Drs. Joan Davidson and Michael Tompkins, Center founders.

Our Center History

The San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy (SFBACCT) was founded in 1995 by Drs. Jacqueline Persons, Michael Tompkins, and Joan Davidson. Dr. Persons served as Director for 18 years before leaving to found a center that includes conducting research as a key mission of the center. She is currently Director of the Oakland Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center at www.oaklandcbt.com.

Our mission has remained the same for over 20 years:

To provide empirically-supported, ethical, and compassionate care to our patients, to offer high-quality professional training for clinicians, and to disseminate information about CBT to both consumers and professionals.

We feel privileged to have had many talented clinicians work with us over the years as Partners, Staff Therapists, Associates, and Psychological and Student Assistants. For many years, we operated out of our current Oakland (Rockridge) location and two offices in downtown San Francisco. In 2004, we consolidated to work more closely together from our east bay location in Oakland in a partnership model. We remain forever grateful for the many contributions that former members of the SFBACCT have made to the success of our Center and we are delighted to continue our mission with such a talented, professional, and caring group of Partners.