PSYCHIATRY, POLICY, & GLOBAL HEALTH

Divya founded and directed Early Childhood Services at the Emma Bowen Community Service Center, where she oversaw attachment- and play-based mental health programs for children ages 0–8. She also secured and directed the $4 million Ready to Launch Grant, through which she built partnerships with over 60 community organizations.

As a clinician at Bellevue Hospital, Divya provides care for children and adolescents ages 5–18 in the emergency room and inpatient units. She also runs a small private practice. She also serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, where she teaches Liberty and Justice for “All,” an undergraduate course on systemic inequalities affecting marginalized youth globally.

Divya volunteers with the Cornell Center for Human Rights, conducting psychological evaluations for undocumented children and training immigration attorneys in trauma-informed care. She also consulted on children’s mental health policy implementation for the New York State Office of Mental Health and has contributed to several global mental health initiatives—including youth program implementation in Mozambique school-based wellness initiatives for newcomer immigrants in the Bay Area, and Columbia University’s International AIDS Care and Treatment Program (ICAP).

At the national level, Divya served on the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Communications and the Council on Government and Advocacy Relations, where she helped author an anti-racism guide for agencies. She also sits on the Board of Directors for The Arthur Project. A frequent speaker, she presents nationally on topics related to intersectionality, immigration, the prison system, and anti-racism, especially as they impact child and adolescent wellbeing.

Divya earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and completed her adult psychiatry residency at UCSF, followed by child and adolescent psychiatry training at Columbia/Cornell NewYork-Presbyterian. She later completed a fellowship in Public Psychiatry at Columbia University, as well as coursework in psychoanalysis at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Center and a media program at Harvard University.

Before entering medicine, Divya was an elementary school teacher with Chicago Public Schools. Originally from California and Texas, she now lives in Brooklyn, where—when not writing, filmmaking, or working with children—she enjoys hiking, dancing, visiting art galleries, and fostering rescue pups.