Dr. Pamela S. Wrona

I fell in love with the field of psychology after the U.S. Women's Soccer Team captured the World Cup Title in 1999, and they interviewed a Sport Psychology Consultant by the name of Dr. Colleen Hacker. I knew that my physical body was not going to allow me to keep competing at the highest level (field hockey and softball had taken a lot out of me!), so the idea of being able to stay within the sports world was more than appealing. At the same time, I was struggling with my own sexual identity and trying to figure out why it was that life seemed to take some of the most important people in my life away from me through illness and death. A year later, entering college at University of the Pacific, I chose to major in Psychology with minors in both Philosophy and Pre-Law. Philosophy is where I first met some of the authors who have had the greatest influences on my professional identity, including Carl Rogers, William James, and Irvin Yalom.

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While I initially entered the field set on becoming a sport psychologist, Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning opened my eyes to the importance of seeing the whole person in all that they are going through, not just components or identity markers. This led me to pursue a Master of Arts degree from Santa Clara University, focusing on both counseling psychology and health psychology. While completing my degree, I had my first opportunity to work with college-aged students at San Jose City College and experienced my first true professional identity crisis - did I want to stay focused on being a sport psychologist, or was I interested in becoming a general practitioner, specifically working with college students? 

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To further explore the opportunities that were available, I decided to pursue my Doctor of Psychology degree in clinical psychology from then John F. Kennedy University, now National University. Within my studies there, I had my second professional identity crisis after working with a wonderful non-profit organization supporting cancer patients and their loved ones - Cancer Support Community. Now the question was: how could I combine my love of sports and sport psychology with my passion for health psychology and the cancer community while also still getting to work with the college-age population that has so many meaningful opportunities for change and impact? 

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While the perfect "dream job" combining all of my professional areas of interest did not really exist, I was able to further my experience with college students during my internship year, working at San Jose State University and being mentored by the wonderful Dr. Wei-Chien Lee. My postdoctoral fellowship year allowed me to return to University of the Pacific to work in their Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) department while also working again at Cancer Support Community. This was finally the merging of professional interests that helped me see the value of diversifying my professional portfolio to focus on the areas that truly inspire me as a clinician, as a supervisor, and as a person. 

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After a three-year hiatus from university college counseling to build a private practice in Tracy, CA, I returned to University of the Pacific's Counseling and Psychological Services, first as a staff psychologist, then as a training director of our APA-accredited doctoral internship training program, and then as the interim director for CAPS. My time at CAPS was beyond meaningful; it was there that I discovered what it was like to captain a team not on a sports field and to have an impact on the future of our field with early career professionals within our internship program. After eight and a half years at Pacific, I realized it was time to diversify my professional portfolio again, in order to have the time and emotional bandwidth to work with clients in private practice, to offer supervision to early career professionals, to focus more on the areas of sport psychology that brought me into this field, to mentor students in this field, and to teach the folx that are changing the field and our world in incredibly meaningful and positive ways. 

 

My love for health psychology still remains strong. I continue to sit within my own experiences of active recovery from an eating disorder and living with chronic pain and depression, and have watched many others in my life live with, and, in the case of my older sister, die from, mental health conditions such as addictions, eating disorders, major illness, anxiety, and depression. I continue to believe that biological, social, and psychological factors have a major influence on overall health and wellness, and take that into consideration in viewing each person holistically in all that I do.

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My love of sports also remains - I am a Bay Area sports fan through and through (thanks to my friends and partner for converting me!). Baseball season involves cheering on the San Francisco Giants, football season brings adventures to Levi's Stadium to watch the San Francisco 49ers, and there is nothing quite as fun as watching "Chef" Curry drain threes with the Golden State Warriors. The most exciting development in Bay Area sports for me has been the recent addition of Bay Football Club to the National Women's Soccer League (founding season ticket holder, what what?), with the Golden State Valkyries joining the Women's National Basketball Association in 2025. Daily, and especially on weekends, I am consuming any and every sport, listening to sports-based podcasts (my newest obsession is The Women's Game with Sam Mewis), and coming up with ideas about how to help team chemistry just in case any team might give me a random call and ask for my opinion!

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Joining me on the sports viewing adventures is my newlywed wife, our two dogs (Wynton and Duchess), with our two cats (Dexter and Hannah) hiding under the bed but hearing us cheer! You might also find us going on off-roading Jeep adventures, wine tasting, brewery hopping, and traveling as often as we can!  ​​