Fern Pinkston

Dr. Pinkston is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Adjunct Faculty in the M.A. in Counseling Psychology program on the Chicago campus. She has extensive experience working primarily with adults across a range of settings, including community mental health, residential, college counseling, and private practice. Her professional experience includes teaching, training, consulting, administrative, and clinical work. Dr. Pinkston specializes in gender, trauma, identity development, and grief.

These days, Dr. Pinkston splits her time between teaching, clinical supervision, and direct service. A theme across her work is fostering minoritized populations and fellow first-generation college students. She completed her predoctoral internship within the counseling center at Texas Woman's University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution. She went on to complete her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Marquette University Counseling Center. Dr. Pinkston was the founding Training Director of the LGBTQ+ Focused Fellowship Program at IntraSpectrum Counseling before going on to start her own private practice, Bespoke Healing, which serves Chicago's queer community. Dr. Pinkston is committed to promoting accessibility of mental health services within private practice: over 80% of Bespoke Healing clients are working class. In addition to clinical training, the Fellowship Program at Bespoke Healing provides mentorship to demystify the process of private practice development for recent graduates looking to become first-generation business owners.

Dr. Pinkston's teaching style is founded on the belief that professional psychology education should be aimed at developing the skill set and self-trust of early-career professionals within a mutually growth-fostering environment. Over the past decade, she has taught foundational courses like Clinical Interviewing, Ethics, Theories, and Lifespan Development, as well as more applied courses like Practicum Seminar, Diversity in Clinical Practice, Treatment Planning, and Group Psychotherapy. In 2019, she began teaching within the Trauma Concentration in the Counseling Psychology Department and developed a Psychology of Gender course in alignment with her clinical expertise. Dr. Pinkston is also an Adjunct Professor at Adler University, teaching the Advanced Humanistic and Existential Therapy Approaches course, which covers a constellation of theoretical orientations that includes narrative, feminist, relational-cultural, and liberation psychology. She stays engaged with scholarship by regularly serving on the dissertation committees of doctoral students.

Dr. Pinkston is sought after as a speaker to corporate and community audiences alike on a variety of mental health-related topics. She enjoys making complex, heavy topics more relatable through her unique blend of warmth and humor