Andrea is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and practices inpatient psychiatry at Vancouver Hospital. She has 15 years of outpatient psycho-oncology experience. Since 2006, she has facilitated group and individual MBIs for mood disorder, sexual medicine and oncology populations, using both Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and more recently Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (MiCBT).

Andrea brings a unique combination of clinical expertise in psychophenomenological diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology, a clinically-informed understanding of Buddhist psychological frameworks, and experience with the stages of insight in the context of a 16 year Burmese Theravadan vipassana personal practice to the mentorship process. This amalgamation of experience allows her to clinically manage the complex interrelationship between meditation-induced altered states and primary psychopathology.

She provides annual 5-day MBCT professional trainings, co-facilitates monthly MBCT training focused on inquiry and developing clinicians’ personal practice since 2009, and is an MBCT mentor with the UCSD Mindfulness Based Program Training Institute. She is a Founding Co-Director of the North American Chapter of the MiCBT Institute, and trains clinicians in the delivery of MiCBT internationally.

Her academic publications explore the clinical relevance of re-contextualizing mindfulness based interventions within Buddhist psychological frameworks. She has recently co-authored competency-based guidelines for training Canadian psychiatrists in MBIs that include the need for recognition and management of unintended clinical effects of meditation practice. She is Associate Editor for Mindfulness since 2013. She has practiced and studied in the Burmese Theravada Vipassana tradition since 2002.