I grew up in Raleigh, NC surrounded by humidity, music, and a family who loves to laugh. In 2002 I moved to Winston-Salem to pursue my bachelor’s degree at UNC School of the Arts in classical guitar. It was there that two wonderful things happened amidst all of the music I was playing: I met my wife and I found my desire to be a therapist.

After my wife completed her master’s degree in Virginia, we moved back to our home in Winston-Salem. I enrolled in Pfeiffer University’s Marriage and Family Therapy program, commuting to Charlotte for 3 years, and graduated in 2013 with my Master of Arts degree. While there I earned the Outstanding Master’s Intern award for my work in the training clinic, and began a mental health-related podcast called In Session with George Bitar, Ph.D., of Connect Couples Therapy in Charlotte, NC.

From 2016-2022, I was a Senior Mental Health Counselor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine’s Counseling & Well-Being Services, serving medical and graduate PhD students in the extremes of academic adversity. This position has also afforded me to continue my passion in working with couples and to seek advanced training in the area.

I often tell people that my first experiences working with couples scared the living daylights out of me. But it soon became clear that relying on intuition alone wasn’t enough to help couples transform their relationship. I tell the same to couples who worry that I use science-based methods as a cornerstone of my clinical work, and I see this providing the pathway to make couples therapy more successful and enriching for the people I work with.