About Jessenia Ogunade, PhD
Larimar was created from lived experience, advanced psychological training, and decades of work inside systems where trauma, power, and consequence intersect, including the real-world impacts of policy, enforcement, and institutional decision-making on individuals, families, and communities.
I am an international psychologist specializing in trauma. My work is grounded in a decolonial framework that examines how trauma is understood, shaped, and responded to within sociocultural and institutional systems.
I am a first-generation Afro Latina woman of Dominican descent and raised in the Bronx during the 1970s. From an early age, I learned how identity, survival, and adaptation operate inside environments that were not designed for safety or wholeness. At home, culture was preserved. Outside, assimilation was expected. That tension shaped my understanding of trauma long before I had language for it.
Over time, that lived experience became formalized through education, training, and practice.
Professional Focus and Expertise
My work centers on the examination of power and privilege, with a specific emphasis on policing and public safety. I am a subject-matter expert in the dynamics of gender-based violence, crisis intervention, and trauma, particularly as they affect Bodies of Culture.
I work at the intersection of:
- Systemic and intergenerational trauma
- Gender, race, and sexuality
- Policing and public safety
- Cultural intelligence
- Grief, loss
My work spans clinical, educational, consulting, and speaking contexts internationally.
Why Larimar Exists
There are voices that have been silenced for generations. Not only through trauma, but through systems that normalize harm, erase context, and demand resilience without repair.
Larimar exists to offer support that does not fragment people further.
This includes Bodies of Culture, LGBTQIA+ communities, first responders, women in leadership, and professionals operating in high-stakes environments. These communities often carry trauma that is not only personal, but cultural, institutional, and cumulative.
Here, complexity is taken seriously.
Clinical and Non-Clinical Work,
Clearly Defined
Through Larimar Counseling Services, LMSW, PLLC, I provide licensed mental health consultation, psychoeducation, and complementary wellness services within New York State.
Through Larimar Evolutions, I provide non-clinical executive and leadership development coaching, systems consulting, professional education, and international speaking focused on trauma, policing, gender-based violence, and institutional impact.
These roles are intentionally distinct.
Clarity is ethical.
Professional Affiliations
Larimar is connected with organizations committed to ethical, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive practice, including:
- Society for Police and Criminal Psychology
- American Psychological Association
Where to Begin
Your experience deserves to be understood in full context.
Your work deserves support that does not destabilize you.
Larimar exists to meet complexity with clarity, not reduction.