ALMA Clinic

As co-founder and co-director of ALMA Clinic, Dr. Nataly Beck is a psychiatrist who is passionate about providing culturally sensitive and compassionate care to patients, especially to those from the Latino community. Originally from Lima, Peru, she immigrated to the US with her family at a young age. She graduated from Yale School of Medicine and completed her psychiatry residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. After her first year as an attending at Yale, she began her work at Stanford where she worked in the INSPIRE clinic for individuals experiencing psychosis and then co-founded ALMA Clinic. She loves the Bay Area and her interests include salsa dancing, playing piano, and spending time with her family.

Dr. Axel Valle is the co-director and co-founder of ALMA Clinic, leading the clinic's psychology branch. He specializes in treating people with anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Valle is also a licensed psychologist in Mexico, where he is originally from. He is passionate about providing mental health care and psychoeducation to Latin-American people and Spanish speakers. In addition to his work at ALMA Clinic, Dr. Valle also provides therapy for Stanford student-athletes with the Sports Psychology clinic.

Dr. Olivia Altamirano is a Clinical Psychologist who specializes in providing culturally-sensitive treatment (for example, incorporating religion/spirituality when this is important to the client), as well as in working with people with psychosis. As such, she works in ALMA Clinic with people who are Spanish-speaking and/or who present with concerns involving strong components of Latin culture, as well as in the INSPIRE clinic with an early psychosis population. Dr. Altamirano’s family is from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Dr. Sam Hayward is a licensed Clinical Psychologist who is a bi-lingual provider that specializes in anxiety and mood disorders. He utilizes evidence-based practices within his therapy work, emphasizes the importance of the therapist-client relationship, and also incorporates relevant family, relational and cultural dynamics and perspectives. Dr. Hayward also spends part of his time within the Student Athlete Mental Health Clinic at Stanford.

Dr. Luisa M. Ladd is a licensed clinical psychologist at ALMA clinic. She specializes in helping adults navigate trauma, anxiety, and major life changes. Her collaborative and holistic approach uses evidence-based treatment like CBT, ACT, and CPT. Dr. Ladd also offers her services in Spanish.

Dr. Sam Saenz was born in the Bay Area and received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University. He completed his medical degree at UC Irvine’s Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community, and he also obtained a Master’s in Public Health from UC Berkeley. After serving as chief psychiatry resident during his psychiatry residency at Stanford, he completed a fellowship in public psychiatry at UC San Francisco. His professional interests include fostering the next generation of diverse mental health providers as well as advancing inclusion in academic medicine.

Dr. Zappert is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. As a faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience in Women’s Health at Stanford, Dr. Zappert was instrumental in developing and directing the first Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program in Clinical Neuroscience in Women’s Health. In addition to her clinical, teaching and research responsibilities, Dr. Zappert served as the Director of Stanford University's Sexual Harassment Policy Office since its inception in 1993 until 2022.

She currently serves as founding director of the Allies for Women in Science and Engineering (WISE)group program.

Dr. Zappert's clinical work and research has focused on the areas of women's mental health, work, and wellness. She is the senior author of the 1985 landmark study “In the Pipeline”, as well as the 2002 study, “Priming the Pipeline”, both of which examined the stresses confronting women in science and engineering at Stanford. Her book, Getting It Right: How Working Mothers Successfully Take Up the Challenge of Life, Work and Family has been nationally recognized as an authoritative resource for professional women and their families.

The daughter of a refugee, Dr. Wendy Bernstein spent 8 years as Associate Medical Director of Casa del Sol, the mental health clinic of La Clinica de la Raza (LCDR), a Latine focused community health program and FQHC based in Oakland, California.  At LCDR she forged a partnership with the Stanford psychiatry residency program and supervised trainees from multiple disciplines. 

She has continued as an Adjunct Clinical Instructor at Stanford with a focus on recruitment and training of residents interested in the cultural and linguistic aspects of clinical care. In addition to co-leading a project to build mental health capacity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, she also serves as Senior Community Psychiatrist at Wellness Equity Alliance, a national public health organization.  

She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Canada, and the Boston University Medical Center psychiatry residency, and has experience in geriatric psychiatry, consultation liaison, and managed care. 

Dr. Sandra N. Gomez is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  Her Chicana identity and experiences growing up in an immigrant household shaped her clinical and research focus on Latine and immigrant mental health and Spanish bilingual/bicultural services.  As a postdoctoral fellow, she works with Latin communities, high-performance athletes, and families and couples, providing culturally responsive evidence-based care. She earned her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology (Spanish bilingual concentration) from Columbia University and completed her internship at the University of Miami Counseling Center.  She serves on the leadership council of the National Latinx Psychological Association and is a reviewer for the Journal of Latinx Psychology. 

Sarah was born and raised in Brazil and moved to the United States in 2011. She completed majors in Biology and Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 2020. At Stanford, Sarah is a Doctoral candidate in Neuroscience in the CoPsyN Sleep Lab where she is mentored by Dr. Andrea Goldstein-Piekarski. Sarah investigates the relationship between sleep and emotion regulation, aiming to understand the neural and behavioral mechanisms that explain this interaction in human beings. As a RAISE fellow, Sarah hopes to support community mental health efforts in the Bay Area. When not in the lab, she enjoys reading, working out, and hanging out with her family.