Olivia grew up in the Chicago metropolitan area. She has always held interest in human nature, survival, resilience, and how people cope with the realities of life. Her working principle has stayed consistent since youth: treat people with respect no matter their life circumstances. That orientation sits at the heart of her practice.

Olivia got to work early. She’s put in time in retail, management, healthcare, and education. At fourteen, she started her own tutoring business, helping younger kids through their math and science homework after school. At fifteen, she mixed seasonings, olive oil, and balsamic vinegars for cash in the basement of a neighborhood spice shop. Other early jobs include vendor positions through Home Depot, stock/unloading truck deliveries, cashier shifts, and traveling across the Chicago suburbs to teach afterschool classes. She graduated high school early and spent most of what would have been senior year working and taking community-college classes.

She finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in three years. While there, she worked weekend night shifts as a housekeeper and caregiver in nursing homes and taught chemistry and cadaver dissection labs during the week. She later took on a regional supervisor role for a Walmart greenhouse vendor before heading to Iowa for medical school.

At twenty-one, she enrolled at Des Moines University, simultaneously earning both a Master of Healthcare Administration and a Doctorate of Osteopathic Medicine. She is the first and only physician in her family. During her years in Iowa, she led medical outreach in rural underserved areas, mentored local youth, and continued her tutoring business for supplemental income.

After medical school graduation, Olivia moved to Detroit to study psychiatry with clinical interests in substance use, trauma, and psychosis. In residency, her colleagues quickly identified her as a natural leader. She was nominated as class representative for two consecutive years, followed by associate chief resident of the psychiatry department. She continued mentoring undergraduates through the University of Illinois MCB Career Mentorship Program and worked as an editorial review group chair coordinating expert reviews in psychiatry, therapy, and public health.

Early in her career, one of her adolescent patients told her that to be a good doctor, she has to “always keep it one-hundred.” She took him seriously. That advice is in part what shaped her down-to-earth practice style. Frustrated by medical politics and academic pretension, she built her own clinic to practice in a way that felt more genuine. The “Dr. Colombo” clients meet in her office is synonymous with who Olivia is in her everyday life. She carries a pro-bono caseload as a deliberate part of her responsibility to the community.

Olivia sees her work as a partnership. She rejects approaches that reduce people to diagnoses and prescriptions. She believes the individual already knows their own life best; her job is to help turn that understanding into meaningful change. She often quips that her practical goals are to 1) help people function at their best and 2) keep them safely free from psychiatric hospitals and correctional facilities. Her commitment to helping people live a free and fulfilling life is deeply personal. Like many, she has people in her personal life who have faced challenges like suicide attempts, panic attacks, legal issues, psychosis, trauma, and substance use. She is also transparent about her own history with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Olivia maintains a working network that spans southeast Michigan, including connections with a range of therapy practices, group homes, and substance use resources. The aim is simple: a human-to-human connection with a doctor who knows the material, but does not require patients to perform. Opening up is not easy. It is a privilege to be trusted with someone’s story. Her most rewarding moments come from supporting others through life’s most challenging times, and watching them (as the great Frank Sinatra once said) pick themselves up and get back in the race. That’s Life.