Sara King, ARNP, PMHNP-BC
Sara is a board-certified family psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. She completed her education at Allen College with honors. She trained under several well-established psychiatrists in the Cedar Valley. She also has extensive post-graduate training in child psychiatry.
She has a passion for helping children, adolescents, and their families. She believes it is essential to treat the patient and not just the disorder. She has an integrative approach to understanding one’s biological, social, and psychological needs. She feels that a patient-centered therapeutic approach is crucial to help patients’ reach their goals through medication management and therapy.
She believes in involving the patient in decision making, treatment goals, and outcomes. This means collaborating with the patient and anyone the patient feels comfortable with to create a patient-centered treatment team. This could include parents, significant others, teachers, and friends who support the patient in achieving their goals of feeling happy and healthy.
Dr. Evans Komen DNP-PMHNP-BC
Evans is a 2014 graduate of the University of Iowa. He has worked in healthcare for over 20 years in various capacities. Dr. Komen has practiced as a psychiatric nurse practitioner in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Dr. Komen accepts clients 12 years of age and above. He manages a wide range of mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, mood disorders, and schizophrenia. Dr. Komen believes in a holistic approach for his clients to achieve optimal mental health.
Kim Roberts ARNP, PMHNP-BC
Kim is a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who sees children and young adults, ages 4 to 25 years old. She graduated with honors from Allen College and has spent over 20 years working in mental health across Central Iowa. She has a passion for complex behavioral health cases and enjoys working with conditions that are commonly identified in childhood, including as ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, Depression, PANDAS, Trauma.
Kim utilizes a bio-psycho-social foundation blended with both integrative and functional medicine models. She believes in a patient-centered and non-judgmental approach to create an environment where patients and families feel that they can be accepted as themselves. Kim enjoys building a rapport with her families and strongly encourages her patients to participate in making decisions regarding their treatment plan. She encourages communication regularly with others on the treatment team including therapists, educators, and people in the patient’s day to day life.
She keeps up to date on the latest research on supporting mental health conditions and providing this education to her patients and families. Kim presents regularly to state and national nursing organizations as well as local pediatricians and family medicine clinics, school districts, college campuses, and law enforcement agencies. She speaks regularly on topics such as pediatric psychopharmacology, autism, PANDAS, suicide prevention, human trafficking, and the impact of social media on today’s youth.
Jennifer Shaw, LISW
Jennifer Shaw has over 20 years of experience as a licensed independent social worker. She graduated for the University of Northern Iowa and has a strong connection with supporting the Cedar Valley. She enjoys working with children, adolescents, and adults. She also provides family and marriage counseling. Her practice approach consists of cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, positive psychology as well as others. She recently completed her certification in mental health and integrative medicine and believes that a holistic approach is beneficial to help manage life’s challenges.
Tasha Lowman, LISW
Tasha is an experienced therapist who loves working with children, adolescents, and adults.
Her approach is providing support with an emphasis on helping patients identify their individual strengths. She helps clients by teaching them coping techniques and ways to manage stress. She assists individuals working through concerns and adversities to help make necessary life changes.
Renee Barbu LISW
Renee has extensive experience helping clients manage several disorders. Renee enjoys working with clients with intense emotions such as shame, guilt, fear, and anger. Renee assists in managing symptoms coming from abuse, rejection, and other past traumas. Some of Renee’s counseling approaches are person centered, solution-focused therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance commitment therapy and trauma informed care.
Renee is aware that people often have the perception that they don't fit it in or are disconnected from others. She is aware that clients have various levels of outside emotional support. Renee would like to be able to be a support person and help clients navigate feelings and relationships. She would like to help clients gain communication skills and build a healthy support network.
Jen Wollum, MHA
Jen Webster is the office manager at Cedar Circle Mental Health and Wellness. She started in April of 2020 and has loved learning new skills and getting to know the patients and their families. She is from Spencer, Iowa and moved to Cedar Falls to attend UNI. She graduated with her bachelors in social work in May of 2017. She recently graduated in February of 2020, with her masters in healthcare administration from Colorado State University. She lives in Waterloo with her boyfriend Brett and their two dogs Paisley and Ollie. She enjoys the outdoors, spending time with friends, adventures with her dogs, going to Iowa Hawkeye games, fitness, and traveling.
Sara Kastli RN, BSN
Sara completed her bachelors in nursing at Allen College in 2014. She has grown up in the Cedar Valley and has worked in healthcare for many years focusing on primary care and mental health. Sara has a passion for helping everyone address and normalize all their mental health needs, allowing individuals and families to live their lives to their fullest. Sara loves getting to know all of our patients and families!
Archie
Archie is the therapy pup at Cedar Circle! Archie is a corgi-Australian shepherd mix. Archie is a loving sweet guy with his own anxiety. He is working on getting to know our clients. He will peek at you from behind the desk and may want to come up and sniff you. The more he gets to know you the braver he gets and may even let you pet him. We are helping Archie overcome his anxiety and he is the perfect addition to Cedar Circle. He goes home with Jen Wollum each day and spends his free time with his parents and his doggy siblings Paisley and Ollie!