The Proudest Color Read Aloud

As Middle Eastern Americans (Iranian and Palestinian) and as clinicians,  Dr. Sheila Modir and Jeff advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion and work toward building resilience in children.  Dr. Modir is a pediatric psychologist at a children's hospital. She obtained a combined doctoral degree in Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and her master’s degree in social welfare at UCLA. Dr. Modir has presented at conferences, spoken on podcasts, and published articles on the impact of racial trauma on mental health and risk and resilience factors. Jeff is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a manager of clinical product and service design for a mental health tech company. He has his master’s in clinical psychology from Pepperdine and was previously on the Board of Directors for the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists.

Together they have advocated at the state and federal level for better mental health care policies, in addition to doing international work at a Red Cross refugee asylum in Belgium. They also consult on film and television productions, including for Disney and Freeform, to ensure that mental health is portrayed responsibly, and have been judges for the annual Sentinel Awards. They are happily married, living in sunny Southern California, and enjoy spending weekends perfecting the recipe for chocolate chip cookies and finding fun places to hike.