Kathryn Wetzler, PsyD (she/her), was born and raised in Australia, where she earned her Bachelor of Commerce at Melbourne University, and after graduating, spent the next 10 years working in sales, marketing, and management at IBM Australia.
After moving to the United States, Dr. Wetzler embarked on a career change, earning her MFT before continuing on towards her PsyD from CSPP. She has had many roles within The Permanente Medical Group (TPMG), both at Kaiser Permanente’s Vallejo Medical Center and then with the Northern California Mental Health Training Program. She completed her postdoctoral residency with the Adult Services Team in KP Vallejo, followed by working in the Emergency and Consultation Liaison Service for three years before returning to the Adult Services Team as a psychologist. Dr. Wetzler has been involved in mental health training since 2008, first serving as the Vallejo Training Director and then the North Bay Consortium Director.
Since 2016, Dr. Wetzler has served as the Director for Mental Health Training across Northern California, where she has focused on increasing the quality and size of our training programs across the region. With quality in mind, she has ensured that all eligible doctoral training programs have received APA accreditation, while also ensuring that all programs abide by the highest of standards in the field. Dr. Wetzler has also increased the visibility and attractiveness of the KP mental health training programs through targeted outreach, worked to reduce the footprint of our training programs on our medical centers through the utilization of technology, and increased efforts pertaining to equity, inclusion, and diversity.
In Dec 2020, in response to the need for future training of the Mental Health Scholars Program students, Dr. Wetzler developed an innovative solution to the complex training needs of the scholars. She developed the “clinic within a clinic” counseling center model that allows flexibility in training for the KP employees who are retraining as Mental Health therapists. Dr. Wetzler successfully lobbied for support of the idea from senior leadership and the first clinic started operations in January of 2022. When fully operational the counseling centers will have over 20 dedicated staff and approximately 90 scholars and Allied Health MFT students per year.
