About Us
Meet The Women Behind Sage Brain Health
Kari & Caroline
We come from different sides of mental health care. Caroline is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and Kari is a therapist. Between the two of us, we’ve spent years helping people through depression, anxiety, trauma, stress, major life changes and the general overwhelm that comes with being human. We’ve also seen the limits of asking people to just keep trying harder.
Sage grew out of our interest in what becomes possible when we add brain-based treatment to the options people already have. For some people, that’s part of recovering their mental health. For others, it’s about feeling clearer, stronger and more like themselves. We wanted to create a place for both.
Kari Read, LCSW
Co-Founder | Therapist | Trauma & Integration
Kari has spent most of her career helping people get unstuck. She’s a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of Peace in Bloom Counseling here in Evergreen, where she works with adults, teens, couples and families. Her work includes anxiety, depression, trauma, relationships and the moments in life when everything feels harder than it used to.
Kari is especially interested in the gap between knowing and feeling. You can understand why you react the way you do. You can know the coping skills. You can have a really good therapist. And sometimes your brain still responds before you have a chance to use any of it. That gap is a big part of what interested her in ExoMind.
At Sage, Kari helps clients get clear about what they actually want to change and supports them in noticing and using the shifts that happen during treatment. For clients already in therapy, she can also work alongside their existing therapist so ExoMind becomes part of the work they’re already doing rather than something completely separate from it.
Before opening Peace in Bloom, Kari worked in nonprofit leadership and community prevention, including serving as Executive Director of Summit Prevention Alliance. She’s spent her career somewhere at the intersection of mental health, families and community. She’s also a mom of three, which has thoroughly cured her of believing that wellness plans designed for imaginary people with unlimited time are particularly useful.Her approach is warm, practical and direct. She’ll ask good questions, tell you what she thinks, and help you figure out whether this actually makes sense for you.
Caroline Journeycake, RN, MSN, PMHNP-BC
Co-Founder | Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
Caroline brings nearly two decades of healthcare experience to Sage and a perspective that looks well beyond a list of symptoms. She’s a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and the founder of Medicine Park Mental Health, where she provides psychiatric care for children, adolescents and adults. Her experience began in nursing and eventually led her into psychiatric medicine, giving her a broad view of how physical health, mental health, medication, stress and everyday life can all affect how someone feels.
Caroline believes people should understand their care and have a real voice in it. She’s collaborative, curious and not particularly interested in forcing someone into a predetermined treatment box.
At Sage, she brings that medical lens to brain health and ExoMind treatment. She helps us look at the whole picture, including symptoms, health history, medications, treatment goals and whether ExoMind is an appropriate option in the first place. Her road into healthcare wasn’t completely linear. Caroline’s first degree was actually in Journalism and Broadcasting from Oklahoma State University. She later returned to school for nursing at Jacksonville University and completed her advanced psychiatric training through Frontier Nursing University.
Medicine Park Mental Health is named for the small Oklahoma mountain town where Caroline grew up. These days, Colorado is home. When she’s not working, she’s usually spending time with her two teenage boys, hiking, playing tennis or pickleball, traveling, or finding some reason to be outside.
There are things therapy does incredibly well. There are things medication can do incredibly well. And now there are ways of working directly with the brain that give us another option. We don’t think one has to replace the others. That’s one of the reasons we built Sage together. You get the benefit of both perspectives: the medical side and the therapeutic side, with care that’s still centered around one very simple question:
What would help you feel more like yourself?