River has a Masters Degree in Social work from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, where they studied Violence and Injury Prevention, and System Dynamics. They have extensive experience working with survivors of gender-based, sexual, and intimate partner violence in roles related to crisis response, medical advocacy, and therapy services. They also have several years of experience working in public health research, with focuses in health equity, tobacco control, violence prevention, and housing services.

River is passionate about group facilitation, and has more than a decade of experience facilitating different types of groups, including support groups, therapy groups, educational groups, and community events. River has received training in a number of group facilitation techniques, including group model building, psychodrama, sociometry, group psychotherapy, and expressive arts group facilitation.

River is a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist In Training [REAT-IT] and has over 400 hours of training in expressive and experiential therapy methods, including drama therapy, play therapy, intermodal expressive arts therapies, and somatic therapies. They are level 1 trained Internal Family Systems therapist, and are a Somatic Experiencing student (beginning year).