone anywhere. I am a Bay Area sports fan through and through (thanks largely to my friends and wife for converting me!). Baseball season means cheering on the San Francisco Giants, football season brings adventures to Levi's Stadium to watch the San Francisco 49ers, and there is still nothing quite as fun as watching "Chef" Curry drain threes with the Golden State Warriors.

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But some of the most exciting changes in Bay Area sports have happened in women's sports. I have proudly been a Bay FC season ticket holder since the club's inaugural season and continue to love watching women's professional soccer establish deeper roots here in the Bay Area. The Golden State Valkyries are now in their second season, and somehow the landscape keeps getting even better: SF Signal is bringing professional women's volleyball to San Francisco, and the arrival of a PWHL team in San Jose means professional women's hockey is joining the party, too. For someone whose entire career was indirectly launched by watching the U.S. Women's National Team in 1999, getting to witness this kind of growth in women's sports feels especially meaningful, and ridiculously fun!

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On any given day -- and especially on weekends -- you can probably find me consuming some form of sport, listening to sports podcasts (with The Women's Game and Time Wasting being the favorites), thinking about team chemistry, leadership, performance, and culture, and quietly remaining convinced that one of these teams might randomly call me someday and ask for my opinion!

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Joining me on many of those sports-viewing adventures is my wife and our two dogs, Wynton and Duchess, while our two cats, Dexter and Hannah, generally choose to experience the excitement from a safer distance. When we're not watching sports, you might find us taking the Jeep off-road, wine tasting, brewery hopping, or traveling whenever we get the chance.