Kristen Pinedo, LMFT

Kristen Pinedo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 13 years of experience in mental health and addiction treatment. She began her work in the substance abuse industry and has dedicated the last 7 years to primary mental health. Her work has always been guided by one conviction: that people deserve care that truly sees them – and that when that care doesn’t exist, it’s worth building.

That belief is what has driven Kristen to help bring multiple programs into existence that simply weren’t there before. Most recently, as Clinical Director at Story Wellness, she conceived and brought to fruition the first outpatient narrative therapy-informed mental health program in Orange County – designing the clinical infrastructure, shaping the treatment model, and building the team that would bring it to life. It was a program born out of a real gap in what was available to people seeking meaningful, non-pathologizing mental health care.

She now brings that same dedication to Wellness Recovery Center in Orange County, where she is leading the development of a residential eating disorder treatment program rooted in narrative therapy. For Kristen, narrative therapy isn’t just a clinical framework – it is the lens through which she has always understood people and their stories. Its core belief that every person is the expert on their own life, that problems are separate from the people who carry them,  and that everyone is worthy of love, belonging, and compassion.

In addition to her work at WRC, Kristen maintains a private practice and provides clinical training and compliance consultation to mental health organizations across Southern California.