Diane Santas, Ph.D.
Ori Elis, Ph.D.
diane Santas, Ph.d.
Clinical Psychologist
PSY10397
Dr. Santas has been in full time private practice in Oakland for 30 years, providing assessment services, parenting consultations, and therapy for children, adolescents and adults. Assessments include cognitive-educational testing, neuropsychological testing, and social-emotional or mental health evaluation. When doing assessments, Dr. Santas coordinates care with psychiatrists, clinicians, educational or occupational therapists, teachers, and school districts. Areas of expertise: cognitive-educational assessments for learning disabilities and ADHD, social-emotional evaluations, and comprehensive assessments of complex cases.
Dr. Santas earned her Ph.D. in 1986 from California School of Professional Psychology, did post-doctoral training at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, and has been a licensed clinical psychologist since 1987. She has Proficiency certification in comprehensive assessments with the Society for Personality Assessment and has participated in training at the Institute for Therapeutic Assessment. In addition to her own assessment practice, Dr. Santas is an Assistant Clinical Professor at UC Berkeley where she does individual clinical supervision and evaluation of graduate level students doing assessments in the Clinical Science program.
Ori elis, Ph.d.
Developmental neuropsychologist
PSY31081
Dr. Elis has extensive experience in neuropsychological and psychodiagnostic assessment across the lifespan and has worked in private practice, community clinics, and hospital settings. She specializes in identifying autism in girls, women, people assigned female at birth, nonbinary, and transgender individuals, but has expertise in attention and executive functions, learning differences, mood and anxiety disorders, severe mental illness, and working with LGBTQ parents and youth. She currently works with children starting at age 7 through adolescence and adulthood (40 years old, with some exceptions on a case-by-case basis).
Dr. Elis approaches assessments through a collaborative, therapeutic, neurodiversity-affirming, and trauma informed lens. She works with each client to identify areas of concern and to generate specific questions they would like the evaluation to address. In this way, she is able to tailor the testing, report, and recommendations to address the specific needs of each individual. This type of comprehensive evaluation can be instrumental in gaining a more holistic perspective of a person's areas of strength and challenge and in understanding how to best support them.
Dr. Elis earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, completed her clinical internship at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Hospital, and her post-doctoral training in private settings and the Veterans Affairs Northern California Healthcare System.