The Koum Team
FInd your Person
Therapy works because of the relationship — so who you sit with matters. Our clinicians share one foundation: the conviction that we're shaped, wounded, and healed in relationship, and a way of working that's relational, experiential, and paced with care. But each brings their own focus, their own presence, their own way of being with people.
Take a look, and reach out to whoever you feel drawn to. Not sure? Tell us a little about what's bringing you in, and we'll help you find the right fit — that's what the first conversation is for.
Something happens before you ever meet your therapist. In the hours when we are not sitting with clients, we are training — and we would argue that this is where the trust you place in us is actually built. Not in the room. In the long preparation for it.
Every clinician at Koum spends at least six hours each week in ongoing training and development. Each attends a team training, where we work through the themes and questions of interpersonal theory together. Each sits in a process group, deepening the relational understanding that our work depends on. And each meets one-on-one for supervision or consultation — every clinician here, whatever their licensure, whatever their years.
We share a single clinical lens. We do not borrow a technique here and an idea there; we are committed, as a practice, to the relational approach — and because we are all looking through the same lens, we can go far deeper into it together than any of us could alone.
Underneath all of it is one conviction: who a therapist is as a person cannot be separated from how they show up in the room. So we hold ourselves to the work we ask of you. We do our own interior work. We tend our own healing, continually, and not because we have finished — because no one does. Therapists ought to be humans first and therapists second: rigorously trained, and rigorously honest about their own humanity. Our clinicians are clinically sharp and warm in equal measure, and they have sat on both sides of the couch.
Which means that when you come to us, you are not alone in this. Neither are we.
OUr Clinical Vision
JOhn-Paul Dombrowski, LPCC-S
Co-Founder, Clinical DIREctor & TherapistJP co-founded Koum on a single conviction: that we're shaped in relationship, wounded in relationship, and healed in relationship. It's the thread running through everything he does. He's especially drawn to people who have already done some work on themselves and still keep landing in the same patterns — who know, in their heads, what they want to be different, but get swept into old roles and reactions the moment they're actually with other people. His work is helping that knowing finally reach lived experience.
JP sees individuals, couples, and groups, and his foundation is the interpersonal process: the belief that the relationship in the room is itself where change happens. From there he draws on Internal Family Systems — getting to know the parts of you shaped by earlier relationships — alongside mindfulness and a deep respect for acceptance and self-compassion. With couples, he works from the Gottman Method. He's especially at home with relationship struggles, trauma and PTSD, the aftermath of abuse, anxiety, and the kind of self-criticism that quietly runs the show.
The work with JP isn't rushed or performative. It's collaborative, reflective, and paced with care — attentive not only to what you talk about, but to what you feel in the room as you talk about it. He's less interested in quick relief than in the deeper changes that actually last.
JP holds a Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Franciscan University of Steubenville and is an independently licensed professional clinical counselor in Ohio (LPCC-S) — a credential that also qualifies him to supervise and train other clinicians, part of why he leads Koum's work with fellow therapists.
Meredith Lindle, LPC
therapistMeredith works with the people everyone else relies on — the ones who show up, hold it together, and always know how to help, yet quietly feel unseen, drained, and alone in their own relationships.
She has a particular gift for the steady caretaker: the mother, the dependable friend, the one so practiced at being there for everyone else that there's no room left to fall apart herself. The person who's started to wonder, somewhere along the way, whether love is something you have to earn, and who's tired of performing for it. Meredith helps untangle that cycle of over-giving and exhaustion, toward relationships where you feel supported, not just depended on.
Her work draws on the interpersonal process, attachment-based therapy, Internal Family Systems parts work, and mindfulness. Sessions are collaborative and steady — attentive both to what you bring in and to what happens between the two of you in the room. She slows things down, notices patterns as they surface, and makes space for new emotional experiences, working toward lasting internal change rather than just quieting symptoms. She sees individuals and couples — and works with teens and older adults as well — and is at home with anxiety, depression, grief, trauma, OCD, life transitions, and the particular weight carried by caregivers and women holding more than their share.
Meredith earned her Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Franciscan University and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Ohio. She sees clients in person — at our Steubenville office and online across the state.
Kateri Kalpakgian, LPC
TherapistKateri works with people whose lives look put-together from the outside while something quietly comes apart on the inside.
She understands the particular loneliness of holding it all together — managing anxiety, quieting intrusive thoughts, keeping relationships intact — until you barely recognize yourself, carrying feelings you rarely say out loud. Her work makes room for the part of you that's tired of performing and longs to be understood, and to feel fully alive again.
Together, she helps you slow down and look honestly at the patterns that keep showing up — in your relationships, your thoughts, your daily life — and gain both insight and grounded ways to live differently. Sessions are honest, grounding, and deeply human: no expectation to perform, explain everything perfectly, or figure it out alone.
Kateri's foundation is the interpersonal process — a focus on relationships and patterns — but she adapts to each person, drawing on more cognitive tools or a more grounding, mindful approach depending on what fits. She works with mood concerns, OCD and intrusive thoughts, relationship struggles, anxiety, life transitions, and questions of self-worth, and she sees preteens and teens as well as adults.
Kateri earned her Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Franciscan University and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Ohio. She sees clients in person at our Steubenville office and online across the state, and offers sliding-scale options.
Jessica Brinker, LPC
therapistJessica works with people who are quietly overwhelmed — who start each day already anxious, working hard to keep everything together while it feels like it's slipping through their fingers.
She understands the particular exhaustion of trying to hold it all on your own: the sense that the tighter you grip, the more slips away, and that asking for help can feel like one more impossible thing. Her work begins with something simpler — being received. From there, she helps you understand the patterns underneath the overwhelm and build real, workable ways to change them, so the day stops beginning in dread.
Jessica works with teens and adults navigating anxiety, OCD, depression, burnout, addiction, grief, trauma, and life transitions. Her approach blends the interpersonal process, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Emotionally Focused Therapy, along with mindfulness and motivational interviewing — collaborative and steady, holistic, with clear goals and practical tools to carry between sessions. She's committed to a real therapeutic relationship, where true healing rather than symptom-managing is the point.
Jessica earned her Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Franciscan University of Steubenville and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Ohio (also licensed in Maryland). She sees clients one-on-one — in person at our Steubenville office and online across Ohio and Maryland — and offers sliding-scale options.
We’re Here to Support Your Healing Journey
Break free from overwhelming emotional patterns with personalized therapy. Reach out today for a free consultation call with one of our therapists and begin healing with exceptional support and care.
