Kristin Louise Duncombe
Author, Therapist, Coach
I am an American therapist and couples counselor, life coach, and author who has lived in Europe since 2001. I have based my career on working with international and expatriate individuals and families following my own experience of growing up across Africa and Asia as the child of a US diplomat, and having lived internationally most of my adult life.
I am the author of Trailing: A Memoir and Five Flights Up, both memoirs that address, among other things, the specific challenges and idiosyncracies of the expat existence. My most recent book is OBJECT: A Memoir, which is a recounting of the US State Department’s protection of a serial pedophile, and the consequences on the lives and mental health of his many preteen victims. OBJECT has been called “devastating and enthralling; a bombshell of a book.”
I did my undergraduate work at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and earned Masters degrees in clinical Social Work and Public Health at Tulane University, in New Orleans, Louisiana. I also trained for three years as a couple’s therapist with Dr. Ellyn Bader and Dr. Peter Pearson of the Couple’s Institute in Menlo Park, California. I did my training as a professional life coach with the Coaches Training Institute in Geneva, Switzerland.
I have more than twenty solid years of experience working as a therapist and coach with individuals, couples, and families in the United States, East Africa, and Europe, and also provided the counseling services for the American University of Paris from 2008 until 2012.
I am based in Geneva though travel frequently to Paris and London to spend time with my kids.
Skype and Zoom allow me to work with people all over the world, no matter where I am. To make an appointment please get in touch. Click here.
Books by KLD
Trailing: A Memoir
Something unexpected occurs when Kristin Louise Duncombe moves to New Orleans to begin her adult life as a psychotherapist: She falls madly in love with a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor, abandons all of her plans, and follows him on a medical mission to East Africa.
OBJECT: A Memoir
What happens when an American diplomat is exposed as a sexual abuser of young girls?
In her searing memoir, Duncombe takes us back to her childhood in West Africa, where her life is a tapestry of lazy family days by the pool and secret abuse at the hands of an esteemed member of the close-knit US Embassy community.