Amy Grinberg

Growing up in England, Grinberg discovered her fascination with the intersection of mental and physical health at an early age. After earning her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Leeds Metropolitan University, she moved to the United States to pursue advanced training. She earned her masters in psychology from the New School for Social Research in New York, where she worked in a trauma and physiology lab studying how trauma impacts health. She then worked as a study coordinator at Columbia University Medical Center in the neonatal intensive care unit with preterm infants, examining the brain-gut interaction.

Grinberg continued her training at Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, where she earned a PhD in clinical health psychology. There, she began her focus on headache disorders, examining the impact of headache on people’s quality of life. Grinberg was drawn to headache medicine by the powerful role stress and autonomic dysregulation play in disease, and by the opportunity to expand the use of effective behavioral approaches. “There is so much we can do from a behavioral standpoint to empower people. When we teach people how to work with their nervous system and behavior, we give them a way back to the lives they want to be living,” she says.

She completed her predoctoral internship at the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the VA and at the Yale University School of Medicine. Grinberg subsequently was appointed National Director of Behavioral Headache Medicine for the Veterans Affairs Headache Centers of Excellence Program—a Congressionally mandated national initiative. In this role, Grinberg provided national clinical and strategic leadership across 28 VA Headache Centers of Excellence nationwide, overseeing the integration of behavioral medicine into headache care throughout the VA health care system. Under her leadership, the VA established a new standard of care, integrating behavioral medicine as a core treatment for headache, fundamentally reshaping how headache disorders are treated nationwide.

Throughout her time at the VA, Grinberg provided individual and group therapy to veterans with a wide variety of conditions, received training in behavioral sleep medicine, and conducted clinical trials on innovative approaches to treatment delivery. She led the development of the system’s first therapist manual on cognitive behavioral therapy for headache diseases, and built and scaled a national training infrastructure, educating and mentoring over 250 providers across the country in behavioral headache medicine. “Serving the veterans was an extraordinary privilege,” she says. “You learn so much from each person. You’re their clinician, their psychologist, their advocate, their cheerleader.”

Grinberg’s philosophy emphasizes true partnership and personalization. “I bring clinical expertise, and patients bring deep knowledge of their own lives. The most effective care happens when those two forms of expertise happen together,” she says. Recognizing that behavior change is difficult, Grinberg focuses on anchoring interventions to patients’ real-world goals and values. “Behavior change becomes sustainable when it is connected to what matters most,” she explains. “When health goals are tied to meaningful life priorities, change is far more likely to last.”

Whether she’s helping people with headache, sleep problems, or other stressors, her methods are designed to give patients lasting self-management skills so they can improve the way they feel and function outside her office. “If I’m doing my job correctly, patients should have their own self-management toolbox they can use independently,” Grinberg says. “Showing people what they can do helps them feel so much self efficacy and is truly magical.”

At Atria, Grinberg runs a comprehensive behavioral medicine program, which she views as core to preventive health and longevity. Using strategies such as cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, biofeedback, motivational interviewing, and more, she works closely with Atria’s interdisciplinary team to provide fully integrated care that treats each person from all angles.

“There's something profoundly meaningful about people letting you into their lives when they’re at their most vulnerable that I really think we cannot take for granted,” Grinberg says. “Every day I show up to work, I like to remind myself that it’s an honor to be trusted with that role.”

Grinberg lives in New York with her husband and their three children. Outside of work, she volunteers weekly offering companionship to sick community members and serves on the board of a nonprofit overnight camp that provides accessible summer experiences to youth regardless of income.