PASHN Leadership team

Jessica Abele, pt, dpt
PASHN Leadership & Website Lady
Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist
Jessica Abele received her Doctorate of Physical Therapy from Boston University in 2010. She started her career with a focus on neurological hospital based practice before beginning her education in pelvic floor physical therapy in January 2016. She has worked in many of the major hospital systems in the Bay Area, including California Pacific Medical Center, UCSF, Kaiser South San Francisco/San Bruno, and Alta Bates. 
Jessica started Therapy Roo Physical Therapy in order to improve access to pelvic floor therapy, with direct access treatment, more flexible scheduling, longer appointments, and by providing care in patients' homes. 
Jessica is honored to be a part of the PASHN leadership team since 2022 and values the organization's dedication to connection across disciplines and elevating patient care. 
PASHN Leadership
​Psychotherapist/Sex Therapist
Julie Lehman, MS, LMFT lives and works in San Rafael, Ca. They have owned and operated a private practice blending psychotherapy and sex therapy since 2018 after working in community mental health. They have specializations in attachment trauma, minority stress, and human sexuality, and approach their work oriented in trauma-informed somatic, relational, and experiential healing.  Julie brings with them a background in medical healthcare, medical research, biological anthropology, and prenatal and children’s yoga instruction.

Julie enjoys providing direct care prominently to marginalized sexual and gender populations, and strives to improve the overall quality of resources available to these communities.  To this end, they currently hold a position as Chair of Marketing and Outreach for Bay Area Open Minds, offer consultation to Marin County, and lead Sexological research on kink/BDSM and other projects with TASHRA. 

Julie believes strongly that holistic and multi-modal healthcare provides the most effective healing treatments.  Thus, they are dedicated to creating and supporting interdisciplinary collaborations. This is especially relevant in the treatment of sexual issues; thus, Julie enthusiastically stepped into PASHN leadership in 2022.

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​Julie lehman, MS, LMFT

PASHN founders and advisory board

​Heather Howard, PhD, MPH, AASECT-CSC, AASECT-CSE, ISSWSH-IF is a board certified sexologist and mind-body health facilitator with a clinical concentration in pelvic, sexual, and chronic pain. She founded the Center for Sexual Health and Rehabilitation to help clients meet their sexual and intimate goals, and developed the Ergœrotics® process to promote comfortable pleasure and create accessible resources for people in all bodies.
In addition to her private practice work, Heather developed a series of video courses to help patients with chronic health conditions to find comfortable pleasure, as well as a library of ergonomic sexual positions to assist health care providers with making clinical recommendations to patients. She also completed funded research entitled “A Culturally-Informed Educational Program to Promote Sexual Health and Well-Being Among Refugee Women.”
Dr. Ricki Pollycove is a board-certified ObGyn, FACOG, a graduate of both University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and BA and MS from UC Berkeley. In private ObGyn practice for over 35 years, she focuses on hormones, mood, lowering disease risk and breast diseases throughout the life cycle. The founding director for Education for the California Pacific Medical Center Breast Health Center, she is a former Chair of the Division of
Gynecology at CPMC, associate professor at University of Arizona College of Medicine.
She authored or co-authored numerous scientific papers on Osteoporosis, Androgens in Women’s Health, hormonal agents (local vaginal and systemic) for painful intercourse due to
menopause and original research, “The Evolutionary Origin and Significance of Menopause,” March 2011 Menopause Journal. She has written consumer blogs on women’s health topics, including the Huffington Post as well as SFMS editorials. She is a NAMS certified menopause practitioner (NCMP).
Amy Selinger, PT, DPT, OCS, she/her/hers, is a board-certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS) who holds a Masters in Physical Therapy from the University of Southern California and a Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT) from Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Amy is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Graduate Program in Physical Therapy. 
Amy has been a physical therapist for over 35 years. She founded Back to Life Physical Therapy, Inc in 1999 to support people with chronic pain in the pursuit of healthy and active lives. Using the Movement System Balance approach and a variety of manual therapeutic approaches, Amy helps those with diverse and complex, chronic musculoskeletal conditions (with particular emphasis on spine and pelvic conditions, including those who have Ehlers Danlos and other hypermobility disorders.) to achieve increased function and lasting pain relief. 
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Lizanne Pastore PT, MA, COMT received her B.S. in Physical Therapy from the
University of Vermont in 1987. She has worked primarily in the Bay Area running a successful private practice since 1999. As an orthopedic manual therapist, Lizanne sees people with myriad musculo-skeletal-neural issues, and since 2005 she has specialized in pelvic health, treating all genders using a broad integrative approach.
Additionally, Lizanne holds an M.A. in Somatic Counseling Psychology. The somatic approach encourages patients to explore a level of body awareness that is often missing in the Western medical model, and it grounds her philosophy of treating people as dynamic, multi-system beings, all with unique concerns and enormous potential to heal. 
Leigh Hollowell, PT, MSPT has been an orthopedic manual therapist for 35 years. She became further specialized in visceral manipulation and pelvic therapy over 20 years ago. She works in private practice in the East Bay treating children, women, and men as well as providing open and affirming work with the LGBTQIA community. Some of the conditions she works with includes but is not limited to abdominal pain, pelvic and genital pain, pelvic floor tightness and/or weakness, bowel and bladder issues, adhesions from abdominal and pelvic surgeries affecting digestion and the intestines, SIBO, esophageal reflux,  neurological headaches, gastroparesis and other autonomic dysfunction of the Vagus Nerve, and Abdomino-Phrenic Dyssernergia to name a few. She also works with people who have musculoskeletal pain in the neck, spine and hips.