Carolyn Phu, Psy.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Registered Psychological Associate, California #PSB
Supervised by Jaclyn Wolf, PhD, Licensed Psychologist, CA PSY 33665
CLIENT FOCUS
Older children and adolescents navigating attention, emotional, and developmental differences, along with the families who support them.
ASSESSMENT APPROACH
Strength-Based
Social-Emotional
Systems Oriented
Collaborative
Culturally Responsive
ISSUES COVERED
ADHD
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Behavioral Interventions
Performance-Based and Projective Measures
Twice-Exceptionality
Anxiety
Depression
Trauma
Emotion Regulation
Multicultural Identities
Carolyn treats test data as a tool for understanding a person rather than a definition of them, translating scores into the parts of someone's story that point toward practical next steps.
She works from a neurodiversity affirming framework, recognizing that environments are often built without every kind of brain in mind, and advocating for change at the school and system level alongside the skills a client builds.
Her particular expertise in social-emotional assessment, including performance-based measures and self-report, gives families insight into how a child thinks and feels about themselves, not only which diagnosis fits.
"I do this work because I want children and families to feel seen and understood, beyond a diagnosis, test scores, or other challenges. My hope is to help them make sense of their experiences, recognize their strengths, and leave with greater self-compassion and supports, and a clearer path forward."
- Carolyn Phu
Carolyn Phu is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Mind Matters, where she provides psychological assessment services under the direction and supervision of Jaclyn Wolf, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist (CA #PSY33665), while completing the requirements for California licensure.
Carolyn Phu is a Postdoctoral Fellow who specializes in comprehensive evaluations for older children and adolescents, with particular expertise in ADHD, Collaborative Therapeutic Assessment, and culturally informed care.
Carolyn brings a strengths-based, socially and emotionally attuned approach to her assessments, believing that an evaluation should tell a family something meaningful about who their child is and not simply where they fall on a set of scores. She works collaboratively with families throughout the process, inviting their questions and observations into the assessment rather than treating them as background information.
Carolyn especially enjoys working with school-age kids and adolescents alongside their families. She finds this stage of development especially meaningful, as children at this age are forming a sense of who they are, how they learn, and how they relate to the world around them. Her primary clinical interests include depression, anxiety, emotion regulation, and trauma, and she brings the same care to those areas that she brings to attention and learning questions.
Beyond her core specialties, Carolyn assesses clients experiencing autism, twice-exceptionality, and behavioral concerns, and she works thoughtfully with clients holding multicultural identities to ensure that findings reflect a young person's full sociocultural context. She is skilled in performance-based and projective measures, which allow her to understand a client's inner experience in ways that questionnaires alone cannot capture.
What distinguishes Carolyn's work is her conviction that data serves the person and never the reverse. No one can be reduced to a series of scores, and her aim is to translate raw numbers into pieces of a client's story, then use that story to offer specific tools and directions forward.
Carolyn conceptualizes from a framework of accepting and supporting neurodiversity. She helps families understand that when an environment has not been designed for the way a young person thinks, that is a shortcoming of the environment rather than an inherent deficit in the individual. While she hopes assessment and intervention can equip a client with skills to navigate their current settings, she also advocates for system-level change and for greater understanding from the adults around them.
Her passion for social-emotional assessment shapes every evaluation she conducts. Families often arrive seeking clarity on a diagnosis, but that search usually begins with watching a challenge affect their child and their family life. Carolyn believes how a child thinks and feels about themselves and others deserves as much attention as any diagnostic conclusion, because shining a light there is what supports a young person's confidence, self-efficacy, and long-term emotional wellbeing.
Carolyn hopes every client feels listened to and validated throughout the assessment process, and that they leave understanding themselves more fully, including the sociocultural context that shapes their experience. Above all, she hopes clients recognize their strengths and feel empowered to lean on those strengths and their support systems as they meet what is hard.
Outside of her clinical work, Carolyn enjoys baking, traveling, playing board games, and exploring the city.