Alexis Garza-Kjorvestad

She is a licensed therapist, educator, and clinical supervisor with more than 25 years of experience in human services and mental health, working with individuals across the lifespan—from newborns to older adults in their 90s. Her professional background includes eight years in law enforcement and public safety, as well as clinical, educational, and community-based roles that have shaped her integrative and compassionate approach to care.

She is the founder of New Approach Therapy and a Professor at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology, where she currently teaches Couple and Family Therapy I. Previous courses taught include Multicultural Counseling and Couple and Family Therapy II.

Alexis specializes in supporting neurodivergent individuals, LGBTQ+ clients, marginalized communities, BIPOC populations, and those navigating trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, grief, addiction recovery, life transitions, family and relationship challenges, and communication barriers. Her therapeutic approach is warm, collaborative, and integrative, blending person-centered, strength-based, with navigating family systems therapies.

Alexis also brings lived experience as a late-diagnosed ADHDer, which informs her compassionate, neurodiversity-affirming approach to therapy and deepens her understanding of the complexities of neurodivergence, masking, self-understanding, burnout, and healing.

She is also a recipient of Pepperdine University P@P Award for excellence in teaching and service.

Alexis uses an integrative, client-centered therapeutic approach, tailoring treatment plans and goals to the unique needs of each individual, couple, or family she works with. She prioritizes creating a safe, attuned, and trusting therapeutic environment where clients feel supported, understood, and empowered. Her work draws from humanistic, family systems, psychodynamic, emotion-focused, internal family systems (IFS), solution-focused, experiential, and expressive arts therapy models to support healing, insight, and meaningful change.

During the first session, clients can expect a supportive space to explore what has been working, what hasn’t, and how certain patterns or roles may be affecting their life and relationships. Together, we’ll begin to identify what they want to shift, what healing or growth looks like for them, and how therapy can support them in moving toward the life they want to live.