Who you'll work with.

Gerdenio "Sonny" Manuel, S.J., Ph.D.

Founder & Senior Clinician · Clinical Training Director, Equity Health · Professor Emeritus, University of San Francisco

Dr. Gerdenio "Sonny" Manuel has practiced as a licensed psychologist in California since 1985. He completed his clinical internship and advanced clinical fellowship in inpatient and community psychology at Cambridge City Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University, his M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and his B.A. from the University of San Francisco.

His areas of clinical practice and scholarship include adult psychotherapy, relationships and sexuality, coping with suffering and traumatic life events, addiction and recovery, and the relationship of psychology and spirituality to human flourishing. He is the author of Living Celibacy: Healthy Pathways for Priests (Paulist Press, 2012), winner of a Catholic Press Award.

Dr. Manuel is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of San Francisco, where he served as Professor and Chair of Psychology and Director of the Saint Ignatius Institute. As staff psychologist and clinical supervisor at St. Anthony's in San Francisco, he led and supervised psychotherapy groups for men struggling with addiction and recovery. He has held senior academic and leadership roles at Santa Clara University, the University of San Francisco, and across Jesuit higher education. Today he serves as Clinical Training Director at Equity Health, a federally qualified health center providing integrated primary and behavioral health care to San Francisco's diverse and underserved communities, where he trains and supervises the next generation of clinicians while continuing to teach, write, and practice.

“Dr. Manuel is a therapist's therapist… He perfectly blends excellent clinical skills based in psychology, spirituality, and rich personal experience to offer clients the very best psychotherapy experience they can hope to receive.” — Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D., ABPP, Santa Clara University

Benjamin J. Gadbaw, M.A., M.F.A.

Psychological Associate · Working under the supervision of Dr. Gerdenio Manuel

Benjamin Gadbaw is a Registered Psychological Associate practicing under the supervision of Dr. Gerdenio Manuel. He works with adults — individuals and couples — navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, relationship and family concerns, and life transitions, with particular care for men, and for those who have built outwardly successful lives yet find themselves contending with deeper questions of identity, purpose, and meaning.

Ben came to psychology after a first career in design and technology. He spent years in design and user research — most recently on new products at Amazon, and earlier at WeWork — and consulted for leading technology, finance, and philanthropic organizations on the problem of understanding people clearly. He has taught at Cornell, Harvard, Parsons, and the School of Visual Arts, and his sculpture has been exhibited in San Francisco and stands in permanent installation at Emory University. That work trained him to listen closely and to take seriously how people actually live — and, in time, drew him toward the deeper questions no metric can answer.

His approach joins depth psychology with a careful attention to the body. He draws on psychodynamic, Jungian, attachment-based, somatic, and internal family systems (IFS) traditions, integrating them to fit the person in the room and helping clients find change through both insight and embodied experience. He understands therapy not as the removal of symptoms but as a relationship in which both people are changed. His care is affirming, anti-racist, and LGBTQ+ inclusive.

Ben holds a Master's in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, and a B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory University — a path that informs his attention to the mind as at once biological, relational, and creative. Outside the office, he is an ultramarathon runner and a sailor.

Elasha Racks, M.S.

Doctoral Student in Clinical Psychology · Founder, Elated & Well

Elasha Racks brings an integrative, body-centered perspective to the work of healing. A Bay Area native with a lifelong reverence for the ocean, she is pursuing her doctorate in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where her work centers the body, cultural identity, and the conditions that allow a person to feel safe enough to grow.

Her path to psychology runs through movement and wellness. She holds a B.S. in Kinesiology from William Jessup University and an M.S. in Integrative Health Sciences, with honors, and is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, certified Flexologist, and Dale Carnegie facilitator. As the founder of Elated & Well, she has spent years coaching individuals and corporate teams toward their own definitions of wellness — creating psychologically safe spaces grounded in growth, balance, and empowerment.

Having grown up amid instability and limited access to care, Elasha is especially committed to serving communities underrepresented in mental health and wellness. She integrates somatic, relational, and culturally attuned approaches, attending to mind and body as inseparable parts of a whole.