VOL. 14
ISPP Current Student Spotlight: Sarah Brill
Sarah Brill, MA (She/Her) 5th Year Clinical Psychology Doctoral Student
Sarah will be completing the pre-doctoral internship at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine! She has also presented globally, nationally, regionally, and locally on the intersection between neuropsychology and health.
How did you get interested in psychology? My journey to psychology was less about discovering something new and more about returning to what had always driven me: human behavior, resilience, and the connection between mind and body. I began my career managing clinical practices and supporting healthcare delivery from the administrative side. Though meaningful, I felt increasingly drawn to be more directly involved in patient care. I wanted to support not just treatment plans, but also the emotional weight of illness through holistic and compassionate care.
That desire led me to pursue psychology.
Looking back, the foundation was always there. I spent years as a competitive ballet dancer, where discipline, body awareness, and recovery were not just physical practices, they were emotional ones too. That same philosophy continues to shape my life through Pilates and functional strength training, reinforcing the value of movement, regulation, and intentional living. I’ve come to view longevity not just as a physical goal, but as a psychological one. It encompasses the ability to sustain ourselves, adapt, and thrive across life’s changing demands. Equally formative was my early captivation with science. My undergraduate work in biology and chemistry, paired with hands-on paleontology field research in the mountains, sparked a deep curiosity about how systems evolve, break down, and adapt over time. Excavating fossils taught me how to ask meaningful questions, interpret complex data, and stay present in the process of slow, deliberate discovery. These skills now serve me in both research and clinical practice. My early scientific work evolved into a passion for psychological inquiry – how stress impacts health, how belief shapes behavior, and how we can use evidence to design more compassionate, effective interventions. These threads: movement, science, and the human experience, all came together for me in psychology. Health psychology, in particular, offered the opportunity to integrate my interests in the mind-body connection, apply research in real-world settings, and approach care with both scientific depth and emotional presence.
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