Your Integrated Care Team
Serious illness affects far more than the physical body. It impacts the decisions you make, the emotions you experience, your relationships, your daily routines, your sleep, your stress levels, and your overall quality of life. Because all of these areas influence one another, our team brings together expertise in medical strategy, nutrition and health optimization, trauma and emotional healing, nervous system support, lifestyle coaching, and care coordination. Together, we help you navigate the complexity of illness while creating the strongest possible conditions for healing, resilience, and living fully.
Alona Pulde, MD
Care Quarterback, Internal Terrain & Healing Resilience Specialist
Bio
Dr. Alona Pulde is a board-certified practitioner of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and a Family Practice physician with expertise in integrative, lifestyle, and nutritional medicine. She helps individuals optimize the body's internal environment by addressing the interconnected factors that influence health, healing, and resilience—including nutrition, sleep, movement, recovery, metabolic health, hormones, stress, relationships, and emotional well-being.
Drawing upon both Traditional Chinese Medicine and evidence-based Western healthcare, Dr. Pulde takes a whole-person approach that recognizes that physical symptoms rarely exist in isolation. She helps patients understand how biology, lifestyle, emotional well-being, social connection, and daily habits influence inflammation, energy, immune function, healing capacity, and quality of life. Across decades of clinical practice, she has observed that when biological stability improves, stress decreases, relationships become more supportive, and people feel more connected to themselves, they are often better able to navigate illness, recover from setbacks, and engage more fully in life.
Role
Dr. Pulde serves as the primary guide and coordinator of each patient's healing journey, helping ensure that all aspects of care work together in a coherent and supportive way. Trained in both Family Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she integrates the strengths of Western medical science with a holistic understanding of the body's interconnected systems. She focuses on optimizing the body's internal environment through nutrition, sleep, movement, recovery, metabolic health, hormonal balance, inflammation, and stress physiology. Drawing upon emerging fields such as psychoneuroimmunology—which explores the interactions among the nervous system, immune system, endocrine system, behavior, and emotional well-being—she helps patients understand how biological, psychological, relational, and lifestyle factors influence resilience, healing capacity, and quality of life. Through exploration of chronic stress patterns, relationships, emotional expression, authenticity, social connection, meaning, purpose, and engagement with life, she helps patients identify obstacles to healing while strengthening the internal and external resources that support recovery and well-being. By integrating these dimensions into a unified approach, Dr. Pulde helps patients move beyond simply managing disease toward creating the strongest possible foundation for healing, resilience, and living fully.
Matthew Lederman, MD
Medical Strategist, Clinical Advocate & Decision Support Specialist
Bio
Dr. Matthew Lederman is a board-certified Internal Medicine physician who specializes in helping individuals navigate complex and high-stakes medical decisions, particularly during serious or life-altering illness. He works with patients to synthesize competing recommendations, interpret evolving data, and align treatment strategies with their values and long-term goals. Dr. Lederman integrates evidence-based medicine, lifestyle interventions, and nervous system regulation, recognizing that chronic stress and relational strain influence immune signaling, sleep architecture, metabolic stability, and decision clarity. He is also a Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC)—one of the few physicians in the United States with this certification—and helps patients and families strengthen communication, navigate difficult conversations, and reduce conflict-driven stress during medically volatile periods. Beyond helping patients evaluate medical options and interpret complex information, he serves as a trusted clinical advocate—someone who understands their values, knows the details of their case, and helps them navigate uncertainty as circumstances evolve.
Role
Dr. Lederman serves as a trusted medical partner throughout your health journey, helping you navigate complex decisions with greater clarity, confidence, and support. Board-certified in Internal Medicine and a Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication, he brings a unique combination of medical expertise and communication skills to situations that are often emotionally charged and medically complex. He conducts comprehensive medical record reviews, identifies potential gaps or overlooked opportunities, evaluates treatment options, interprets emerging research, and helps patients understand the risks, benefits, and tradeoffs of important medical decisions. He also helps patients and families navigate difficult conversations, conflicting medical opinions, and the uncertainty that often accompanies serious illness. Through ongoing access via messages, brief calls, and formal appointments, he remains available to help patients think through new developments, address unexpected challenges, coordinate care, and make informed decisions as situations evolve. Whether reviewing a new scan, discussing treatment options, managing difficult symptoms, or helping put out unexpected fires, Dr. Lederman provides the reassurance of having an experienced physician who knows your case, understands your values, and is in your corner when you need him most.
Paris Williams, PhD
Trauma, Grief & Relational Healing Specialist
Bio
Dr. Paris Williams is a Clinical Psychologist with advanced degrees in Clinical Psychology, Contemplative Psychology, and Somatic Psychology. Throughout his career, he has worked with individuals facing acute and developmental trauma, chronic illness, chronic pain, substance dependency, psychosis, and other complex health and life challenges. He has taught trauma-informed approaches to healing and recovery throughout the United States and internationally and has extensive experience supporting couples, families, and groups through conflict resolution, relationship repair, and mediation. His work integrates psychological insight, mindfulness, body-centered awareness, and compassionate exploration to help people understand and transform longstanding patterns that contribute to suffering and disconnection.
Role
Significant life experiences-whether recent or rooted in earlier relationships and developmental experiences-can continue to shape how people respond to illness, stress, uncertainty, and connection with others. These unresolved patterns often influence emotional well-being, relationships, self-protective behaviors, and a person’s ability to fully engage in healing and life. Drawing upon extensive experience in trauma psychology, somatic psychology, mindfulness-based approaches, and relationship repair, Paris helps clients explore the deeper experiences and patterns that may exist beneath current struggles. His work supports individuals in healing unresolved trauma, processing grief, improving relationships, resolving longstanding conflicts, and cultivating greater meaning, authenticity, and emotional freedom. Because trauma, chronic stress, grief, and relationship distress can influence sleep, nervous system regulation, hormonal signaling, inflammation, immune activity, and overall resilience, this work supports not only emotional healing but also the physiological conditions that contribute to healing, health, and well-being. By addressing these foundational dimensions of experience, clients are often better able to engage fully in their healing journey and create lasting change in their lives and relationships.
Mark Ideta
Nervous System Regulation & Emotional Integration Specialist
Bio
Mark Ideta is a Trauma and Connection–Focused Life Coach who helps individuals navigate emotional pain, relationship strain, and the stress responses that arise during difficult life circumstances. His work focuses on helping people develop a healthier relationship with their emotional experience so that fear, grief, anger, and shame no longer create inner conflict or paralysis. Instead of suppressing difficult emotions, he helps clients understand and move through them in ways that restore clarity, resilience, and self-compassion. Mark integrates approaches such as Internal Family Systems, Coherence Therapy, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Hakomi, somatic awareness, and Nonviolent Communication to support emotional healing and relational repair. He holds a degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master’s degree in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.
Role
Fear, grief, anger, shame, and relationship stress can keep the body locked in patterns of chronic survival, increasing stress hormones, disrupting sleep, raising inflammation, weakening immune function, and making it harder to follow through with treatment plans. Mark helps clients develop a healthier relationship with their emotional experience so difficult feelings no longer create inner conflict or paralysis. Drawing upon Internal Family Systems, Coherence Therapy, AEDP, Hakomi, somatic awareness, and Nonviolent Communication, he teaches practical skills for regulating the nervous system, processing emotions safely, and responding to life’s challenges with greater flexibility and self-compassion. Because the nervous system influences virtually every major physiological system in the body, greater regulation supports not only emotional well-being but also the physiological conditions that contribute to healing, health, and resilience. As emotional reactivity decreases and nervous system stability improves, people often experience greater clarity, steadier energy, and a stronger ability to carry out the decisions and health strategies they have chosen. Nervous system stability provides an essential foundation for healing.
Lisa Rice
Health Coaching & Lifestyle Implementation Specialist
Bio
Lisa Rice is a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) with training in Traditional Chinese Medicine, nutrition counseling, yoga instruction, and plant-based culinary arts. She has extensive experience helping individuals translate health recommendations into meaningful and sustainable lifestyle change. Drawing upon her background in coaching, nutrition, and behavior change, Lisa helps people build confidence, overcome obstacles, and create practical routines that support resilience, healing, and overall well-being. Her coaching is grounded in compassion, curiosity, accountability, and a deep respect for each person's unique goals, values, and readiness for change.
Role
Understanding what supports healing is only the beginning. Turning recommendations into sustainable daily habits can be challenging, especially while navigating illness, treatment, fatigue, and competing demands. Lisa helps bridge the gap between knowing and doing. Working closely with the medical team, she supports patients in implementing meaningful changes around nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, recovery, and self-care. Through motivational interviewing, accountability, encouragement, and personalized problem-solving, she helps clients build confidence, overcome obstacles, and create routines that fit their lives and values. Her work helps transform health strategies into practical daily behaviors that support resilience, healing, and long-term well-being.
Jessica Maruri
Care Coordination & Continuity Specialist
Bio
Jessica Maruri brings nearly a decade of experience supporting physicians and patients within complex clinical environments. She previously worked for eight years alongside Drs. Alona Pulde and Matthew Lederman at the Whole Foods Market Medical & Wellness Center, where she served as a Department and Clinical Assistant supporting patient care coordination, clinical workflow, and communication between providers and patients. A graduate of Brandeis University, Jessica has worked in the medical field since 2016 and most recently served as a Medical Assistant at the University of Texas at Austin. Through these roles, she developed deep experience managing medical records, coordinating follow-ups, tracking clinical information, and helping ensure continuity of care. Her work focuses on maintaining clear communication, organized systems, and reliable follow-through so that patients and care teams can navigate complex medical situations with greater clarity and support.
Role
Cancer can quickly overwhelm a person's ability to keep track of everything. Jessica helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks. She tracks labs, imaging, and follow-ups, coordinates communication across the care team, captures emerging concerns between sessions, routes questions to the right practitioner quickly, and keeps information organized during fast-moving periods. When emotional overwhelm makes it hard to stay organized, she helps maintain continuity so important details are not missed. In many ways, she serves as the connective tissue of the team—helping everything stay aligned and moving forward. When the logistical burden is reduced and care remains coordinated, stress often decreases and patients can focus their energy on healing rather than managing complexity.