Your Care Team

Our team includes licensed mental health clinicians, group facilitators, and wellness practitioners trained in perinatal mental health. Every member of our team brings deep compassion, clinical excellence, and a commitment to helping families heal.

Molly Schwartz, LICSW, PMH-C

Clinical Director

Molly is a perinatal mental health clinician who brings both personal and professional experience to her role at Root + Rise. She earned her Master of Social Work from San Diego State University and worked in a variety of settings—including community mental health programs and colleges and high schools—before discovering perinatal mental health, which quickly became a deep passion. After moving back to New England with her husband, son, and dog, Molly joined the Obstetrics Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and earned her Perinatal Mental Health Certification (PMH-C) through Postpartum Support International.

Today, Molly supports individuals during the perinatal period while also working behind the scenes to advance systems of care and strengthen the perinatal mental health field. She approaches therapy and administrative work with compassion and empathy, recognizing that the perinatal period is a monumental and deeply complex season of life with unique challenges and needs. Her work is grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and mindfulness, with the belief that changing how we relate to ourselves and our experiences can help us live with greater meaning and less suffering.

Outside of work, Molly can usually be found parenting, dancing, reading, or finding ways to move her body. She also hopes to take up watercolor painting—the supplies are ready and waiting (and have been for some time…).

Angela Landerholm, MD.

Medical Director

Angela brings steadiness, warmth, and empathy to her work with individuals navigating the emotional complexities of pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting. As both a mother and a psychiatrist, she understands that this season can hold both profound joy and unexpected struggle, and she is committed to helping parents find balance, meaning, and self-compassion along the way.

Before becoming Medical Director, Angela served as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist with expertise in psycho-oncology, aging, and caregiver wellbeing. Her experience caring for individuals through life’s most vulnerable transitions informs her deep respect for the resilience of new and expectant parents.

Angela earned her medical degree from University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed her psychiatry residency at The Institute of Living/Hartford Hospital. Subsequently she completed fellowship training in consultation-liaison psychiatry medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is dedicated to supporting a clinic culture that centers on compassion and connection for both patients and the clinicians who care for them.

OUR FOUNDERS

Co-Founders Kate Perfetti & Rophe Mason

It started with a simple question: “Can we grab lunch?” Over bowling alley pizza and shared stories, we realized we carried the same burden and the same dream. Both of us had seen, in different ways, how isolating and overwhelming the perinatal and postpartum seasons could be. That lunch turned into a calling, and Root + Rise was born.

Kate, a solo mom and longtime mental health professional, had spent years fielding referrals for women desperate for help. She knew from both personal and professional experience that a one-size-fits-all model was not enough. Women in the perinatal stage need care and programming designed just for them.

Rophe, an experienced birth worker and executive, had walked with countless women through pregnancy and birth. Time and again, she saw the same pattern: after the baby arrived, support faded, and that is often when depression, anxiety, and exhaustion began to press in. She knew something had to change.

Together, we combined our passion for maternal mental health with the expertise to build something new. Root + Rise is the result, a space for healing, a space for support, a space to rise. Because no one should have to navigate pregnancy and postpartum alone.

Your Care Team

Natalie Bendheim, LICSW, PMH-C

Ani Deery, LMHC, PMH-C

Jaime Meighan, PMHNP

Lauren Martino, LMHC, MS

Sarayu Mangipudi