Providers

Mental Health Clinicians

Chantelle, PMHNP

Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner

Chantelle Paulson (she/they) is a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) with a deep commitment to providing compassionate, holistic care. Since 2022, she has been prescribing in community health, drawing on over a decade of diverse healthcare experience.

A life-long resident of the Pacific Northwest, Chantelle is new to the Vancouver community but has long been committed to improving mental and physical well-being in the area. Her healthcare journey began in 2011, starting as a medication aide and caregiver for individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities in a group home setting.

Throughout her career, Chantelle has held a variety of roles, including technician and RN positions working with individuals experiencing severe mental illness in both secure residential and inpatient crisis settings. She also worked for several years as a board-certified medical-surgical nurse in a hospital setting, gaining invaluable experience at the bedside and as a charge nurse.

Chantelle’s diverse background has shaped her holistic approach to healthcare, with a special focus on the intersection of mental and physical health—particularly within underserved communities. Her mission is to continue integrating mental health support into the broader healthcare landscape to ensure access and equity for all individuals.

Chantelle earned her doctorate from Gonzaga University, where she developed a PTSD screening protocol for cancer patients in survivorship at a local oncology clinic. She is excited to collaborate with the primary care providers at Lavender Spectrum to offer well-rounded, holistic care to every patient she serves.

With a special interest in working with neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ individuals, Chantelle incorporates the HAES (Health at Every Size) framework into her care. She personally identifies with all three of these communities. She is committed to practicing anti-racism in both her personal and professional life. Other areas of expertise include medication management for individuals who have psychotic, mood, anxiety, and trauma disorders, and she strives to provide care that respects each individual’s unique experiences and needs.

Chantelle is dedicated to evidence-based practice and continually seeks opportunities to grow her knowledge, attending conferences and consulting medical journals to improve the care she provides.

Outside of her professional life, Chantelle enjoys spending time with her spouse and dog. She also loves camping, creating art, reading, powerlifting, and gardening.

Primary Care Clinicians

Tyler RN, BSN

Registered Nurse

Tyler (he/they) joined the Lavender Spectrum Health team in May 2024 as a registered nurse. He holds licensures in Washington and Oregon and started practicing in November 2022. Tyler is passionate about providing healthcare to and advocating for disenfranchised groups, such as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and neurodiverse patients.

His first nursing experience was providing care to patients on a post-surgical unit at a level-one trauma center. In this position, he learned how to treat patients with acute and

chronic ailments. Tyler also got to work with a diverse patient population. This gave him a chance to advocate for these diverse patients to ensure they received compassionate, gender-affirming, and culturally sensitive care. He would use his knowledge of caring for LGBTQ+ patients with his fellow nurses to ensure culturally competent care for these

patients.

Tyler graduated from Washington State University School of Nursing in 2022 with honors. During his time in nursing school, Tyler realized his passion for caring for LGBTQ+ patients and educating himself on treatment for LGBTQ+ needs. With so little research on the community, Tyler would search for research articles focusing on treatment for the community. Tyler identifies as gay and genderqueer. He lives in Portland's St. Johns neighborhood with his partner and fur baby.

Rowan FNP

Family Nurse Practitioner

Rowan (she/her) is a Nurse Practitioner who holds liberation and autonomy as the core principles of her life's work. She comes from a diverse background which includes activism, birth work, primary care, mental healthcare, and working with adolescents. She first became interested in healthcare while advocating for incarcerated people, and she continues to approach all work through an intersectional, abolitionist, and equity-centered lens. As an NP, she is passionate about creating trusting relationships through patient-centered care with a special interest in preventative, gender-affirming, and sexual healthcare.

Rowan is queer and cisgender. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking, reading queer science fiction, and playing word games. She lives in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood of Portland.

Rowan, like all our providers, practices from the following lenes: health at every size, neurodiversity-affirming, and trauma informed.

Rowan, like all our providers, also enjoys seeing patients with conditions that are poorly understood such as dysautonomia, hypermobility syndromes, and mast cell issues.

Lauren FNP

Family Nurse Practitioner

Lauren (she/her) is a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) who recently graduated from Oregon Health & Science University. Formerly a birth, abortion, and postpartum doula, Lauren was called to doula work by a passion for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. Her time spent in this role initially led her to pursue Nurse Midwifery. However, her desire to provide care to people of all genders throughout the lifespan caused her to pivot to the FNP role, and she couldn't be happier about it. She loves being able to provide evidence-based primary care services to all people.

Lauren's central principle to providing healthcare is a deep respect for the person in front of her, their expertise in their own body, and their self-determination. Lauren enjoys meeting her patients where they are at in their health journey, and in particular loves working with those along the LGBTQIA2S+ spectrum, neurodivergent people, and people who live with disabilities and chronic illnesses.

A daughter of Italian immigrants and originally from New York, she has spent 15 years on the west coast but has still managed to maintain her sass. She lives in Portland with her husband, Scott, and her tiny rescue dog, Willow, and firmly believes everyone needs a tiny rescue dog in their lives. In her free time, Lauren likes reading, cooking, baking, nature walks, yoga, and playing board games and video games.

Lauren, like all our providers, also enjoys seeing patients with conditions that are poorly understood such as dysautonomia, hypermobility syndromes, and mast cell issues.

Natalie FNP-C

Family Nurse Practitioner

Natalie FNP-C (she/they) is a family nurse practitioner in practice since 2016 providing primary care, urgent care, and specialty services. Natalie is particularly passionate about LGBTQ+ health, neurodiversity-affirming healthcare, and gender-affirming hormone therapy. Natalie has a strong interest in keeping current on scientific literature for best practices in primary care and practicing evidence-based medicine.

Natalie’s background includes four years of primary care at a rural community health clinic where she served the low-income rural communities of Southwest Washington and was a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community. She also worked for one year providing telehealth urgent care services in Oregon and Washington, and 18 months in private practice in Portland, Oregon, providing full spectrum primary care.

She has a unique scientific background for a nurse practitioner; she has seven scientific publications (one of which is first author) and had a two-year research fellowship in functional neuroimaging at Duke University where she studied how mindfulness buffers the brain from the effects of early life stress. She continues to publish scientific research on improving health of the LGBTQ community with her spouse, a scientist who studies healthcare delivery for marginalized populations.

She also provides consulting services in the community to increase access to other services including electrolysis for gender-affirming surgeries.

Natalie is a member of the following professional organizations: World Professional Organization for Transgender Health and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Natalie identifies as queer and neurodivergent. Natalie enjoys hiking, photography, crafting, and is an avid reader of audiobooks and scientific journals.

Natalie, like all our providers, practices from the following lenes: health at every size, neurodiversity-affirming, and trauma informed.

Natalie, like all our providers, also enjoys seeing patients with conditions that are poorly understood such as dysautonomia, hypermobility syndromes, and mast cell issues.

Natalie provides evidence-based healthcare services. She has been involved in evidence-based medicine research and other scientific research.

Dr. Iris Maruska, ND

Naturopath

Dr. Iris Maruska (Dr. M) and is excited to be joining Lavender Spectrum Health in May 2025.

She grew up in a tiny town in western Montana and came to Portland almost 20 years ago. She fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and could not see herself anywhere else. In those years, she finished a degree in Psychology from Portland State University and attended the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon where she received her Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine. For the past 11 years, she has been practicing in the urgent care setting using evidence-based conventional medicine. After life threw her a few curve balls, she realized she missed connecting with her patients and made the decision to move into the primary care setting.

Her approach to patient care is built on four principles:

Make it fun. Coming to the doctor should not be scary, shame filled, or disrespectful. She understands many people have had uncomfortable doctor’s appointments in the past. She wants you to look forward to coming to see her.
Work together. She is here to guide, educate, and keep you safe, and will make decisions together with you on where to start and how to achieve your health goals.
Everything is connected. All body systems intersect somewhere. In addition, mental and physical health are deeply intertwined and many times both must be addressed to feel best.
Individualized care. One size does not fit all, especially in medicine. Therefore each patient gets a tailored, holistic, and comprehensive care plan based on their specific wants and needs.

She will be the first to admit change is hard and she is not a huge fan of it, however sometimes it can be exactly what we need (if we let it). She hopes to see you soon!

Iris is a naturopath by training and while she practices similarly to our other providers, insurance coverage including copays and coinsurance may be different from our other providers”

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