Okotoks raised.
World trained.
Home by choice.
I grew up here. I've lived and worked around the world, including years in business and oil and gas before psychology (yes, I have an MBA; no, I won't make you do a SWOT analysis of your feelings). In 2020, I came home.
I teach psychology, I hold doctoral-level clinical training, and I'm also a parent who sometimes shows up with toddler smears on my shirt. I don't do the pedestal thing. I'm in the trenches too, and I'd be honoured to be in them with you.
Psychologists come to this work through many paths. Mine ran through a doctoral degree: years of advanced clinical coursework, supervised assessment and therapy practica, and formal training in diagnosis across the full DSM-5, including personality assessment tools like the Rorschach (R-PAS). Since then, my practice has centred on the two things that training was built for: comprehensive assessment and the treatment of complex concerns.
For you, that means:
Diagnostic depth. Training and experience to assess and understand the whole picture, not just the most visible concern.
Complex cases welcome. Puzzling presentations are often exactly where this preparation matters most.
Assessment and therapy under one roof. The person who assesses you is the person who understands your results, and can treat what they find.
Meet Dr. Sarah Chernoff
The Story
I grew up in Okotoks, in a family where child development wasn't a topic, it was the family business. My mother is an expert in early childhood education and child development, and I spent my childhood, quite literally, in a school. Long before I had the vocabulary for it, I was steeped in the question that would shape my career: what do children and families actually need to thrive?
I didn't take the straight road here, and I'm glad. I left Okotoks and lived and worked around the world. I earned an MBA. I spent years in business, including oil and gas, working alongside the kind of practical, hardworking people who make up this province. Those years taught me things a psychology program can't: how Albertans think, what their days actually look like, and how to talk about hard things without pretense.
Psychology was always the destination, though. I returned to school and completed my doctorate, training in clinical assessment and treatment across the full range of what psychologists see, from ADHD and OCD to the complex, tangled situations that don't fit neatly anywhere.
In 2020, I came home. Okotoks raised me, and it seemed only right that the work of my life should happen here.
How I Practice
A few convictions run through everything I do:
Understanding before intervention. Whether it's a formal assessment or a first conversation, I want to know what's actually going on before we decide what to do about it. Symptoms have histories, and the history matters.
Families are the unit of change. Children live in families. Much of my work happens with and through parents, because that's where change is most powerful and most lasting. I trained in SPACE and SPACE-for-ARFID directly with Dr. Eli Lebowitz of the Yale Child Study Center, and parent-based work is at the heart of my practice.
Depth is worth the time. I'm formally trained in psychodynamic and family-systems approaches, and I'd rather help you change a pattern at its root than teach you to manage it forever.
No pedestal. I'm a psychologist, a teacher of psychology, and also a parent who knows exactly what a hard Tuesday at home feels like. I will never talk down to you. I've been told by many clients that this is the thing they remember most, and I take that as the highest compliment available.
Why “Revolution”?
Because I mean it. I believe the way we support families needs rethinking, and I intend to spend my career helping to change it, one family at a time, from a storied Okotoks house on Elma Street. Big changes have started in smaller places.
Come as you are. That's how I'll show up too.
Every revolution starts with one conversation.
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