Executive Director of ekoe | Licensed Clinical and Cultural Psychologist

“Connection is the heart of healing. Embodiment and interdependence are the ventricles; listening and sensing are the atria; and love is the oxygenated lifeblood circulating through out. Connection has a rhythmic beat, a distinct musculature, and a capacity to liberate.”

Dr. Jen Leyton-Armakan (she/her) is a clinical psychologist, co-founder and executive director of ekoe - an integrative mental health practice rooted in embodied collective healing. Nearly two decades into her career, Dr. Jen is clear that trauma healing occurs in connected spaces. She understands that her first task with clients is to co-create conditions for connection. Personal healing gives rise to more capacity for wholehearted and interdependent relationships. Ultimately, Dr. Jen aims to inspire a generative process that moves us all towards liberation.

Dr. Jen’s approach is informed by psychodynamics, liberation psychology, and psychobiological science. Advanced training certification in somatic experiencing, embodied social justice, meditation, and yoga instruction are woven into her work. As a trauma specialist, she is highly skilled in identifying and alleviating psychological and relational symptoms resulting from traumatic experiences. She treats a range of trauma-related conditions including mood and anxiety disorders, substance use disorders, family conflict, codependence, grief & loss, ineffective coping behaviors, and issues related to major life transitions.

Chronic stress associated with marginalization is a defining part of life for most of Dr. Jen’s clients. Through an anti-oppressive and liberation-based perspective, she listens for the traumatic effects of dominant culture oppression on individuals and families. As a white-adjacent multiracial Latinx, Dr. Jen is uniquely situated to explore the complexities of identity, power, erasure, dehumanization, and belonging. She holds space for clients to explore and contextualizes historic, intergenerational and systematic traumatization, while resourcing individuals with somatic and insight-oriented approaches.

Dr. Jen has extensive experience at a variety of levels of care. She established a trauma-informed intensive outpatient program for young adults with mental health and substance abuse disorders. She also built and maintained a thriving private practice affiliated with The Stone House. Dr. Jen supported a multidisciplinary team on Howard University Hospital’s psychiatric unit, working with adult patients with chronic and severe mental illness. Prior to that time, she worked at a child and adolescent psychiatric hospital, juvenile detention center, in-home care, school-based program, community-based clinic, and college campus settings.

She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. She graduated with a B.S. in Human Development and Psychological Services from Northwestern University. She is a Board Member of Our Minds Matter, a school-based student-led movement to end teen suicide and destigmatize mental health issues. She lives in the DC-area with her partner, three daughters, and two dogs – Zoe, the Matri-arf & Zen, the Thera-pup. Jen loves adventures with her people and any chance she can get to visit her family in Panama. Between soccer games, art projects, dress-up dance parties, reading and running with her girls, she occasionally rests.

ekoe Clinical Director | Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist

“Human beings automatically adapt to traumatic events and relational stress in order to manage overwhelm. Unfortunately, these necessary adaptations – particularly those that develop in childhood – can become fixed and outdated, no longer serving us the way they once did. We will work together to heal these unprocessed wounds, consciously adapt, and embody change so that the effects of the past remain in the past and you can intentionally reconnect with yourself, your loved ones, and your life.”

Dr. Michael Baly is a clinical psychologist who works with adolescents and adults with a range of concerns and goals. He specializes in helping individuals address the effects of complex trauma, attachment wounds, and ongoing relational stress.

Common concerns that Dr. Baly works with include: depressed mood, anxiety, emotion dysregulation, self-harm, suicide risk, and compulsive, self-destructive, and addictive behaviors.

Dr. Baly received a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. He has trained at several nationally recognized institutions, including the Institute of Living, Johns Hopkins University, and the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Dr. Baly is a founding partner and former Clinical Director of Encore Outpatient Services, an integrated treatment facility focused on helping individuals recover from co-occurring trauma and substance use disorders. He was a supervising psychologist within the Child and Family Therapy clinic at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, providing care for adolescents and families, and supervising doctoral interns and postdoctoral fellows. He additionally oversaw the postdoctoral fellowship training program at the Child and Family Therapy clinic. Dr. Baly has also been an adjunct faculty member and guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Baly offers a warm and secure space for clients as they work to address challenging issues and move towards change. He integrates relationship-based, mind-body approaches. His treatment approach is collaborative, and combines principles rooted in attachment theory, neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, and cognitive and behavioral science.

Dr. Baly is a Certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist and is in the process of becoming a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Consultant. He has additionally received extensive training in Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Motivational Interviewing (MI). Dr. Baly ultimately hopes to help clients thrive by healing underlying wounds and shifting automatic tendencies that may no longer serve them the way they once did.

ekoe Director of Clinical and Community Integration | Licensed Clinical Psychologist

“You’re already good at solving problems. We’re here to talk about the stuff that gets in the way.”

Howard Crumpton, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who approaches therapy as an opportunity to help each person who works with him to restore balance in life through connection, acceptance, and commitment to change. After helping to establish the Primary Care Behavioral Health Service program at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, Dr. Crumpton started a private practice where he continued providing psychodiagnostic assessment, school consultative, company consultative, and psychotherapy services for children and adolescents, and their families.

Dr. Crumpton sees the world through a contextual behavioral science lens, which focuses on responding to life’s challenges in ways that are workable and meaningful, even though they might be hard sometimes. His therapeutic approach, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT, said as the word, not an acronym), is a third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy approach that can help clients to contact their values and the present moment, so that they may show up fully and flexibly in their lives. He has used this model to help children and adolescents, single adults, parents, and families from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in a variety of settings, including hospital systems, detention centers, private practices, and integrative substance recovery settings, and in virtual/online settings.

Dr. Crumpton earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and completed two postdoctoral residency years at the Kennedy Krieger Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

ekoe Director of Integrative Health and Wellness

“Science has demonstrated that to thrive, we need to nourish our mind, body and soul.”

Lynn Westine spent more than 35 years in operational space-based and ground systems management and engineering. Following this already stellar career, she then decided to resume her passion for exploring the interactions and signaling between–and within–the body, the environment, and the universe.

So, utilizing the very same methodologies that helped her successfully own and operate her own NASA-award-winning engineering business, Lynn created her new venture, EKOE Health. Now, she and her colleagues work with clients to help educate and identify bio-individual strategies that restore balance in health and wellness through Nutrition/Phytochemistry, Mindfulness, Energy, and Exercise.

Certifications: D.C.N. Doctorate of Clinical Nutrition, M.S. Nutrition and Integrative Health, Maryland University of Integrative Health, M.S., School of Engineering and Applied Science, George Washington University, A.B., Majored in Chemistry, Sweet Briar College, Certified Trainer: National Personal Training Institute (NPTI), Certified Trainer: National Association of Sports Medicine Certificate (NASM), Certificate: Applied Microscope Technology for Health Education & Audit Processes. (Nutritional Microscopy) BioMedX™, Nutrition Response Testing™, NES Health™, iRest™(level 1), David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies, NASA (GSFC) Agency Honor Awards (AHA): Exceptional Public Achievement Medal (2019), FY13 Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year; 2019 one of the Robert H. Goddard awards for Exceptional Customer Service; 2019 recipient of an Exceptional Public Achievement Medal