OUR PEOPLE
Meet The Team
We believe it “takes a village” for a business to thrive. Our Founders took their experiences in life and profession and built Collaborative to solve the problems they had encountered before. It’s new, it’s fresh, its humanity at its peak.
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Maria Pietruszka, MS, LMHC, CASAC-T
Maria was born in Poland and migrated to NYC at the age of 3. She was raised in Brooklyn and carries that as a badge of honor.
Maria attended Hunter College where she graduated with a degree in Sociology. She then attended LIU Brooklyn and obtained her Master’s in Mental Health Counseling in 2017. During her time at LIU Brooklyn, she was the campus representative for the American Psychology Association Division 35 Society for the Psychology of Women. Maria was involved in hosting events that help spread awareness for feminist research, theory and education to understand and improve the lives of girls and women in all their diversities. This helped Maria develop her passion towards working with women and women’s issues.
After graduation, Maria was hired as a full time substance abuse counselor at Outreach, where she completed her internship for graduate school. She worked with adults to help them reach their goals in recovery. Maria implemented harm reduction techniques to help promote a more inclusive and realistic approach for treating substance use disorders. She is determined to approach all her clients by meeting them where they are and empowering them to meet their treatment and therapy goals.
After 3 years, Maria was promoted to Program Coordinator where she was responsible for running Restart Academy, a Department of Education alternative high school for students with substance use and behavioral issues and an after school program for outpatient services for adolescents. Maria enjoyed working and advocating for adolescents and young people. She guided them through different life transitions like: finishing high school, coping with peer pressure and preparing for the next chapters of their lives like college or full time employment.
Maria also supervised new counselors and her approach was always to empower counselors and teach them listen to their “clinical gut”.
Maria is driven by social justice and participated in movements for Black Lives Matter, women’s rights and animal rights. Her approaches in therapy display her commitment to provide an empathic, compassionate and judgement-free space where people from all walks of life can address their emotional issues, life transitions and meet their therapy goals.
When she is not in session, Maria teaches as an adjunct lecturer at Hunger College. She teaches courses like Drugs and Society and the Sociology of Mental Health. In her free time, Maria loves to re-watch “The Office”, spend time with her two cats Rajah and Stella and try new vegan recipes.
Maria Pietruszka, MS, LMHC, CASAC-T
Psychotherapist
Maria was born in Poland and migrated to NYC at...
Alex Nourishad M.D.
Alex begins every therapeutic relationship with a comprehensive assessment that helps guide the direction of treatment. He then works with you to develop a plan that will meet your individual needs and concerns. If medications are recommended, Alex will discuss the risks, benefits, and alternatives with you thoroughly and walk you through a road map of both the results and possible side effects you might reasonably anticipate. If psychotherapy is recommended, you will have the opportunity to discuss whether you would prefer to have a collaborating psychotherapist or work with Alex in this capacity.
Alex takes a relational approach, which means you can expect a casual conversation style that brings awareness to the therapeutic alliance and is unafraid to lean into his various intersectional identities (e.g. LGBTQ, first-generation American, musician) to unlock a vocabulary of shared or divergent life experiences. He prefers to combine psychotherapy with psychopharmacology to achieve optimal results, employing evidence-based techniques from CBT, psychodynamic, and brief relational frameworks.
Areas of focus include exploring identity-related concerns, self-esteem, body image, substance abuse (including medication-assisted treatment with Vivitrol and Suboxone), anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, personality disorders, and more. Alex has specialized experience working in LGBTQ community healthcare and outpatient addiction treatment center settings.
Outside of work, Alex loves to eat, travel, and make music. He sings in an a cappella group and chorus and loves to work on individual projects in songwriting, recording, and music production.
Education, Training & Credentials:
- Undergraduate: BS, Biological Sciences, Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA)
- Medical School: MD, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth (Hanover, NH)
- Residency: Adult Psychiatry, Icaahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in affiliation with Mount Sinai Beth Israel (New York City, NY)
- Board Certification: American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
Alex Nourishad M.D.
Founder & Psychiatry President
Alex begins every therapeutic relationship with a comprehensive assessment that...
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